Toyah Cordingley was stabbed at least 26 times while out walking her dog in October 2018.

The 24-year-old’s body was discovered by her father, half-buried in sand dunes on Wangetti beach between the popular tourist hotspots of Cairns and Port Douglas.

Rajwinder Singh, 40, who travelled to India the day after Ms Cordingley’s body was found, was charged with murder. He was arrested and then extradited to Australia in 2023.

But jurors at Cairns Supreme Court said they were deadlocked, and unable to reach a unanimous decision on his guilt after two-and-half days of deliberations. The judge thanked the jury for their “diligence”.

Under Queensland law, jury verdicts in murder cases must be unanimous. So Mr Singh will face another trial.

Originally from Buttar Kalan in the Indian state of Punjab, Mr Singh had been living in Innisfail at the time of the killing, a town about two hours south from the crime scene.

Prosecutors said they did not have a motive for the killing of Ms Cordingley – a health store worker and animal shelter volunteer – and there was no evidence of a sexual assault.

The trial at Cairns Supreme court heard that DNA highly likely to be Mr Singh’s was discovered on a stick in the victim’s grave.

Data from mobile phone towers also suggested Ms Cordingley’s phone had moved in a similar pattern to Mr Singh’s blue Alfa Romeo car on the day the victim went missing.

The prosecution also suggested the hurried way Mr Singh left Australia without saying goodbye to his family or colleagues pointed to his guilt.

Mr Singh had denied murder – and had told an undercover police officer he had seen the killing, then left the country, leaving behind his wife and children because he feared for his own life.

His defence lawyer said he was “a coward” but not a killer, and accused police of a “flawed” investigation that did not look sufficiently at other possible suspects.

They said DNA found at the scene, including on the victim’s discarded selfie stick, did not match Mr Singh’s profile.

“There is an unknown person’s DNA at that grave site,” defence barrister Angus Edwards told the jury.

The superseding indictment alleges the rap mogul forced employees to work long hours under threat of physical and reputational harm and forced at least one worker to engage in sex acts with him.

Mr Combs’s lawyers have denied that the rap mogul has ever forced anyone into sex acts and that the case revolves around consensual relationships with his girlfriends, the New York Times reports.

His lawyers have also “vehemently” denied all the accusations made against him in the federal case and dozens of civil lawsuits that have been filed against him in recent months.

“He looks forward to his day in court when it will become clear that he has never forced anyone to engage in sexual acts against their will,” his lawyer Marc Agnifilo has said.

Mr Combs, one of the most successful rappers in the US, is soon expected to stand trial in a federal sex trafficking and racketeering case.

The new allegations detailed in the amended indictment come under the racketeering charge.

Separately, Mr Combs faces dozens of lawsuits accusing him of rape and assault. His lawyers have dismissed the lawsuits as “clear attempts to garner publicity.”

Mr Combs was led into a wood-panelled courtroom on Friday in New York’s southern district federal court wearing a greenish-tan prison jumpsuit, with overgrown grey hair and a beard.

He chose to stand as he entered his not guilty plea. Asked by a judge if he had seen and read the indictment, he responded, “Yes, I have sir”.

Behind him, in the public benches, his son Christian, his daughter Chance, his mother Janice Combs – wearing large sunglasses, and friend Marvet Britto (a publicist) came to support him, along with two other men who described themselves as part of the family’s “support system”.

Mr Combs was smiling in court, waving and blowing kisses to his family and hugging his lawyers.

As well as the new allegations, there was also much discussion in court between the prosecution and defence’s lawyers over a video published by CNN last year appearing to show CCTV footage of Mr Combs kicking his former girlfriend, Cassandra Ventura, on a hotel hallway floor in 2016.

Mr Combs’s lawyers repeated their claims that the video was “deceptive” and that a visual expert had found that parts of the video were taken out of order, the actions sped up, and timestamps covered up.

Prosecutors on the other hand described it as “critical” and “direct evidence” of their case that they will submit as an exhibit in the trial. The judge urged them to reach a compromise.

CNN and a lawyer for Ms Ventura have denied what Mr Combs’ lawyers said about the video.

After the video was released in 2024, Mr Combs apologised for his behaviour, saying: “I take full responsibility for my actions in that video. I was disgusted then when I did it. I’m disgusted now.”

On Friday, the judge said jury selection was expected to start on 5 May, and opening statements on 12 May.

Authorities responded to the fire and rescued the emaciated 32-year-old man from a 72 sq-foot (6.7 sq metre) room. The alleged captive weighed 68 pounds (30 kilograms) upon his escape and was treated for smoke inhalation.

The man confessed to setting the fire after enduring years of “prolonged abuse, starvation, severe neglect, and inhumane treatment”, police in Waterbury, Connecticut, said.

His stepmother, who is accused of holding him captive and starving him, was charged with kidnapping and cruelty. She has denied the allegations.

When explaining his reasoning for setting the fire, the man told police: “I wanted my freedom.”

Prosecutors allege he was given a sandwich and two small water bottles a day for years. He was only let out of captivity for two hours a day to do chores while under the supervision of his stepmother.

Using hand sanitizer, paper and a lighter he set the fire knowing he could die, a prosecutor said in court on Wednesday.

His stepmother, Kimberly Sullivan, 56, was home at the time of the fire but did not speak to authorities when they arrived on the scene.

Ms Sullivan’s attorney said the accusations were false.

“He was not locked in a room,” the lawyer, Ioannis Kaloidis, told local media. “She did not restrain him in any way. She provided food; she provided shelter. She is blown away by these allegations.”

The fire was set on 17 February, and local police arrested Ms Sullivan on Wednesday.

Waterbury Police Chief Fernando Spagnolo called the details of the case “both heartbreaking and unimaginable”.

Police said the victim told them that he was held captive in his family home in Waterbury from approximately age 11.

“He had been locked in the room for 20 years, and for 20 years he’d been trying to get out of that room,” the prosecutor said.

Authorities were unclear when his father died, but they said his conditions worsened as a result.

When he was found, authorities said he had a body mass index (BMI) of 11. The National Health Service says a healthy range is between 18.5 and 24.9.

Police said that during his captivity, the unnamed man had not received medical or dental care.

The shooting took place at 22:39 on Friday local time (03:39 GMT Saturday) near Scarborough city centre in eastern Toronto.

Authorities said six people suffered bullet wounds and others were hurt by flying or broken glass.The injuries were not life-threatening, they said.

Toronto police said the three men, armed with an assault rifle and handguns, had entered the pub and “opened fire indiscriminately”.

A motive “right now remains unclear and we’re chasing down all leads”, said Police Supt Paul MacIntyre.

“This was a brazen and reckless act of violence that’s really shaken our community and the city itself,” he added.

Police said they were deploying all available resources to find the suspects.

Earlier, they said that one suspect, wearing a black balaclava, had been seen fleeing the scene in a silver car.

The victims ranged in age from 20s to mid-50, according to police.

“I’m happy to report, by the grace of God, that there have been no fatalities,” Supt MacIntyre said, which he called “extremely lucky.”

He said he and other officers were “horrified” by video of the shooting.

“These guys just looked at the crowd and opened fire. It was horrible.”

Glass walls were shattered and there was “blood all over the floor”, including in the basement, where some people ran to hide before police arrived, he said.

Mayor Olivia Chow expressed deep concern over the mass shooting, telling reporters on Saturday that she was “deeply troubled” by the incident.

“It is troubling because of the magnitude of the shooting and the number of people hurt,” Mayor Chow said.

She said that police have been actively investigating the case throughout the night and into the morning.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford also condemned the violence, stating in an X post on Saturday that he fully supports the Toronto Police Service in their search for the suspects.

The number of those injured in this incident is high compared to other shootings in the area in 2024.

Last year, eight people were injured and two killed in shootings and firearm discharges in the police division where Friday’s incident occurred, the department’s data shows.

In Toronto, which has a three million population, 43 people were killed in shootings last year.

Canada has a lower rate of firearm homicides than its neighbour the US, with 0.6 per 100,000 people compared to 4.5 per 100,000, according to 2021 data from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation.

Last December, Dominique Pelicot was sentenced to 20 years in jail for drugging his ex-wife, Gisèle, raping her and inviting dozens of men to also abuse her over nearly a decade.

Pelicot filmed the rapes of his wife, collecting hundreds of videos he neatly catalogued on a hard disk.

Among them were also two photos of his daughter, in which Ms Darian, 46, says she is clearly unconscious, sleeping in an unfamiliar position and wearing underwear she doesn’t recognise.

Dominique Pelicot has offered conflicting explanations for the photos, but has always denied sexually assaulting his daughter.

Ms Darian has long said the photos are proof her father also drugged and raped her.

“I know that he drugged me, probably for sexual abuse. But I don’t have any evidence,” she told the BBC in January, when she also talked about the shock of being shown those pictures by police for the first time.

The heated courtroom exchanges between Ms Darian and her father were some of the most dramatic in the 16-week trial that shocked France and the world. “I never touched you, never,” Pelicot pleaded to his daughter during one session. “You are lying!” Ms Darian shouted back.

Ms Darian has previously said she felt she was the trial’s “forgotten victim” as, unlike in her mother’s case, there was no record of the abuse she is convinced was inflicted upon her.

She told Elle France earlier this week that the charges she is pressing against her father were “symbolic” but “in line with what I have said since the start: that I am a victim of chemical submission [drug-facilitated assault] but was never recognised as such”.

She has hired lawyer Florence Rault to represent her.

For many years, Ms Rault has been fighting for justice for two women who were the victims of violent ordeals in the 1990s.

One, a young property agent known by the pseudonym Marion, was the victim of an attempted rape in 1999, to which Pelicot has admitted.

The other – also an estate agent in her 20s – was raped and murdered in 1991. Pelicot is currently being investigated over that case, but has always denied any involvement.

Ms Darian said she saw similarities between her and Marion. “We look strangely alike. She is blonde, her hair is bobbed, we were born the same year… I wanted to meet her lawyer and hear all the details,” she told Elle France.

In her police complaint, which was quoted by French media, Ms Rault lamented that Ms Darian had never been offered gynecological examinations nor had she been tested for the drugs Pelicot used on his wife.

Ms Rault said the investigation had only focused on Gisèle Pelicot and that her client had been treated as a “peripheral victim”. She asked the authorities to launch a fresh “serious and in-depth” inquiry.

Béatrice Zavarro, Dominique Pelicot’s lawyer, told French media that Ms Darian’s decision to press charges was “unsurprising given her statements and beliefs during the Avignon trial”.

She also said that the prosecutors in Avignon, in south-eastern France, said there were insufficient “objective elements” to accuse Pelicot of raping and using chemical submission on his daughter.

Forty-nine men were sentenced in December alongside Dominque Pelicot. All were found guilty of at least one charge – rape or sexual assault – against Gisèle Pelicot.

Seventeen initially said they would appeal the charges against them, but seven of those have since changed their minds.

Those who decide to press ahead with their appeals will go on trial at the end of the year in Nîmes, southern France.

The first trial – which lasted from September to December 2024 – garnered worldwide attention thanks to Gisèle Pelicot’s decision to waive her anonymity and open the trial to the public and the media.

Shahzadi Khan, who worked for an Indian couple, was executed last month, according to the Indian government.

According to Abu Dhabi court documents, Khan asphyxiated the boy, but a doctor who testified at the trial could not confirm this as he had not been allowed to perform a post-mortem.

Khan’s family maintain she was innocent and say the four-month-old died from an incorrect vaccination on the day of his death. They said Khan did not get “adequate representation” during her trial. The BBC contacted UAE authorities for comment.

The execution was carried out on 15 February, but the news was only confirmed by Indian authorities on 3 March after Khan’s parents petitioned the Delhi High Court seeking information about their daughter.

The secrecy surrounding the execution has made headlines in India, which has close ties with United Arab Emirates. Hundreds of thousands of Indians live and work in the country.

According to the petition filed by Khan’s family, she had moved to Abu Dhabi in December 2021 to work for the Indian family as a caregiver.

She was entrusted to look after the baby, who was born in August the following year.According to Khan’s father, she would often call her family back in the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh and show them the baby over video calls.

But the calls stopped after his death – and the family later learnt that Khan was in jail. According to Khan’s family, the baby died on 7 December 2022, just hours after he received a vaccine.

Police arrested Khan two months later. She insisted that a video recording showing her confessing to killing the baby had been forced, and that she had not received proper legal support in court.

She was sentenced to death in July 2023. Her appeal was rejected in February 2024.

Khan’s family said they last heard from her on 13 February this year when she called from prison, saying that she might be executed the next day.

“She kept crying and said she was put in a separate cell, and that she would not come out alive and that it might be her last call,” her father Shabbir Khan told the BBC.

When Khan’s family did not hear from her after that, they filed a petition with the Delhi High Court, seeking information from the Indian government on whether she had been executed.

Khan’s family said they felt she did not have “adequate representation” which resulted in her receiving the death sentence.

In an interview with the Press Trust of India, her father Shabbir Khan said: “She didn’t get justice. I have tried everywhere, running around since last year. But I didn’t have money to go there [Abu Dhabi] to hire a lawyer.”

In an earlier statement released to BBC Hindi following her conviction, Khan’s employer said: “Shahzadi brutally and intentionally killed my son which is already proven by the United Arab Emirates authorities in the light of all the evidence.

“Misleading information has been provided to media and other authorities to gain [their] sympathy and shift the focus from the actual crime which she committed.”

In February, the Indian government informed parliament that a total of 54 Indians were on death row in foreign countries, including 29 in the UAE.

Jordan Kavanagh, 29, from Rathbrady Road, Limavady in County Londonderry, also grabbed his partner by the throat and punched her in the face while her mother was trying to help her, a court in Londonderry was told.

He also kicked an 11-week-old puppy during the attack on 13 December 2023.

Sentencing at Londonderry Crown Court, Judge Neil Rafferty described the case as “disgraceful and upsetting.”

The judge praised the victim for taking the case and said she had been “totally vindicated”.

The court heard on the night of 13 December 2023, Kavanagh had accused his girlfriend of stealing his beer and in a fit of anger kicked their 11-week-old puppy so hard the dog was sick.

Kavanagh then told the injured party to leave or he would kill her before threatening her with a pair of scissors.

The defendant was said to have calmed down and hugged the victim before dragging her across the room.

He then kicked her in the stomach and said he would kill the baby before he would let her hold it.

When the victim’s mother was taking her to hospital, Kavanagh got into the vehicle and grabbed his girlfriend by the throat while punching her in the face.

When she was getting out of the vehicle he told her if she contacted police he would burn her out.

Police were called and Kavanagh was arrested.

Judge Rafferty said it had been “an appalling assault on the young woman”, adding the attack on the puppy was “brutal and repugnant”.

Kavanagh faced a series of charges including non-fatal strangulation, assaulting the woman and causing unnecessary suffering to an animal.

The judge also imposed a five-year restraining order.

Police told the BBC that the local government’s water unit received an alarm for a water pump on Sunday at 17:30 local time (16:30 GMT).

“Technicians found that someone has opened an electrical cabinet, pulled out a cable and thereby cut off the power to the pump,” police said. The technician put the cable back and reset the alarm at 21:30 local time, and the pump is now working.

Police have not said who they suspect could be responsible. The incident comes after the suspected sabotage of an undersea telecoms cable connecting Germany and Finland last month.

There has been an increase in damage to infrastructure in the Baltic Sea in recent months, largely caused by ships dragging their anchors across cables. European leaders have suspected Russian involvement.

However, poor weather, inadequate equipment and human error has been found to be responsible for some damages.

Following the discovery of the suspected sabotage on Gotland on Sunday, Patrik Johansson, who heads the local water and sanitation department, said: “We can see that it is human influence that caused the damage.”

There has been no impact on the drinking water, the statement added.

Susanne Bjergegaard-Pettersson, Gotland’s head of water and sewage, told Aftonbladet, which first reported the incident, that the water pumps drew from a lake that supplies large parts of the island.

The BBC has contacted Bjergegaard-Pettersson for more information.

Gotland is a large island in the Baltic Sea that sits to the east of mainland Sweden and west of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia.

Goods worth more than $2m (£1.58m) were stolen from the homes of NBA and NFL players in a series of break-ins which began in October 2024.

Kansas City Chiefs stars Travis Kelce and Patrick Mahomes were among those targeted as they were competing in games late last year, as were players from the Milwaukee Bucks and Cincinnati Bengals.

According to a federal complaint unsealed on Tuesday, all seven men charged over the burglaries are Chilean nationals. It alleges they are members of a South American theft group that targeted high-profile athletes.

The complaint names the men as Pablo Zuniga Cartes, Ignacio Zuniga Cartes, Bastian Jimenez Freraut, Jordan Quiroga Sanchez, Bastian Orellano Morales, Alexander Huiaguil Chavez, and Sergio Ortega Cabello.

The group, who are aged between 23 and 38, all face a maximum of 10 years in jail if convicted over the burglaries.

It is not yet clear if they have legal representation. Four of the defendants – Mr Cabello, Mr Chavez, Mr Morales, and Mr Sanchez – pleaded not guilty to initial charges in Ohio last month.

While the federal complaint does not name the victims, it said the Kansas City homes of two Chiefs players were burgled in October.

Kelce’s home was robbed on 7 October as he was starting a game against the New Orleans Saints. Officials said $20,000 (£15,900) in cash was stolen from his $6m home.

And Mahomes’s residence was burgled on 5 October, police said at the time.

The complaint also alleges the seven men were involved in the November burglary of a home belonging to a Milwaukee Bucks basketball player. The date of this incident is when forward Bobby Portis reported a burglary.

A safe containing watches, chains, jewellery, and cash was stolen along with a designer suitcase and designer bags. In total, the items stolen were worth more than $1.5m.

The athletes make for easy targets in part because they have valuable belongings and public schedules, security experts told the BBC last year.

“In any professional football event, for instance, there’s 106 players, 53 on each team, that are not going to be home, not including coaches. And some of those players may have very lucrative contracts and live in nice places,” said former FBI agent Jeff Lanza.

The NFL has been warning players about the crimes, sending a memo last year which said “organised and skilled groups” appeared to be targeting them. The memo said the groups were tracking the players’ whereabouts on social media and through public records.

The issue is an international one. In the UK, a number of top Premier League footballers have also been targeted with burglaries in recent years.

Hadi Matar, 27, now faces a sentence of more than 30 years in prison.

The attack in August 2022 left Sir Salman with severe injuries including damage to his liver, vision loss in one eye and a paralysed hand caused by nerve damage to his arm.

The jury’s guilty verdict on Friday came after a two-week trial in Chautauqua County Court in western New York state, near the site of the attack.

The jury also found Matar guilty of assault for wounding the interviewer, Henry Reese, who was on stage with the author. Mr Reese suffered a minor head injury during the attack.

Matar’s sentencing date has been scheduled for 23 April.

Sir Salman, 77, testified that he was on stage at the historic Chautauqua Institution when he saw a man rushing towards him.

Recalling the incident, he said he was struck by the assailant’s eyes, “which were dark and seemed very ferocious”.

He initially thought he had been punched, before realising he had been stabbed – 15 times in total – with wounds to his eye, cheek, neck, chest, torso and thigh.

The attack took place more than 35 years after Sir Salman’s novel, The Satanic Verses, was first published.

The novel, inspired by the life of the Muslim Prophet Muhammad, sparked outrage among some Muslims, who considered its content to be blasphemous. The book was banned in some countries after it was published in 1988.

Sir Salman faced countless death threats and was forced into hiding for nine years after Iran’s religious leader issued a fatwa – or decree – calling for the author’s death due to the book.

But in recent years, the author said he believed the threats against him had diminished.

During the trial’s closing arguments on Friday, prosecuting lawyer Jason Schmidt played a video in slow-motion of the attack, the Associated Press reports.

“I want you to look at the targeted nature of the attack,” Mr Schmidt said in court, according to the news outlet. “There were a lot of people around that day but there was only one person who was targeted,” he told the jury.

During the two-week trial, defence lawyer Andrew Brautigan argued that prosecutors had failed to prove Matar intended to kill Sir Salman. Matar had pleaded not guilty.

His lawyers declined to call any witnesses of their own and Matar did not testify in his defence.

In an interview with the New York Post from jail in 2022, Matar praised Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, for calling for Sir Salman’s execution.

“I don’t think he’s a very good person,” Matar said about the author. “He’s someone who attacked Islam.”

He added that he had only read a few pages of the Satanic Verses.

Matar, born in Fairview in New Jersey to parents who emigrated from Lebanon, has also been charged in a separate federal case with providing material support to the Lebanon-based militant group Hezbollah, according to an indictment unsealed in July.

Hezbollah is designated a terrorist organisation by Western states, Israel, Gulf Arab countries and the Arab League.