On Friday, MPs in Westminster have another chance to consider a bill which could legalise assisted dying in England and Wales.

In Scotland, a separate assisted dying bill has received the initial backing of MSPs and will now be looked at in more detail.

The Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill was introduced by Labour MP Kim Leadbeater.

It proposes letting terminally ill people end their life if they:

• are over 18, live in England or Wales, and have been registered with a GP for at least 12 months
• have the mental capacity to make the choice and be deemed to have expressed a clear, settled and informed wish, free from coercion or pressure
• be expected to die within six months
• make two separate declarations, witnessed and signed, about their wish to die
• satisfy two independent doctors that they are eligible – with at least seven days between each assessment

Once an application has been approved, the patient would have to wait 14 days before proceeding.

A doctor would prepare the substance being used to end the patient’s life, but the person would take it themselves.

The bill defines the co-ordinating doctor as a registered medical practitioner with “training, qualifications and experience” at a level to be specified by the health secretary. It does not say which drug would be used.

It would be illegal to coerce someone into declaring they want to end their life, with a possible 14-year prison sentence.

A majority of MPs backed the bill in November 2024.

A committee of 23 MPs – including 14 supporters and nine opponents – has gone through the proposed legislation line by line. It held public hearings and took evidence from experts.

Under the original proposals, a High Court judge would have to approve each request to end a life.

However, the committee accepted Leadbeater’s suggestion that a three-person panel comprising a senior legal figure, a psychiatrist and a social worker should oversee applications instead.

Other changes include:

On Friday, MPs will have the chance to propose and vote on additional changes. There won’t be a vote on whether to pass or reject the entire bill.

The legislation will then be subject to further scrutiny in the Commons and the Lords, with further votes. The Commons is unlikely to vote to give the bill final approval until 13 June at the earliest.

The government has reduced its upper estimate for the number of assisted deaths in the first year from 787 to 647. It admitted errors in calculating how many people could take up the service if it becomes law.

Paralympian and House of Lords crossbencher Baroness Grey-Thompson is a vocal critic.

She is worried that disabled and other vulnerable people could be put under pressure to end their lives – and that doctors may struggle to make accurate six-month diagnoses.

Actor and disability-rights activist Liz Carr, who made the BBC One documentary Better Off Dead?, also opposes the legislation.

“Some of us have very real fears based on our lived experience and based on what has happened in other countries where it’s legal,” she wrote on X.

Dr Gordon Macdonald, from campaign group Care Not Killing, said the bill ignores the wider “deep-seated problems in the UK’s broken and patchy palliative care system”.

Labour MSP Pam Duncan-Glancy, the first permanent wheelchair user to be elected to Holyrood, said it could become “easier to access help to die than help to live”.

The British Medical Association, which represents doctors, and the Royal College of Nursing are neutral on the issue.

More than 1,000 GPs responded to a BBC questionnaire on attitudes to changing the law, with about 500 saying they were opposed, and about 400 in favour.

Leadbeater argues that some people “have a horrible, harrowing death”, however good their end-of-life care is.

The Dignity in Dying campaign group said her bill provides the “most detailed, robust proposals” on the issue that “Westminster has ever considered”.

Chief executive Sarah Wootton said that the fact that every year “up to 650 terminally ill people end their own lives, often in lonely and traumatic ways,” proves the need for reform.

Broadcaster Dame Esther Rantzen, who has stage-four lung cancer, is another long-standing campaigner for change. “All I’m asking for is that we be given the dignity of choice,” she said.

The Isle of Man and Jersey are both part of the British Isles but are able to set their own laws.

The Isle of Man passed its Assisted Dying Bill in March, and the new system could be in place by 2027.

Jersey’s politicians approved plans to allow assisted dying for those facing “unbearable suffering” in May 2024. The final legislation is being written. If approved, new rules could take effect from summer 2027.

There is some debate over exactly what the terms mean.

However, assisted dying generally refers to a person who is terminally ill receiving lethal drugs from a medical practitioner, which they administer themselves.

Assisted suicide is intentionally helping another person to end their life, including someone who is not terminally ill. That could involve providing lethal medication or helping them travel to another jurisdiction to die.

Euthanasia is the act of deliberately ending a person’s life to relieve suffering in which a lethal drug is administered by a physician. Patients may not be terminally ill.

There are two types: voluntary euthanasia, where a patient consents; and non-voluntary, where they cannot because, for example, they are in a coma.

The Dignity in Dying campaign group says more than 200 million people around the world have legal access to some form of assisted dying.

Switzerland has allowed assisted suicide since 1942. Its Dignitas facility accepts foreign patients as well as Swiss nationals, and between 1998 and 2023 it helped 571 Britons to die.

Assisted suicide is also legal in Austria.

In the US, 10 states allow “physician-assisted dying” where doctors can prescribe lethal drugs for self-administration.

In Canada, voluntary euthanasia or “medical assistance in dying” can be provided by a doctor or nurse practitioner, either in person or through the prescription of drugs for self-administration.

Voluntary euthanasia and assisted suicide are also legal in Spain and Colombia.

Assisted dying is legal in some parts of Australia – though the law differs across states – and in New Zealand.

The Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg let people who are not terminally ill receive assistance to die.

Update 3 January 2025: This piece has been updated to give further detail on the definition of a co-ordinating doctor.

The number of UK billionaires has fallen while King Charles’ personal wealth has jumped to equal former prime minister Rishi Sunak and his wife Akshata Murty, according to the latest Sunday Times Rich List.

The annual list of the UK’s 350 richest people revealed the biggest decline in billionaires in the paper’s history.

Meanwhile in the past year, the King’s wealth has grown by £30m to £640m, increasing his rank 20 places to 258 with Sunak and Murty.

Topping the list for the fourth consecutive year is the Hinduja family behind the Indian corporation Hinduja Group, which, despite a decline in fortune, is recorded to be worth more than £35bn.

The number of billionaires slid to 156 this year from 165 in 2024, representing the sharpest decline in the Sunday Times Rich List’s 37-year-history.

“Our billionaire count is down and the combined wealth of those who feature in our research is falling,” Robert Watts, compiler of the Rich List told PA Media.

1. Gopi Hinduja and family (£35.3bn, down from £37.2bn)

2. David and Simon Reuben and family (£26.87bn)

3. Sir Leonard Blavatnik (£25.73bn)

4. Sir James Dyson and family (£20.8bn)

5. Idan Ofer (£20.12bn)

Coming in second after the Hinduja family, at almost £27bn, were the Reuben brothers, who made their fortune through property and technology.

A close third was Sir Leonard Blavatnik, a Ukrainian born British-American businessman who built up a sizeable net worth of almost £26bn.

Seeing the biggest fall in fortune this year was Manchester United part-owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe.

His wealth has dropped by £6.473bn – more than a quarter of his fortune – in the last year.

It now sits at £17.046bn from £23.519bn, pushing him from fourth to seventh on the list.

Among other notable figures to make the list were Formula One champion Sir Lewis Hamilton, David and Victoria Beckham, and Sir Elton John.

Dua Lipa, 29, was the youngest person to be included on the sub-list of the richest Britons aged under 40. She was raked at 34, with an estimated wealth of £115m.

Harry Styles, 31, was listed at 22 with a fortune of £225m. Ed Sheeran, 34, was at number 13 with £370m.

The King’s rise in wealth has also made him richer than his late mother, Queen Elizabeth II.

The new figures estimate Charles to be worth £270m more than his mother, with the majority of his fortune benefiting from the investment portfolio he inherited from her.

The late Queen was said to be worth £370m in 2022 compared to Charles’ current fortune of £640m.

He did not pay inheritance tax on the fortune she left, due to an exemption. This would have charged a standard of 40% on assets above a threshold.

Money is also earned from the private estate the Duchy of Lancaster. It covers more than 18,000 hectares of land in areas such as Lancashire and Yorkshire, as well as property in central London.

Worth £654m, it generates about £20m a year in profits.

Mr Watts said researchers found that fewer “of the world’s super rich are coming to live in the UK.”

He said he was “struck by the strength of criticism for Rachel Reeves’s Treasury” when speaking to wealthy individuals for the publication.

He said: “We expected the abolition of non-dom status would anger affluent people from overseas.

The Labour government abolished the non-dom tax status in April, which is where UK residents whose permanent home or domicile is outside the UK for tax purposes.

Instead, they now face the new foreign income and gains regime, which provides tax relief on foreign income and gains for people in their first four years of tax residence.

It only applies if they have not been a tax resident in the UK in any of the 10 consecutive years prior to their arrival.

Last year, former Conservative chancellor Jeremy Hunt revealed plans to scrap the tax status before successor Rachel Reeves sped up the process.

The government expects the package of measures to raise £12.7bn over the next five years. US President Donald Trump’s global tariffs, announced in April, have also had an impact.

The announcement saw the stock markets plummet immediately afterwards, with turbulence continuing since and businesses facing higher prices in the US.

The International Monetary Fund has said in its recent forecast for the world economy that global share prices dropped “as trade tensions flared” and warned about an “erosion of trust” between countries.

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Millions more adults in England and Wales are believed to have experienced domestic abuse since the age of 16, after the Office for National Statistics (ONS) overhauled its crime survey.

They added new questions covering topics like controlling and coercive behaviour and the harm it causes.

This means that more than 12m people are thought to have suffered abusive behaviour from family members or partners, up from 10m in older figures.

The new data, for the year ending March 2024, gives the most detailed picture yet of how common different types of abusive behaviour are, suggesting 18% of adults have suffered emotional abuse and 12% economic abuse.

Not all abusive behaviours cross the line into criminal levels of domestic abuse, researchers warned.

Data on the severity of abuse was not published on Friday, but is expected in November.

The figures were published on the same day as a report from MPs calling for better data on violence against women and girls (VAWG).

The Public Accounts Committee highlighted the need for improved information on how much violence women and girls face, on the needs of support services, evidence on the interventions that reduce violence and co-ordination across government departments to halve VAWG.

The Home Office said the new data is “essential to help us better understand the scale of domestic abuse and how we halve violence against women and girls”.

Domestic abuse charity Women’s Aid, which helped the ONS and University of Bristol develop the new questions has welcomed the change.

“Women’s Aid has for many years been concerned that the questions in the survey have failed to adequately capture the lived experience of victim-survivors of domestic abuse” said Sarika Seshadri, their Head of Research and Evaluation.

The definition of domestic abuse in law has changed a lot over the past decade. Coercive control was first made a crime in 2015, years before the 2021 Domestic Abuse Act explicitly defined some of its major forms, including economic abuse.

The ONS adapted its gold-standard crime survey to reflect the shift in understanding of abuse and better reflect the experiences of survivors.

Some of the new questions ask about manipulative behaviour, including whether a partner or family member had tried to convince the respondent’s friends they were “crazy”; acted in an “overly jealous way”; or had threatened to hurt or kill themselves if the respondent did not do what they wanted.

The new survey also asks if a family member or partner had threatened to discredit the respondent using sensitive personal information, such as their sexuality or immigration status.

Answers were collected privately using tablets, unlike the spoken interviews used for other crimes.

According to the new data, about 12.6 million people in England and Wales – 26% of the population – had experienced abusive behaviours by family or partners since age of 16, including 30% of women and 22% of men.

These figures did not account for the number of incidents or harm suffered. Women are more often the target of repeated or more severe abuse.

More than three-quarters of the 108 domestic homicide victims in the year to March 2024 were women.

The man who murdered Cher Maximen in front of her three-year-old daughter at Notting Hill Carnival has been jailed for life.

Shakeil Thibou, 20, from Kensington in west London, was sentenced at the Old Bailey where he was ordered to serve a minimum term of 29 years.

Ms Maximen, 32, was stabbed with a zombie knife when a fight between a group of men broke out next to her. She died six days later in hospital.

During sentencing, Judge Philip Katz said: “It is not possible to overstate the impact of Cher’s brutal and shocking murder on those who knew her.”

The trial heard that Thibou had lunged at a man, Adjei Isaac, during the fight on 25 August – family day at the carnival.

As Mr Isaac tried to avoid being stabbed, he came into contact with Ms Maximen, who fell to the ground. She was then stabbed by Thibou.

Thibou was found guilty of murder, attempting to cause grievous bodily harm to 20-year-old Mr Isaac with intent, and having an offensive weapon.

Judge Katz said Thibou’s “brazen” attack had been carried out in broad daylight in front of families and the police.

He said instead of just enjoying a fun day together, Cher’s daughter “witnessed her mother being murdered in front of her.

“The police were totally outnumbered as the violence spun out of control.”

The judge said watching the police body-worn footage was “terrifying”.

Addressing Thibou, Judge Katz said: “When violence broke out, you were quick to move to join in.

“You were so fired up that you didn’t hesitate to use your knife.

“You were so brazen that it was carried out in front of police officers.”

Thibou, who wore a medical face mask and blue beanie hat in the dock, looked straight ahead throughout.

His brother Sheldon Thibou, 25, was found guilty of violent disorder and assaulting PC Oliver Mort, who tried to intervene.

A third brother, Shaeim Thibou, 22, was cleared of violent disorder but convicted of assaulting PC Mort.

Shaeim will be sentenced later on Friday, will Sheldon will be sentenced at a later date.

We were flying through the warm light of the setting sun. There were villages and small towns where the lights were coming on. It was a peaceful landscape where people walked and drove without constantly looking to the sky.

We were over the suburbs of Amman when Safa’a Salha held up her mobile phone so that I could read a message she’d written.

“Oh my God,” this Gaza mother wrote, “Jordan is so beautiful.”

The evacuees had come to the Jordanian border by road. I joined them there for the final part of the journey by helicopter to Amman.

Safa’a spoke very little English, and in any case the noise of the helicopter made it impossible to converse.

She showed me another message. “We used to see this [helicopter] every day and it was coming to bomb and kill. But today the feeling is totally different.”

Next to her sat her 16-year-old son Youssef who showed me the scar on his head from his last surgery. He smiled and wanted to speak, not of Gaza but ordinary things. How he was excited by the helicopter, how he liked football. Youssef said he was very happy and gave me a fist bump.

Beside him was nine-year-old Sama Awad, frail and scared-looking, holding the hand of her mother, Isra. Sama has a brain tumour and will have surgery in Amman.

“I hope she can get the best treatment here,” said Isra, when we were on the ground and the noise of the engines faded.

I asked a question which had been answered for me many times by looking at images, but not face to face by someone who had just left.

What is Gaza like now?

“It is horrible. It is impossible to describe. Horrible on so many levels. But people are just trying to get on with living,” Isra replied.

Four sick children were evacuated to Jordan along with twelve parents and guardians. They left Gaza by ambulance on Wednesday morning and travelled through Israel without stopping until they reached the border crossing.

The plan to evacuate children was first unveiled during a meeting between US President Donald Trump and Jordan’s King Abdullah in February.

Jordan’s stated aim is to bring 2,000 sick children to the kingdom for treatment. So far only 33 have been evacuated to Jordan, each travelling with a parent or guardian.

Jordanian sources say Israel has delayed and imposed restrictions and this – along with the resumption of the war – has impeded the evacuation process. Sick Gazans have also been evacuated to other countries via Israel.

We put the Jordanian concerns to the Israeli government organisation responsible – Cogat (Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories) – who told us that since “the beginning of the year, and especially in recent weeks, there has been a significant increase in the number of Gazans evacuated through Israel for medical care abroad.”

Cogat said thousands of patients and escorts had gone to countries, including Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, the US and others. The statement said that “the ongoing hostilities in the Gaza Strip pose a challenge to the implementation of these evacuation operations.”

Israel broke the last ceasefire in March launching a wave of attacks on what it said were Hamas positions.

Gaza remains a claustrophobic zone of hunger and death for its residents. Those who get out for medical treatment are the exception.

According to the UN the population of 2.1 million is facing the risk of famine. The organisation’s head of humanitarian affairs, Tom Fletcher, has appealed to the UN Security Council to act to “prevent genocide” in Gaza.

These are strong words for a man trained in the sober traditions of the British Foreign Office and who has served as an ambassador and senior government advisor.

The Israeli blockade is preventing essential aid supplies from reaching the population. That along with the continued bombing explain Isra Abu Jame’s description of a place horrible beyond words.

The children who arrived in Jordan on Wednesday from Gaza will join a small community of other wounded and sick youngsters in different Amman hospitals.

Since January we have been following the case of Habiba Al-Askari, who came with her mother Rana in the hope doctors might be able to save three gangrene infected limbs – two arms, and a leg.

But the infection – caused by a rare skin condition – had gone too far. Habiba underwent a triple amputation.

When I met Habiba and Rana again this week, the little girl was using the toes of her remaining foot to scroll, and play children’s games on her mum’s phone. She blew kisses with the stump of her arm. This was a very different child to the frightened girl I met on the helicopter evacuation five months ago.

“She’s a strong person,” Rana said. Habiba will be fitted with prosthetic limbs. Already she is determined to walk, asking her mother to hold under her armpits while she hops.

Some day, Rana hopes, she will take Habiba back to Gaza. Mother and child are safe and well cared for in Amman, but their entire world, their family and neighbours are back in the ruins. Concerns about Habiba’s health make Rana reluctant to contemplate going back soon.

“We have no house. If we want go back where will we go? We would be going back to a tent full of sand…[but] I truly want to return. Gaza is beautiful, despite everything that has happened. To me Gaza will always be the most precious spot on this entire earth.”

They will return. But to war or peace? Nobody knows.

With additional reporting by Alice Doyard, Suha Kawar, Nik Millard and Malak Hassouneh.

Israel is preparing a series of sites in Gaza that could be used as distribution centres for humanitarian aid in a controversial new plan, satellite images show.

The Israeli government suspended food and medicine deliveries into Gaza in March.

Ministers said the move, which has been condemned by UN, European and Middle Eastern leaders, was intended to put pressure on Hamas to release its remaining hostages. Israel also accused Hamas of stealing aid – an allegation the group has denied.

The UN has said the blockade has caused severe shortages of food, medicines and fuel, and an assessment on Monday warned that Gaza’s population of around 2.1 million people was at “critical risk” of famine.

The US confirmed last week that it was preparing a new system for providing aid from a series of hubs inside Gaza, which would be run by private companies and protected by security contractors and Israeli forces.

Images analysed by BBC Verify show that land has already been cleared, with new roads and staging areas constructed at a number of locations in southern and central Gaza in recent weeks.

Israel has not publicly said where the hubs will be, but humanitarian sources – briefed previously by Israeli officials – told BBC Verify that at least four centres will be built in the southern section of Gaza and one further north near the Netzarim Corridor, a strip of land controlled by the military that effectively divides the territory.

The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation – an organisation set up to support the plan – initially said food, water and hygiene kits would be supplied to 1.2 million people, less than 60% of the population.

On Wednesday it announced it would start operations before the end of May, and appeared to call for Israel to allow aid through normal channels until its distribution centres were fully operational. It also called for aid hubs to be built in northern Gaza, something not envisaged under the original plan and which had led to criticism that people would be forced to move south.

UN agencies have insisted they will not co-operate with the plan – which is in line with one previously approved by Israel’s government – saying it contradicted fundamental humanitarian principles.

A spokesperson for the UN’s Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) accused Israel of seeking to use “food and fuel as leverage, as part of a military strategy”.

“All aid would be channelled through a handful of militarised hubs,” Olga Cherevko told BBC Verify.

“That kind of arrangement would cut off vast areas of Gaza – particularly the most vulnerable, who can’t move easily, or are otherwise marginalised – from any help at all.”

Meanwhile, Bushra Khalidi of Oxfam described the new plan as a “farce”.

“No logistical solution is going to address Israel’s strategy of forcible displacement and using starvation as a weapon of war. Lift the siege, open the crossings and let us do our job.”

It is understood that the proposed new system has not yet had final sign-off from the Israeli government.

BBC Verify used satellite imagery to identify four potential sites based on the limited available information about their locations.

The sites are similar in size, shape and design to existing open-air distribution sites inside Gaza, such as at Erez, Erez West and Kisufim. The largest site we’ve looked at is bigger – more comparable to the area inside Gaza at Kerem Shalom crossing.

Our analysis of the imagery shows significant development at one of the sites in south-west Gaza, close to the ruins of a village that is now an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) base.

Satellite photos since early April show the construction of a road there and a large staging area, surrounded by berms – large defensive barriers made of piled sand or earth – about 650m (2,130ft) from the border with Egypt.

A high-resolution image captured on 8 May shows bulldozers and excavators working on a section of land spanning about 20 acres (8 hectares). IDF armoured vehicles are at a fortified building nearby.

A photo taken on site, geolocated by BBC Verify, also shows lighting being installed on the perimeter.

Further imagery from 11 and 12 May shows this, along with three other sites, continuing to expand. One site is about half a kilometre from a collection of eight UN warehouses, and 280m from another large warehouse.

Stu Ray – a senior imagery analyst with McKenzie Intelligence – agreed the sites were likely to be secure distribution centres. He noted that some of the facilities are in “close proximity to IDF Forward Operating Bases which ties in with the IDF wishing to have some control over the sites”.

Analysts with another intelligence firm, Maiar, said the facilities appeared to be designed with separate entrances for trucks to move in and out, and with other gaps in the berms that would be suitable for pedestrian entrances.

The IDF did not comment on the potential aid centres when approached by BBC Verify, but said that its operations in Gaza were carried out “in accordance with international law”. Cogat – the Israeli body responsible for managing crossings into Gaza – did not respond to a request for comment.

Three of the four sites located by BBC Verify are south of the IDF’s newly created Morag Corridor.

This is an Israeli military zone that runs across the Gaza Strip and separates the southern cities of Khan Younis and Rafah.

Since the IDF established a security zone there in early April, a six-mile (10km) road has been built covering two thirds of the width of Gaza, bordered by defensive berms and dotted with IDF outposts.

This new road leads directly to one of the development sites visible in satellite imagery, and a pre-existing road connects it to two more.

This entire area has been subjected to extensive land clearance by the IDF. BBC Verify has geolocated video and images of areas throughout the Morag Corridor, and south of it, filmed by Israeli forces, which show controlled demolitions using explosives and heavy machinery, and extensive destruction of buildings.

Humanitarian sources said Israeli briefings indicated that aid would enter Gaza via Kerem Shalom crossing.

Satellite imagery shows ongoing construction work happening there too over the past few months, with the apparent expansion of its storage areas, and new roads added.

Since Israel stopped new aid supplies in March, the UN has reiterated that it has an obligation under international law to ensure that the basic needs of the population under its control are met.

Israel has insisted that it is complying with international law and that there is no shortage of aid in Gaza.

Garfield, Puss in Boots, Aristocats’ Toulouse – cultural icons maybe, ginger most certainly.

And now scientists across two continents have uncovered the DNA mystery that has given our furry friends, particularly males, their notable colour.

They discovered that ginger cats are missing a section of their genetic code, which means the cells responsible for their skin, eye and fur tone produce lighter colours.

The breakthrough has brought delight to the scientists but also the thousands of cat lovers that originally crowdfunded the research.

The scientists hope solving the puzzle could also help shed light on whether orange coloured cats are at increased risk of certain health conditions.

It has been known for decades that it is genetics that gives orange tabby cats their distinctive colouring, but exactly where in the genetic code has evaded scientists till now.

Two teams of scientists at Kyushu University in Japan and Stanford University in the US have now revealed the mystery in simultaneous papers published on Thursday.

What the teams found was that in the cells responsible for giving a cat its skin, hair follicles and eyes their colour – melanocytes – one gene, ARHGAP36, was much more active.

Genes are made up of pieces of DNA which give instructions to a cat’s cells, like other living creatures, on how to function.

By comparing the DNA from dozens of cats with and without orange fur they found that those with ginger colouring had a section of DNA code missing within this ARHGAP36 gene.

Without this DNA the activity of the ARHGAP36 is not suppressed i.e. it is more active. The scientists believe that the gene instructs those melanocytes to produce lighter pigment.

For decades scientists have observed that cats with completely ginger colouring are far more likely to be male. This tallies with the fact that the gene is carried on the X chromosome.

Chromosomes are larger sections of DNA, and male cats like other mammals have an X and a Y chromosome, which carry different number of genes.

As it is a gene only on the X chromosome, in this case controlling the pigment production, then one missing piece of DNA is enough to turn a cat fully ginger.

In comparison female cats have two X chromosomes so the DNA needs to be missing in both chromosomes to increase lighter pigment production to the same extent – it means a mixed colouring is more likely.

“These ginger and black patches form because, early in development, one X chromosome in each cell is randomly switched off,” explains Prof Hiroyuki Sasaki, geneticist at Kyushu University.

“As cells divide, this creates areas with different active coat colour genes, resulting in distinct patches.”

Although couched in science, the study originally started off as a passion project for Professor Sasaki.

He had retired from his university post, but as a cat lover said he wanted to continue working to uncover the orange cat gene in the hope it could “contribute to the overcoming of cat diseases”.

He and his team raised 10.6m yen (£55,109) via crowdfunding for the research from thousands of fellow cat lovers across Japan and the world.

One contributor wrote: “We are siblings in the first and third grades of elementary school. We donated with our pocket money. Use it for research on calico cats.”

The ARHGAP36 gene is also active in many other areas of the body including the brain and hormonal glands, and is considered important for development.

The researchers think it is possible that the DNA mutation in the gene could cause other changes in these parts of the body linked to health conditions or temperament.

The ARHGAP36 gene is found in humans and has been linked to skin cancer and hair loss.

“Many cat owners swear by the idea that different coat colours and patterns are linked with different personalities,” said Prof Sasaki.

“There’s no scientific evidence for this yet, but it’s an intriguing idea and one I’d love to explore further.”

A 21-year-old man has been charged after fires at two properties and a car linked to Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, the Metropolitan Police has said.

Roman Lavrynovych, a Ukrainian national, was charged with three counts of arson with intent to endanger life on Thursday.

He was arrested at an address in Sydenham, south-east London, in the early hours of Tuesday. He is due to appear at Westminster Magistrates’ Court on Friday.

The charges relate to three incidents – a vehicle fire in Kentish Town, north London, a fire at the prime minister’s private home on the same street and a fire at an address that he previously lived at in north-west London.

The investigation has been led by the Met’s Counter Terrorism Command due to its links to a high-profile figure.

In the early hours of Monday 12 May, emergency services responded to a fire at the Kentish Town home where Sir Keir Starmer lived before becoming prime minister and moving into 10 Downing Street.

Police were alerted by the London Fire Brigade (LFB) to reports of a fire at the residential address at 01:35 BST.

Damage was caused to the property’s entrance but nobody was hurt.

The BBC understands the property was being rented out to the prime minister’s sister-in-law.

A car that Sir Keir had sold to a neighbour last year was set alight four days earlier on Thursday May 8 on the same street.

Just after 03:00 on Sunday 11 May, firefighters dealt with a small fire at the front door of a house converted into flats in nearby Islington.

One person was helped to safety by firefighters wearing breathing apparatus, LFB said.

It is understood that the prime minister lived there in the 1990s.

A few days on from seeking to sound muscular about his desire to squeeze legal migration, the prime minister is in Albania focusing on illegal arrivals.

The Balkan country has provided a rare British success story in the incredibly difficult politics and diplomacy of attempting to cut illegal migration.

In 2022, around 12,500 Albanians crossed the English Channel by small boat, but the number has since shrunk massively.

The last government, and latterly this one, set up campaigns to put people off attempting the journey and far more migrants have been returned.

Sir Keir Starmer wanted to lean into this inherited success from the Conservatives, and sought to make a virtue of being the first British prime minister to make an official visit to the country.

But he also wanted to talk up negotiations with a handful of unnamed European countries that might temporarily take failed asylum seekers who have exhausted all avenues to remain in the UK.

Downing Street told reporters the move could stop failed asylum seekers stalling deportation “using various tactics, whether it’s losing their paperwork or using other tactics to frustrate their removal”.

The PM’s spokesman added it would ensure they also cannot make their removal harder “by using tactics such as starting a family”.

It is an interesting idea, which draws initial parallels with the last government’s plan to send some migrants to Rwanda, but is different.

The Conservatives wanted to send people to the African country immediately after their arrival in the UK, to lodge an asylum claim there or another “safe” country.

They argued, given the numbers arriving on small boats, a radical policy shift was needed to put people off.

Labour argued it was a vastly expensive waste of money, and scrapped the idea.

Now they are talking up their own, narrower plan.

But the curiosity is they chose to do just that while on a visit to a country that is not interested in hosting what are being called “return hubs”.

And we were to find that out rather bluntly, when no sooner than Sir Keir Starmer had made the case for the idea, the man stood next to him, his Albanian counterpart Edi Rama, said they wouldn’t be doing any more deals than the one they already have with Italy, their neighbour over the Adriatic Sea.

Downing Street insisted its own deal with Albania was “never planned as part of the discussions.”

In short, though, they had failed to ensure the most eye-catching idea they were talking about matched the pictures, the backdrop, the stage they were on.

Cue the Conservatives, whose own record on small boat crossings was poor, but who can point to that specific success with Albania, seizing on Sir Keir’s awkward juxtaposition and branding it an “embarrassment”.

It is another episode that serves as a reminder of just how hard it is finding workable, practical, deliverable solutions to a massive and complex issue, which plenty in government acknowledge they simply have to get a grip of.

Somehow.