Ryanair publishes full list of cancellations

Ryanair has published full details of which of its flights are being cancelled between now and 28 October.

Customers whose flights have been axed will also receive an email, chief executive Michael O’Leary has said.

The budget airline is cancelling 40-50 flights every day for the next six weeks, after it admitted it had “messed up” the planning of pilot holidays.

Mr O’Leary said most people would be transferred to an alternative Ryanair flight on the same day.

If not, they would be moved to flights the day before or the day after, and the airline would meet its obligations over compensation.

Details of all the cancelled flights are available on the Ryanair website.

More than 200 of the cancelled flights are either into or out of London Stansted, with a handful in Edinburgh, Manchester and Birmingham also affected.

The airline said it was cancelling flights at airports where it ran the busiest schedules, so it would be easier to accommodate passengers on alternative flights.

Rome, Milan, Brussels and Barcelona airports will also see a significant number of flights, either or in or out, cancelled.

Mr O’Leary said around 400,000 passengers would be directly affected, but he said a decision had been made to disrupt the plans of 2% of travellers in order to offer a better service to the remaining customers.

Changes to the way the airline organises its holiday year have left Ryanair with a backlog of staff leave, meaning there is a shortage of pilots on standby over the next six weeks.

That meant any minor disruptions to flights, due to problems with air traffic control capacity, strikes, or weather disruptions were causing knock-on delays, because the airline did not have the flexibility it needed from back-up crews, said Mr O’Leary.

After 1 November, when the lighter winter schedule begins, there will not be any need for cancellations, he said.

He said they were also asking to buy back leave from pilots and alter the holiday schedule.

Image copyright Getty Images

Mr O’Leary said Ryanair would honour all of its obligations to compensate passengers under EU regulations but would not book passengers onto flights with rival carriers.

“We will not pay for flights on other airlines, no. It is not part of the EU261 entitlement,” he said, referring to European passenger rights legislation.

He said the airline did not have an overall shortage of pilots, but said they had “messed up” the rosters for September and October.

“This is our mess-up. When we make a mess in Ryanair we come out with our hands up,” he said.

“We try to explain why we’ve made the mess and we will pay compensation to those passengers who are entitled to compensation, which will be those flights that are cancelled over the next two weeks.”

If passengers are given more than 14 days’ notice of a cancellation, they are not entitled to compensation.


Image copyright Reuters

The EU compensation rules for cancelled flights are as follows:

  • Passengers are entitled to assistance and compensation, if the disruption was within an airline’s control.
  • Airlines have to offer full refunds, paid within seven days, or rebookings for a flight cancelled at short notice.
  • In addition, passengers can also claim compensation.
  • Cancellation amounts are: 250 euros (£218) for short-haul, 440 euros (£384) for medium-haul and 600 euros (£523) for long-haul.
  • Passengers who reach their destination more than three hours late can be compensated from 200 to 600 euros, depending on the length of flights and delay.
Posted in BBC

Wisconsin approves $3bn deal for Foxconn factory

Wisconsin has approved a package of subsidies worth up to $3bn (£2.2bn) to Taiwanese manufacturing giant Foxconn in exchange for a new US factory.

Republican Governor Scott Walker signed the controversial deal into law on Monday.

He told reporters that work on the plant, which is to make LCD panels, should start this spring.

It is believed to be the largest incentive package for a foreign company in US history.

Foxconn, which has pledged to invest $10bn in the facility and hire thousands of workers, is still negotiating a final location.

Critics have branded the deal “corporate welfare”, and questioned whether Foxconn would follow through with 13,000 high-quality jobs, as lawmakers hope.

The amount of money the firm ultimately receives is tied to its investment and hiring.

Even under optimistic projections, an analysis for Wisconsin state lawmakers found it would take more than 25 years for the state to break even on the deal.

Posted in BBC

Nerf guns can lead to serious eye injuries, doctors warn

Bullets from Nerf guns can cause serious eye injuries, doctors from a London eye hospital are warning.

They treated three people with internal bleeding around the eye, pain and blurred vision after they were shot with the toy guns by children.

Writing in BMJ Case reports, the doctors recommended wearing protective eye goggles and said the safe age limit for the guns may need to be reviewed.

Hasbro warns players not to aim Nerf guns at the eyes or face.

On its packaging, it also advises that only bullets designed for the product should be used.

The BBC contacted the company for comment but has not yet received a reply.

Force and speed

Nerf guns, made by Hasbro, are designed for children aged eight and over.

The company also sells replacement bullets or darts – but cheaper versions are also available online from other retailers.

The eye experts, from Accident & Emergency at Moorfields Eye Hospital, said the unlabelled bullet heads were harder and could potentially cause more damage – something that parents may not realise.

In their report, they describe the injuries of two adults and a child in separate incidents linked to Nerf guns.

One 32-year-old man was shot in the eye from eight metres away by a child with a Nerf gun. He suffered blurred vision and a red eye.

Image copyright BMJ Case Report

A 43-year-old woman was shot in her right eye from a distance of one metre and complained of blurred vision and a red, sore eye.

An 11-year-old child also suffered a shot in his right eye from a distance of two metres, and complained of pain and blurred vision.

He developed swelling of the outer layer of the eye (cornea), and the inner layer of the eye (retina), from the force and speed of the bullet fired by the gun.

All the patients were examined and treated with eye drops, the researchers said.

Check-ups after a few weeks showed that their sight had returned to normal.

‘Protective eyewear’

While it was good skyypro news for the three patients, the doctors said that projectiles like Nerf gun bullets travelling at speed could cause long-term loss of vision.

One patient told the doctors that there were “numerous online videos which show children how to modify their guns to make them shoot harder, faster and further distance”.

They added: “This case series emphasises the seriousness of eye injury from Nerf gun projectiles and calls into consideration the need for protective eyewear with their use.”

But they said more research was needed to find out if eye injuries were on the rise as a result of toy guns.

The authors said they could not advise on a safe distance for shooting to avoid eye injuries on the basis of three patients.

Posted in BBC

Size matters when it comes to extinction risk

The biggest and the smallest of the world’s animals are most at risk of dying out, according to a new analysis.

Size matters when it comes to extinction risk, with vertebrates in the so-called “Goldilocks zone” – not too big and not too small – winning out, say scientists.

Action is needed to protect animals at both ends of the scale, they say.

Heavyweights are threatened mainly by hunting, while featherweights are losing out to pollution and logging.

“The largest vertebrates are mostly threatened by direct killing by humans,” said a team led by Prof Bill Ripple of Oregon State University in Corvallis, US.

“Whereas the smallest species are more likely to have restricted geographic ranges – an important predictor of extinction risk – and be threatened by habitat degradation.”

Image copyright Jurgen Leckie
Image caption The great hammerhead shark is under threat from illegal fishing

The research adds to evidence that animals are dying out on such a scale that a sixth extinction is considered under way.

This has prompted efforts to determine the key drivers of extinction risk.

One clue is body size. Research on birds and mammals has shown that those with larger bodies are more likely to go extinct.

Yet, when the researchers made a data base of thousands of birds, mammals, fish, amphibians and reptiles at risk of extinction, they found disproportionate losses at the large and small ends of the scale.

“Surprisingly, we found that not only the largest of all vertebrate animal species are most threatened, but the very tiniest ones are also highly threatened with extinction,” Prof Ripple told BBC News.

Image copyright Dave Young
Image caption Warty swamp frog: This frog is believed to be in decline across much of its range

Large charismatic animals, such as elephants, rhinos and lions have long been the target of protection efforts.

However, fish, birds, reptiles and amphibians that are the giants of their kind, such as the whale shark, Somali ostrich and Chinese giant salamander, tend to be overlooked.

Meanwhile, small species at risk – such as frogs and shrews – receive very little attention.

“I think, for the smallest species, first of all we need to bring higher awareness to them, because the larger ones get a lot of attention, but the smaller ones get very little,” said Prof Ripple.

In the study, researchers from the US, UK, Switzerland and Australia compared body mass and extinction risk for more than 25,000 vertebrate species.

Of these, around 4,000 are threatened with extinction, as assessed by the Red List of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.

Vertebrates with the smallest and the largest bodies were found to be most at risk of disappearing, whether they were on land or living in oceans, streams or rivers.

Image copyright R Hutterer
Image caption The Canarian shrew is a tiny endangered mammal living only on the Canary Islands

Threats facing the heaviest included:

  • Regulated and unregulated fishing
  • Hunting and trapping for food, trade or medicines

The lightest were mainly at risk from:

  • Pollution of lakes, streams and rivers
  • Farming
  • Logging of forests
  • Development.
Image copyright Factcatdog
Image caption The Bavarian pine vole is thought to be critically endangered

The researchers say that while different approaches are needed for the conservation of large versus small species, there is an urgent need to step up efforts for both.

“Ultimately, reducing global consumption of wild meat is a key step necessary to reduce negative impacts of human hunting, fishing, and trapping on the world’s vertebrates,” they write in the journal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, which published the study.

“Indeed, based on our findings, human activity seems poised to chop off both the head and tail of the size distribution of life.”

Extinction can be a natural process, affecting a handful of species each year.

However, estimates suggest the world is now losing species at hundreds of times the “background” rate.

Co-researcher Thomas Newsome of the University of Sydney in Australia said for large animals lessening the negative impacts of hunting, fishing and trapping was key.

“But it’s ultimately slowing the human population growth rate that will be the crucial long-term factor in limiting extinction risks to many species,” he said.

Posted in BBC

Rohingya crisis: Suu Kyi does not fear global ‘scrutiny’

Myanmar’s de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi has said her government does not fear “international scrutiny” of its handling of the growing Rohingya crisis.

It was her first address to the country about the violence in northern Rakhine state that has seen more than 400,000 Rohingya Muslims cross into Bangladesh.

Ms Suu Kyi has faced heavy criticism for her response to the crisis.

She said there had been no “clearance operations” for two weeks.

In her speech in English to Myanmar’s parliament, Aung San Suu Kyi said she felt “deeply” for the suffering of “all people” in the conflict, and that Myanmar was “committed to a sustainable solution… for all communities in this state”.

Ms Suu Kyi, who has decided not to attend the UN General Assembly in New York later this week, said she nevertheless wanted the international community to know what was being done by her government.

Hours after her speech, the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva called for full access to the region so it can investigate the situation “with its own eyes”.

What is the crisis about?

Rakhine has faced unrest and sporadic violence for years, but the current crisis began in August with an armed attack on police posts which killed 12 people.

Image copyright Reuters
Image caption A new wave of Rohingya Muslims has been pouring into Bangladesh since 25 August

That was blamed on a newly emerged militant group, the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (Arsa).

The Rohingya, a mostly Muslim minority, are denied citizenship and equal opportunities by the Myanmar government, which says they are illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. They are largely despised by the wider Burmese majority-Buddhist population.

The attack lead to a massive security crackdown by the military, which the UN’s human rights chief later said seemed like a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing”.

Rohingya Muslims started leaving in vast numbers, crossing into Bangladesh with tales of their villages being burned and saying they were facing persecution at the hands of the military. Thousands of Rohingya had already fled to Bangladesh in recent years.

Access is restricted to the area, but on a government-controlled trip for journalists the BBC found reason to question the official narrative that Muslims were setting fire to their own villages.

  • Seeing through the official story in Myanmar
  • How much power does Aung San Suu Kyi really have?

What did Suu Kyi say in her the speech?

The Myanmar government does not use the term Rohingya – calling the group Bengali Muslims instead – and Ms Suu Kyi did not do so in her speech.

Delivering her address in a tone of measured defiance, she said she and her government “condemn all human rights violations and unlawful violence”.

Among the key points:

  • She did not address allegations against the military, saying only that there had been “no armed clashes or clearance operations” since 5 September.
  • She said most Muslims had decided to stay in Rakhine and that indicated the situation may not be so severe.
  • She said she wanted to speak to both Muslims who had fled and those who had stayed to find out what was at the root of the crisis.
  • She said the government had made efforts in recent years to improve living conditions for the Muslims living in Rakhine: providing healthcare, education and infrastructure.
  • She also said that all refugees in Bangladesh would be able to return after a process of verification.

How was the speech received?

Ms Suu Kyi has overwhelming support in her home country, where she was a political prisoner for years before coming to power.

But her speech has been criticised internationally for failing to address the allegations of abuse by the military.

The BBC’s Jonathan Head, who is in neighbouring Bangladesh, disputed the claim that there had been no clearance operations since 5 September, pointing out that he had seen villages being burned days after that date.

Image caption BBC reporters witnessed burning Muslim villages in Myanmar

Amnesty International said Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi was “burying her head in the sand” by ignoring the abuses by the army.

“At times, her speech amounted to little more than a mix of untruths and victim blaming,” the rights group’s director for South East Asia and the Pacific, James Gomes, said in a statement.


‘Blind to the realities?’

By Jonah Fisher, BBC News, Nay Pyi Taw

Aung San Suu Kyi is either completely out of touch or wilfully blind to the realities of what her army is up to.

It is simply not credible to say we don’t know why more than 400,000 Rohingya have fled. The evidence is being gathered every day in the testimony of refugees.

There were other moments that raised eyebrows. Like when she presented as good news the fact that more than half the Muslims in Rakhine haven’t fled. Or when she said that there had been no clashes in Rakhine for the last two weeks.

To say as she did that “all people in Rakhine state have access to education and healthcare without discrimination” is simply wrong.

The Rohingya, particularly those in camps around Sittwe, have long been denied access to the most basic services, in particular healthcare.


What is Myanmar’s position?

While Ms Suu Kyi is the de facto head of the government of Myanmar, also known as Burma, it is the military which holds real power in Rakhine state as it is in charge of internal security.

The Burmese military says its operations in the northern Rakhine state are aimed at rooting out militants, and has repeatedly denied targeting civilians.

Ms Suu Kyi has previously said the narrative was being distorted by a “huge iceberg of misinformation” and said tensions were being fanned by fake news promoting the interests of terrorists.

Posted in BBC

Parsons Green bombing: Police still questioning suspects

Police are continuing to question two men on suspicion of terror offences following Friday’s attack on a Tube train in south-west London.

It comes as CCTV images emerged showing a man carrying a Lidl supermarket bag 90 minutes before the bombing.

An 18-year-old and 21-year-old are being held over the explosion, which injured 30 at Parsons Green station.

The UK terror threat level has been lowered to severe after being raised to critical, its highest level.

On Saturday, the 21-year-old, believed to be Yahyah Farroukh, was arrested in Hounslow, west London, and the 18-year-old was detained at Dover port.

Local council leader Ian Harvey said he understood the 18-year-old was an Iraqi orphan who moved to the UK when he was 15 after his parents died.

Police are searching two addresses in Surrey in connection with the arrests – one in Sunbury-on-Thames and another in Stanwell, near Heathrow airport.

Mr Harvey, who leads Spelthorne Borough Council, told the Press Association it was “widely known” the 21-year-old was a former foster child who had lived at the property being searched in his ward of Sunbury East.

Mr Farroukh, who is originally from Syria, is believed to have been in the UK for at least four years and is understood to be living at the Stanwell address.

Neighbours there have told the BBC he was a “friendly” and “chatty” young man who had been visited by family from Scotland.

  • Residents in Sunbury told to get out of homes
  • Terror threat lowered after Tube bombing

A third property in Hounslow has also been searched as part of the investigation, Scotland Yard said.

The BBC understands it is a Middle Eastern chicken shop called Aladdins in Kingsley Road.

Mr Farroukh, whose social media says he is a student at West Thames College, was arrested outside the shop shortly before midnight. A manager confirmed he had worked there for a number of months.

ITV News has obtained CCTV showing a person leaving the property in Sunbury that is currently being searched by police.

The person can be seen carrying a Lidl bag at 6.50am on Friday morning.

At 8.20am, a device exploded on a District Line train.

The “severe” terror threat level means an attack is no longer imminent but is still highly likely.

Home Secretary Amber Rudd said police had made “good progress” in the investigation and urged “everybody to continue to be vigilant but not alarmed”.

Assistant Metropolitan Police Commissioner Mark Rowley said police had gained a “greater understanding” of how the bomb was prepared but said there was “still much more to do”.


Analysis: No ‘all clear’ yet

By BBC home affairs correspondent Dominic Casciani

The lowering of the threat level is an important sign.

It means that intelligence chiefs have looked at the developing picture in the Met’s huge operation – and other threads we will never see, from perhaps MI5 and GCHQ – and concluded that detectives now have a good handle on what happened on Friday at Parsons Green.

Or, to put it another way, the threat level would not have been reduced if anyone within the counter-terrorism network still thought there was a bomber, or accomplices, on the loose.

This is not the same as an “all clear” – intelligence is only ever fragmentary.

Detectives now appear to have time on their side.

Providing they make evidential progress, they could conceivably hold both suspects for up to a fortnight before they have to charge or release them.


Speaking to the Andrew Marr Show on Sunday, Ms Rudd said there was “no evidence” to suggest so-called Islamic State was behind the attack.

“But as this unfolds and as we do our investigations, we will make sure we find out how he was radicalised if we can,” she said.

Thirty people were injured – most suffering from “flash burns” – when a bomb was detonated on a Tube carriage at Parsons Green station.

The house being searched in Sunbury-on-Thames belongs to a married couple known for fostering hundreds of children, including refugees.

Ronald Jones, 88, and Penelope Jones, 71 were rewarded for their service to children when they were made MBEs in 2010.

The couple are said to be staying with friends following the police raid, during which surrounding houses were evacuated.

Friend Alison Griffiths said the couple had an 18-year-old and a 22-year-old staying with them recently.

She described Mr and Mrs Jones as “great pillars of the community”, adding: “They do a job that not many people do.”

Police have urged anyone with information to contact them and to upload pictures and video to the website www.ukpoliceimageappeal.co.uk or to call the Anti-Terrorist Hotline on 0800 789 321.

Posted in BBC

Viewers shocked as Nicole Kidman and Alexander Skarsgard share intimate Emmys kiss

ONE blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment from today’s Emmy Awards had viewers losing their minds – and it involved Aussie star Nicole Kidman.

No, our Nic wasn’t pulling focus with her unusual clapping technique – rather, it was a surprisingly intimate moment she shared with her Big Little Lies co-star Alexander Skarsgard.

As Skarsgard headed to the stage to accept his award for Best Supporting Actor in a Limited Series or a Television Movie, he stopped by Kidman, who played his wife in the series.

His arms around her waist, hers on his face, the two co-stars – whose racy sex scenes in the HBO series made headlines – kissed each other full on the lips, while Kidman’s husband Keith Urban looked on, clapping.

Reaction from viewers was unanimous: Wait, did we just see what we thought was saw?

Hurricane Maria to become major storm near Caribbean islands

Maria is expected to become a dangerous major hurricane as it nears the Leeward Islands in the Caribbean.

The category one hurricane will rapidly strengthen over the next 48 hours and will hit the islands late on Monday, says the US National Hurricane Center.

It is moving roughly along the same path as Irma, the hurricane that devastated the region this month.

Hurricane warnings have been issued for Guadeloupe, Dominica, St Kitts and Nevis, Montserrat and Martinique.

A hurricane watch is now in effect for Puerto Rico, the US and British Virgin Islands, St Martin, St Barts, Saba, St Eustatius and Anguilla.

Some of these islands are still recovering after being hit by Irma – the category five hurricane which left at least 37 people dead and caused billions of dollars’ worth of damage.

In its latest update on Monday, the NHC says Maria has maximum sustained winds of 90mph (150 km/h).

The eye of the storm is 100 miles east of Martinique, and Maria is moving west-northwest at about 13mph.

“Preparations to protect life and property should be rushed to completion,” the NHC says.

The most southerly point of the Leeward Islands – where Maria will first strike – include Antigua and Barbuda. The latter island was evacuated after being devastated by Irma.

The NHC says that “a dangerous storm surge accompanied by large and destructive waves will raise water levels by as much as 5-7ft (1.5-2.1m) above normal tide levels near where the centre of Maria moves across the Leeward Islands”.

It also forecasts a maximum potential rainfall of 20in (51cm) in some areas of the central and southern Leeward Islands – including Puerto Rico and the US and British Virgin Islands – through to Wednesday night.

“Rainfall on all of these islands could cause life-threatening flash floods and mudslides,” it warned.

The destruction of Barbuda

Drone footage of Saint-Martin after Irma

Earlier this month, Irma left more than two-thirds of homes on the Dutch side of the island of St Martin (known as Sint Maarten) uninhabitable, with no electricity, gas or drinking water.

The French government has said its side of St Martin – known as Saint-Martin – sustained about €1.2bn ($1.44bn; £1.1bn) in damage, with nine deaths across Saint-Martin and nearby St Barts.

On the British Virgin Islands, entire neighbourhoods were flattened.

After a visit to the area, British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson described the damage as something “you see in images of from the First World War”.

In pictures: Irma devastates British Virgin Islands

Virgin boss Richard Branson, who has a home in the Virgin Islands, has been tweeting ahead of the storm’s predicted arrival, warning people to stay safe.

The Puerto Rican government has issued a statement saying it expects the hurricane to make landfall there as a category three on Tuesday.

The US territory escaped the worst of the damage from Irma – although it experienced widespread power cuts – and it has been an important hub for getting relief to islands that were more badly affected.

“Puerto Rico is our lifeline,” Judson Burdon, a resident of Anguilla, told Reuters news agency. “We had two volunteer flights cancel because of the weather that is coming.”

Irma also hit the US, with 11 deaths being linked to the hurricane. Nearly 6.9 million homes were left without power in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Alabama.

A second hurricane, Jose, is also active in the Atlantic, with maximum sustained winds of 90mph.

The centre of the storm was about 335 miles south-east of Cape Hatteras in North Carolina, the NHC said in its advisory at 21:00 GMT on Sunday.

Tropical storm watches have been issued for parts of the north-eastern US.

Posted in BBC

Trump in Moscow: what happened at Miss Universe in 2013

Sitting in a makeshift studio overlooking the Moscow river on a crisp day in November 2013, Donald Trump pouted, stared down the lens of a television camera and said something he would come to regret.

Asked by an interviewer whether he had a relationship with Russian president Vladimir Putin, the brash New York businessman could not resist boasting. “I do have a relationship with him,” Trump said.

Russia’s strongman had “done a very brilliant job,” Trump told MSNBC’s Thomas Roberts, before declaring that Putin had bested Barack Obama. “He’s done an amazing job – he’s put himself really at the forefront of the world as a leader in a short period of time.”

Trump, a teetotaler, seemed intoxicated by the buzz surrounding the glitzy event that had brought him back to Moscow: that year’s instalment of the Miss Universe contest that he then owned.

Four years later, he is struggling to shake off the hangover.

The 2013 pageant has become a focal point for the simultaneous investigations, led by special counsel Robert Mueller and congressional committees, into whether associates of Trump colluded with Russian officials to help them win the 2016 US presidential election.

Investigators are examining closely efforts apparently made by the Russian government to pass Trump’s team damaging information on Hillary Clinton, using Trump’s politically-connected Miss Universe business partners as couriers.

They are also looking into the $20m fee that Trump collected for putting on the pageant from those same business partners – along with extraordinary allegations about Trump’s private conduct behind closed doors at the Ritz-Carlton hotel during his 2013 stay in Moscow.

The Guardian has learned of additional, previously unreported, connections between Trump’s business partners on the pageant and Russia’s government. The ties are likely to attract further scrutiny by investigators who are already biting at the heels of Trump associates.

A full accounting of Trump’s actions in the Russian capital as that autumn turned to winter may be critical to resolving a controversy that has already consumed the first eight months of his presidency.

“Our committee’s investigation will not be complete unless we fully understand who President Trump met with when he was over in Russia for Miss Universe, and what follow-up contacts occurred,” Eric Swalwell, a California Democrat on the House intelligence committee, said in an interview.

Trump’s attorney, John Dowd, declined to answer when asked whether the president’s team accepts that the Miss Universe contest is a legitimate area of inquiry for investigators. “Fake news,” Dowd said in an email.

‘Look who’s come to see me!’

It was a whirlwind courtship.

Trump was instantly taken with Aras Agalarov, the billionaire owner of the Crocus Group corporation, when the two wealthy property developers met for the first time on the fringe of the Miss USA contest in Las Vegas in mid-June 2013.

After just ten minutes of discussion, Trump was showing off his new friend. “He clapped me on the shoulder, gave a thumbs up, and started shouting, ‘Look who’s come to see me! It’s the richest man in Russia!’,” Agalarov recalled to a Russian magazine later that year, before clarifying that his fortune – estimated at about $2bn – was far from Russia’s biggest.

The meeting had been set in motion only a month earlier, when Agalarov’s son Emin, a pop singer who is well known in eastern Europe, filmed his latest music video in Los Angeles. His co-star was the reigning Miss Universe, a casting choice that brought the Agalarovs into contact with Trump’s beauty pageant division.

The idea of hosting that year’s contest in Russia was raised over dinner by Paula Shugart, Trump’s top Miss Universe executive, according to Emin Agalarov. In a little noticed interview published in July, Emin said Trump’s organization seemed to be in need of the money that Moscow could offer. “We have a lot of debts,” he quoted Shugart as saying. Miss Universe denies that Shugart said this.

In any case, a price tag of $20m to be paid by Agalarov in return for Trump bringing the Miss Universe contest to Russia was quickly agreed upon. Several Democrats have raised concerns that the payment – like the billions in bank loans he secured to bring himself back from the brink in the early 1990s – may have left Trump indebted to foreign influences.

“The pageant was financed by a Russian billionaire who is close to Putin,” Senator Al Franken of Minnesota told a congressional hearing in May. “The Russians have a history of using financial investments to gain leverage over influential people and then later calling in favours. We know that.”

Just four weeks after Emin’s video shoot, at the backslapping Las Vegas get-together, Trump announced that the deal was done. Miss Universe would be held at the Agalarov family’s sprawling Crocus City complex on the edge of Moscow, described by Trump as ”Russia’s most premier venue”.

In a dreary Vegas hotel banqueting hall, the beaming new business partners ate a celebratory dinner together. Video footage later obtained by CNN showed Trump at his most oleaginous. “What a beautiful mother you have,” he told Emin. The principals were joined by an assortment of hangers-on including Emin’s publicist – a portly Briton named Rob Goldstone.

It was Goldstone who would contact Trump’s son Donald Jr during the 2016 presidential campaign with a sensitive message, revealed in emails released last month. The “crown prosecutor of Russia” – assumed to be Goldstone’s garbled billing for Yury Chaika, the Russian prosecutor general – wanted the Trump campaign to have some documents that would “incriminate Hillary,” he said. And the Agalarovs would deliver them.

“This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr Trump – helped along by Aras and Emin,” Goldstone wrote. Rather than express surprise or question the apparent Kremlin operation Goldstone was describing, Donald Jr pressed ahead and arranged the meeting. “If it’s what you say I love it,” he replied.

Aras Agalarov made a suitable sherpa. While not a member of Putin’s inner circle, Agalarov cultivated friendly relations with the Kremlin while rising to the country’s oligarch class with a profitable network of shopping malls. He travelled around in a $44m Gulfstream private jet.

Less than two weeks before the Miss Universe finals, Putin awarded Agalarov the prestigious Order of Honor medal, after Crocus had completed for him a billion-dollar transformation of a former military base into a new state university.

“I wish to thank you so much for your work and contribution to the development of this country,” Putin told Agalarov and his fellow honorees. Crocus would go on to be further rewarded with more government construction contracts, including for stadiums that are to be used for next year’s soccer World Cup tournament in Russia.

Quietly, Agalarov and Crocus have also cultivated high-level relationships with Russian authorities on another front. They were established by one of Agalarov’s top lieutenants – Ikray “Ike” Kaveladze, a publicity-shy senior Crocus executive and the so-called “eighth man” at the 2016 Trump Tower meeting where Donald Jr hoped to receive dirt on Clinton.

While relatively unknown to the public before news of the meeting emerged in July, Kaveladze has in fact been an associate of some of Russia’s richest and most powerful people for the past three decades.

The Guardian has established that Kaveladze was involved in the $341m takeover of a US company by a Russian mining firm belonging to an associate of Putin, and was a business partner to two former senior officials at Russia’s central bank.

In 2003, the Colorado-based firm Stillwater Mining was bought by Norilsk Nickel, a metals corporation in Moscow led by Vladimir Potanin, one of Russia’s wealthiest oligarchs, who is so favoured by Putin that he has played on the president’s “Hockey Legends” ice hockey team .

As part of its $341m purchase of the American firm, Norilsk nominated Kaveladze to be one of its five handpicked directors on Stillwater’s new board, according to a filing by the company to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Kaveladze was billed as the president of “an international consulting boutique” serving a “US and Eastern European clientele”.

The deal was the first time a Russian company had ever taken a majority stake in a publicly traded US company. It was viewed as critical by the Kremlin. Putin was reported at the time to have personally advocated for the deal’s approval by US regulators during a meeting with then-president George W Bush earlier in 2003.

Norilsk was then co-owned by Potanin and Mikhail Prokhorov, another major Russian oligarch, who later sold his stake. Prokhorov, who has had mixed relations with the Kremlin, now owns the Brooklyn Nets basketball team in New York. Kaveladze and Prokhorov had been classmates at the Moscow Finance Institute in the late 1980s and formed a partnership selling customised jeans between their studies.

Kaveladze’s ascent to the Stillwater board was eventually derailed, according to a source, after the discovery of his earlier involvement in a $1.4bn California-based scheme involving shell companies and transfers from Russia, which US authorities said may have been used for money-laundering. Norilsk said he withdrew from the process for personal reasons.

The Guardian previously revealed that Kaveladze’s partner in that operation was Boris Goldstein, a Soviet-born banker whose ties to former KGB officers attracted interest from US investigators after he moved to California in the early 1990s. In a remarkable coincidence, the US attorney in San Francisco whose office eventually declined to bring criminal charges over their alleged money laundering scheme was Robert Mueller, the special counsel now looking into Kaveladze’s reappearance.

Also previously unreported is Kaveladze’s close friendship with Andrei Kozlov, who was first deputy chairman of Russia’s central bank under Putin for four years before being assassinated in 2006 as he attempted to clean up Russia’s corrupt banking system. Allegations about who bore responsibility for his murder have swirled ever since.

At the turn of the 1990s, Kaveladze and Kozlov had gone into business together after graduating from the Moscow Finance Institute. They founded a small publisher and translator of financial books with Dmitry Budakov, another classmate, who also went on to be a senior executive at Russia’s central bank before running a division of the state-owned Bank of Moscow.

The young entrepreneurs capitalised on a hunger for financial literature among players in Russia’s rapidly privatising economy, pricing their textbooks at around $250. One book was published in Kaveladze’s name. His 1993 work, Protecting trade secrets in the US: A guide to protecting your business information, remains available in several university libraries.

According to an official history of that time, their book publishing outfit, ECO-Consulting, was established as a division of Crocus International, Aras Agalarov’s then-burgeoning business empire. In return for the security of being part of a larger corporation, Kaveladze and his business partners advised Agalarov on economic and financial affairs, according to a memoir of the time by Budakov. “Cooperation was mutually profitable,” he wrote.

Kaveladze soon moved to the US, landing first in Pennsylvania. He had earlier spent almost a month visiting the Gettysburg area after graduating in 1989. As a tribute to their departed guest, locals held a “Perestroika” 5,000-metre running race near the site of the Civil War battlefield as part of their Labor Day celebrations, according to the Gettysburg Times.

When Kaveladze moved to the US, he was adopted by a middle-aged couple in York, Pennsylvania, and later moved to New York. His adopted mother died in February 1993; her widower did not respond to requests for comment.

More than 25 years after their first venture, Kaveladze continues to work alongside Agalarov at Crocus. Their company has become one of the biggest corporations in Russia, carrying out government building contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars from Putin’s administration – and sealing international deals with tycoons such as Trump.

‘Will he become my new best friend?’

Before leaving the US for his big Russian show in 2013, Trump made an unusual public appeal.

“Do you think Putin will be going to The Miss Universe Pageant in November in Moscow,” he asked on Twitter, and “if so, will he become my new best friend?” A source in Moscow told the Guardian that a meeting with Trump was indeed pencilled into Putin’s diary by aides, but fell off his schedule a few days beforehand.

Agalarov later said that Putin sent his apologies to Trump in the form of a handwritten note and a gift of a traditional decorative lacquered box. It is not known whether Trump met any associates of Putin in lieu of the president himself, but he certainly claimed to have.

“I was with the top-level people, both oligarchs and generals, and top-of-the-government people,” he said in a radio interview in 2015. “I can’t go further than that, but I will tell you that I met the top people, and the relationship was extraordinary.”

Having flown from the US overnight, Trump arrived in Moscow on 8 November and checked in to the Ritz Carlton hotel. It was a choice that has since become notorious. An opposition research dossier compiled for a private client by a former British spy, which was later published by BuzzFeed News, alleged that the Kremlin held compromising and lurid footage of Trump and a pair of prostitutes during his stay at the hotel.

Elsewhere in the dossier, author Christopher Steele wrote that two sources alleged Trump also had illicit sexual encounters in the Russian city of St Petersburg during a separate visit to the country. The sources, according to Steele, said that Aras Agalarov would “know the details”. Trump denies any wrongdoing.

It is plausible – but unproven – that attempts were made to surveil Trump during his trip.

“If you are in their field of interest then the FSB will absolutely attempt to carry out surveillance,” said a Russian hotel industry source, who did not want the name of his hotel mentioned due to the sensitivity of the topic.

The source said there was little that hotel managers could do about FSB demands, and that they are sometimes forced to provide access to rooms for agents. “In the bigger hotels you also definitely have a number of people on the staff who work on the side for the FSB, so they would have had absolutely no problem getting into the room if necessary.”

Putin said earlier this year that it was absurd to think the FSB would have bugged or secretly filmed Trump’s room in 2013, as he was not even a politician at that point. Russia did not simply bug every American billionaire who visited the country, according to the president.

But the hotel industry source cast doubt on that claim. “Surveillance doesn’t happen that often, but I’m pretty sure Trump would have been of a sufficient level to warrant it,” said the source. “I’ve seen people of lower levels than him watched for sure.”

When the late-night talk show host Stephen Colbert managed in July to gain access to the Ritz-Carlton’s presidential suite, where Trump is said to have stayed, an unexplained power cable was discovered dangling from a section of the bedroom wall that was hidden behind a non-illuminated mirror.

Whatever the truth about how closely Trump was being monitored by the Kremlin, a remark he made about Putin during that boast-filled interview with MSNBC seems particularly curious with the benefit of hindsight.

“I can tell you that he’s very interested in what we’re doing here today,” Trump said of the Russian president. “He’s probably very interested in what you and I are saying today – and I’m sure he’s going to be seeing it in some form.”

Some elements of Steele’s dossier have reportedly been confirmed by investigators, but other details have been shown to be false. And Trump has been backed up on the claims about his private conduct by Emin Agalarov. “While the world tries to figure out what Donald Trump was doing in a hotel in Moscow during Miss Universe – I actually know because he was filming my music video,” he wrote on Instagram.

Early in the morning of 9 November, Trump was taking part in filming at the hotel for the video of Emin’s single In Another Life. The video features Emin dreaming about being surrounded by bikini-clad Miss Universe contestants, before waking up to be lectured by Trump and told: “You’re fired”.

Yulya Alferova, a businesswoman and blogger who was hired by Crocus Group to help with their social media presence at that time, arrived at the hotel that morning and met Trump shortly after the filming had finished. After a brief conversation, Trump took a shine to her, and Emin invited her to join a small group for lunch.

“We talked about Twitter, and I asked him if he agreed that Twitter is the strongest and sometimes the most dangerous social media. He asked me about real estate, because I told him it’s one of my professional interests,” said Alferova, who once achieved notoriety in Russia for posting a photograph of her cat eating black caviar.

Later, Trump told her that she should contact him if she was ever in New York. He had his assistant hand her a business card. But there was nothing inappropriate about his conduct, Alferova said, describing Trump as a “gentleman” who always acted “correctly and properly” in their interactions.

The pageant went off without a hitch. Gabriela Isler of Venezuela was crowned the winner. An after-party was held for the contestants and friends of the organizers. There were three private boxes: one for the Agalarovs, one for Trump and one for Roustam Tariko, the chief of Russian Standard, the Russian vodka company and bank, which sponsored Miss Russia. The American band Panic! At The Disco provided the music, and contestants mingled with guests. Several were invited into the boxes to speak with Trump and the oligarchs. Aerosmith singer Steven Tyler, who had performed at the ceremony, was also there.

“Trump was still there when I left at 2am,” a guest at the party told the Guardian. “There were a lot of people there, it was fun but pretty civilised”. Alferova, the businesswoman and blogger, remembered multiple guests approaching Trump and asking for photographs with him.

“There were no government people present and no major Forbes List people except Aras [Agalarov] and Roustam [Tariko]” said one of the organisers of the event, suggesting Trump’s boastful claims that “all the oligarchs” attended may have been false.

Still, during his Moscow stay Trump also attended a private meeting with leading Russian businessmen at Nobu, the high-end Japanese restaurant chain for which Agalarov owns the Moscow franchise. The dinner was arranged by Herman Gref, Putin’s former energy minister and now chief executive of the state-owned Sberbank, Russia’s biggest bank. The bank, which was another sponsor of Miss Universe, was later among the Russian companies sanctioned by the US over Russia’s annexing part of Ukraine in 2014.

“He’s a sensible person, very lively in his responses, with a positive energy and a good attitude toward Russia,” Gref told Bloomberg.

Agalarov has said he and Trump also met with the businessmen Alex Sapir and Rotem Rosen – Trump’s old partners on the controversial Trump Soho project in New York – to discuss opportunities in Moscow. Agalarov later said they struck an agreement in principle to go ahead. Trump seemed to think so: “TRUMP TOWER-MOSCOW is next,” he said in a thank you note to Agalarov on Twitter. Eight days later, Sberbank announced it was lending Agalarov 55 billion rubles ($1.3bn) to finance new projects in Moscow.

Trump Tower Moscow, like so many other Russian twinkles in Trump’s eye over the past three decades, did not materialise. But it recently emerged that the conversations continued behind the scenes even after he began his long-threatened campaign for president.

In October 2015, four months into his campaign, Trump signed a “letter of intent” to build a tower in Moscow. Pulling the strings on the abortive deal was Felix Sater, yet another Russian business associate of Trump, who once served time in prison for stabbing a man in the face with a broken cocktail glass.

“I will get Putin on this program and we will get Donald elected,” Sater reportedly told Trump’s attorney in an email. “Buddy our boy can become President of the USA and we can engineer it … I will get all of Putins team to buy in on this.”

The future of Trump’s presidency may rest on what else was said and done relating to the project – and whether investigators who already smell blood can prove it.

On at least three occasions following the Miss Universe trip, Trump had publicly claimed to have met Putin. But when asked by reporters at a campaign stop in Florida in July 2016 to clarify the status of his relationship with the Russian president, as concerns over Russian election interference mounted, Trump gave a rather different version.

“I never met Putin,” said Trump. “I don’t know who Putin is.”

Wayne Rooney pleads guilty to drink-driving

Former England football captain gets two-year driving ban after pleading guilty to being almost three times over limit

Wayne Rooney has been banned from driving for two years after pleading guilty to being almost three times over the limit in what he described as a “terrible mistake”.

The former England captain, 31, has also been fined two weeks’ wages by his club, Everton, reported to amount to £300,000.

John Temperley, the district judge at Stockport magistrates court, said he would not impose a fine on the Everton forward and instead banned him from the roads for two years. He also sentenced Rooney to a 12-month community order with 120 hours of unpaid work.

“I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you this was a serious offence,” Temperley told Rooney. “You were driving a motor vehicle almost three times the legal limit and you were carrying a female passenger, which was an aggravating feature and you put other road users at risk.”

Rooney’s solicitor, Michael Rainford, told the court the player’s two-week fine by Everton was “not insignificant and it’s another form of punishment”. He added: “Through me Wayne wishes to express his genuine remorse for what was a terrible mistake and a terrible error of judgment on his behalf.”

He disclosed that Rooney had written a letter to the court expressing his remorse over the episode, in which he was pulled over in a VW Beetle when a police officer noticed one of its tail lights was not working at 2am on Friday 1 September. The car belonged to a woman the footballer had met in the Bubble Room bar in Alderley Edge.

When asked by the officer if he had been drinking, Rooney said he had had “a few”. Rainford said Rooney had been “a perfect gentleman” when he was arrested and that he stopped the car without being flashed.

In a statement issued after the plea, Rooney said: “Following today’s court hearing I want publicly to apologise for my unforgivable lack of judgment in driving while over the legal limit. It was completely wrong.

“I have already said sorry to my family, my manager and chairman and everyone at Everton FC. Now I want to apologise to all the fans and everyone else who has followed and supported me throughout my career.

“Of course I accept the sentence of the court and hope that I can make some amends through my community service.”

England’s record goalscorer smiled at a police officer as he left the court to a chant of “Rooney! Rooney!”, surrounded by a media scrum.