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.

Christian James Michel, an arms consultant, is accused of bribing Indian officials to win a multimillion-dollar helicopter contract for British-Italian defence company AgustaWestland. He denies the charge.

He was extradited to India from the United Arab Emirates in 2018 and has been in custody ever since, in what a judge called an “exceptional” situation.

The AgustaWestland controversy was one of several corruption cases linked to India’s former ruling Congress party, some of which fizzled out eventually.

In 2010 the Indian government signed a deal with AgustaWestland’s parent company to purchase 12 helicopters.

The alleged irregularities came to light when India’s federal auditor reported that the government may have vastly overpaid for the $753m (£455m) deal, which was eventually scrapped in 2014.

According to court documents, Mr Michel is alleged to have received around €42m ($44.7m, £25m) for securing the contract. His lawyer has argued that there is no evidence to connect him with the alleged offence.

India’s financial crime fighting agency and domestic crime bureau have held separate investigations into Mr Michel.

But both of those investigations have yet to be concluded and trials have yet to begin, leading to a “prolonged incarceration” of Mr Michel, the Delhi High Court noted.

The judge said his six years in pre-trial custody was also “alarmingly close” to the maximum punishment of seven years’ imprisonment for money laundering, which is one of the charges he faces.

The court decided to grant him bail in one of the cases, after the Supreme Court did the same in another case on 18 February.

This means that Mr Michel is now free to leave Delhi’s high-security Tihar jail, but he cannot leave India as his passport has been seized.

The deal for 12 three-engine AW-101 helicopters was signed in February 2010 after AgustaWestland beat off competition from US and Russian rivals.

The aircraft were intended for an elite squadron of the Indian air force which ferries around the president, the prime minister and other VIPs.

Only three of the helicopters were delivered to India before the deal was scrapped.

Italian prosecutors suspected that kickbacks worth almost $67.6m were paid to Indian officials to secure the contract.

Giuseppe Orsi, the former chief of AgustaWestland’s parent company which at the time was called Finmeccanica, and Bruno Spagnolini, the former head of AgustaWestland, were tried in Italy on fraud and corruption charges.

Both were acquitted in 2018. Indian officials have said their acquittals would have no bearing on the case in India.

India’s air force chief at the time of the deal was arrested for bribery in 2016, and later released on bail.

Soldiers raided warehouses and drug labs in Higueras de Abuya, a village about 75km (45 miles) south of the state capital, Culiacán.

A spokesman for the army said the seizure of such a large amount of the synthetic drug – which in some forms is known by its street name crystal meth – would constitute a hard blow to whichever criminal gang was behind the labs.

Mexico’s security minister has deployed thousands of troops to the northern state of Sinaloa an effort to reign in the drug cartels that are active there.

The seizure of the powerful and highly addictive stimulant comes just two weeks after Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum managed to convince US President Donald Trump to hold off imposing a 25% duty on Mexican imports to the US for a month.

One of the reasons Trump had cited for imposing the tariffs was the flow of drugs from Mexico to the US.

He also accused the Mexican government of having “an intolerable alliance” with drug trafficking organisations.

While the deployment of some extra troops to Sinaloa predates the spat between the US and Mexico over tariffs, the seizure of the methamphetamine stash will be welcome news to the Mexican government, which wants to demonstrate to the US that it is playing its part in trying to combat drug cartels.

Hamlet Toledo, deputy operative chief of the army general staff, told reporters that in addition to the four tonnes of methamphetamine seized this weekend, the army had also secured another large meth stash last week, bringing the total to more than five tonnes.

General Toledo said that one of the warehouses where the drugs were found appeared to have housed between 15 and 20 people, who are thought to have fled before the soldiers arrived.

The soldiers who located the labs had become suspicious when they spotted vats of precursor chemicals – needed to make the drug – outside the properties.

On Wednesday, gardaí (Irish police) stopped and searched a vehicle and a residential property in the Allenwood area of Kildare and approximately 72kg of cocaine was discovered.

The men, aged in their 50s and 60s, were arrested in relation to facilitating and enhancing drug distribution activities for an organised crime group.

They were subsequently charged and are due before Naas District Court on Thursday.

Assistant Commissioner Angela Willis of Organised and Serious Crime said it “is another significant seizure of cocaine destined for the Irish market”.

“An Garda Síochána and our law enforcement partners are committed to targeting those engaged in drug related organised crime that leads to harm, intimidation and violence in our communities nationwide.”

They included HMP Whitemoor, a category A jail in Cambridgeshire, which had four spaces left, according to the latest data published by the Ministry of Justice (MoJ).

Other prisons in the region, including HMP Bure, near Norwich, also faced similar pressure.

The MoJ said £2.3bn had been pledged towards building prisons over the next two years, and it aimed to open up 14,000 places by 2031.

The figures, accurate at the end of November, showed Whitemoor was four inmates below its operational capacity of 458 inmates.

HMP Rye Hill, a category B prison in Northamptonshire, had just two vacant cells – despite the situation being the same in March.

HMP Peterborough, which accommodates both male and female prisoners, had 52 spaces left at its 1,304-inmate capacity, according to the data.

In Suffolk, HMP Warren Hill had three spaces left, while HMP Highpoint had 11.

The Mount, in Hertfordshire, had room for seven more prisoners inside its 1,032-capacity site.

Pressure at HMP Chelmsford, in Essex, eased since March, with figures showing the category B facility was 42 inmates shy of its 723 capacity by December.

Separate MoJ data, published on 16 December, revealed there were 85,960 prison spaces left in England and Wales – with an overall operational capacity of 88,692.

Unveiling extra funding to build prisons, justice secretary Shabana Mahmood said Labour inherited a prison system “on the edge of collapse”.

“This capacity strategy, alongside an independent review of sentencing policy, will keep our streets safe and ensure no government runs out of prison places again,” she said.

Prisons were due to be deemed as sites of national importance under new planning rules, an MoJ spokesman added.

The move would bust “lengthy delays” stopping new prisons being built quickly, he said.

Earlier this year, the government released certain offenders early to ease overcrowding in prisons.

Ex-West Mercia PC Mark Cranfield, 52, from Bromfield, Shropshire, sent inappropriate social media messages and a friend request to the highly vulnerable woman, a two-week trial was told.

He was convicted at Birmingham Crown Court of two counts of misconduct in a public office and a computer misuse offence.Cranfield, who was based in Ludlow, is due to be sentenced on 13 February.

The defendant had denied three counts of misconduct while in public office and a computer misuse offence, after he was subject to an Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) investigation.

He was cleared of a third misconduct offence which related to the social media friend request.

The officer was also accused of sharing details of his marital sex life with the victim and forwarding intimate video and images to a WhatsApp account that has not been traced.

The jury of four women and eight men deliberated over three days before unanimously convicting Cranfield of three of the offences, despite his claims he had no sexual interest in the woman.

The court heard he had made his attraction to the woman obvious when she made a complaint and provided evidence to police in 2018, in which he told her: “I’m glad I got to see the pictures.”

He said he also believed he had deleted the two images and video, which were found on his work phone more than two years after the revenge porn investigation had concluded.

But he had denied claims he had been “titillated” by the video and said he had only contacted the woman on the social media app to discuss “everyday” issues.

The court heard the former officer then sent messages “pestering” the woman, asking how she was and saying his sex life with his wife “had gone out of the window”.

Cranfield had also deleted one of two Facebook accounts he had, to try to cover his tracks, the trial heard.

The woman later retracted her complaint relating to revenge porn, Mr Rippon added, because “she just didn’t want to deal with this defendant any more”.

Following the verdicts, Cranfield sobbed audibly in the dock as his barrister applied for the case to be adjourned for pre-sentence reports, with judge Kerry Maylin granting unconditional bail.

IOPC regional director Derrick Campbell said Cranfield’s actions had “prevented allegations of a criminal offence being fully investigated” and he had accessed police systems without a policing purpose.”

He had no legitimate reason for doing so and his actions have the potential to damage the public’s confidence in police officers,” he said.

The force say officers were called by paramedics to an address in Fownhope Close, Redditch, at about 14:00 GMT on Tuesday over concerns for the safety of a man, who had a knife.

A police negotiator attempted to resolve the situation over several hours, the force added, but the man was shot at about 19:40 GMT. He was pronounced dead 20 minutes later.

As a result of the shooting the Independent Office of Police Conduct (IOPC) has started its own investigation after West Mercia Police referred itself.

The IOPC confirmed a knife had been recovered from the scene and said the police officers involved had “provided initial accounts”.

No-one else was at the address at the time.

“This is a tragic incident, and our thoughts are with everyone affected at this difficult time,” Assistant Chief Constable Grant Wills said.The coroner has been informed and a post-mortem examination will take place.

In a statement, the IOPC said the man’s family had been contacted to “express our condolences and explain our involvement”.

IOPC director of operations Steve Noonan added: “Our thoughts are with all of those affected by this tragic incident”.

Given a man has died after being shot by police, our role is to independently investigate all the circumstances surrounding this incident including the actions and decisions taken by officers.

“While police shootings are thankfully rare, it is understandable that people will be concerned when it does happen, and it is important we conduct a detailed and robust investigation into what took place.

“Our enquiries are in their very early stages.”

Prosecutors said they believed the gang smuggled heroin, cocaine and cannabis worth up to £7bn into the UK.

Two trials – one lasting for a record 23 months – have previously resulted in the conviction of 18 defendants.

At Manchester Crown Court, Sohail Qureshi and Khaleed Vazeer were respectively jailed for 25 and 20 years. Meanwhile Ghanzanfar Mahmood received a sentence of three years and nine months.

Twelve other members of the gang have already been jailed.

The National Crime Agency (NCA) said the OCG illegally imported drugs more than 240 times from the Netherlands before they were distributed across the UK.

Between 2015 and 2018, the gang smuggled more than 50 tonnes of heroin, cocaine and cannabis.

To conceal their crimes, the OCG set up a series of front companies and warehouses across Greater Manchester, Lancashire, Cheshire and Yorkshire, as well as in the Netherlands.

Drugs were typically transported in consignments of strong-smelling foodstuffs such as onions, garlic and ginger.

In fact, the gang bought so many onions – between 40 and 50 tonnes a week – that it often had to send them back and forth between England and the Netherlands.

During one of the trials, prosecutor Andrew Thomas KC commented: “The stench of criminality is overpowering.”

The court heard Qureshi was a “high level, executive” member of the gang, reporting directly to ringleader Paul Green.

Green, based in Widnes, Cheshire, was jailed for 32 years earlier this month.

Qureshi played a leading role in setting up new supply lines for the gang when they began to suspect a previous plan – involving the setting up of a front company – had been compromised.

Before passing sentence on the latest three gang members, Judge Paul Lawton said “career criminals” Qureshi and Vazeer had been secretly recorded at a London restaurant discussing criminal opportunities and drug smuggling.

The judge said they had helped import drugs on an “industrial and hitherto unprecedented scale”, causing “incalculable” harm across the UK.

“What was actually being imported was misery, social degradation and, in the case of some addicts, death,” he added.Richard Harrison, the NCA’s regional head of investigations, said the gang had “absolutely no ethics”.

He added: “They stooped incredibly low and left a trail of devastation for entirely innocent people by cloning businesses and stealing identities.

“Crime and Policing Minister Dame Diana Johnson said law-enforcement agencies were “determined to bring these organised drug gangs to justice”.

She added that “our streets will be safer with these criminals no longer free to prey on vulnerable people in the name of profit”.

The last of the three convicted gang members will be sentenced at a later date.

On Friday, Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg filed a notice indicating her decision to seek death sentences for Johan Jose Martinez-Rangel, 22, and Franklin Jose Pena Ramos, 26.

The crime they are accused of committing became a centrepiece in Republican Donald Trump’s campaign for re-election in November.

The two suspects are Venezuelan nationals, and they crossed the border into the US without the proper documentation to do so. US Border Patrol briefly arrested them after their entry into the US, but they were released and given notices to appear in court at a later date.

A few months later, in June, the two men allegedly kidnapped, sexually assaulted and killed 12-year-old Jocelyn Nungaray, leaving her body in a Houston creek.

Trump and his allies repeatedly pointed to the case as evidence that the US needs tighter border security and stiffer penalties for migrants and asylum seekers involved in crimes.

He also campaigned with Nungaray’s mother, Alexis Nungaray, who visited the US-Mexico border with Trump and testified before Congress about her ordeal.

In Friday’s announcement, District Attorney Ogg echoed some of the criticisms of immigration enforcement that Trump made on the campaign trail.

“Jocelyn’s murder was as vile, brutal and senseless as any case in my tenure as district attorney,” Ogg said in a statement.

“And it was made worse by knowing that these two men were here illegally and, had they been held after being captured at the border, they would never have had the opportunity to murder Jocelyn and destroy her family’s future.”

In June, prosecutors filed capital murder charges against the two suspects, who are being held in jail on $10m bonds.

Multiple studies, however, have shown immigrants in general are less likely to commit crimes than US-born citizens.One survey of arrest records in Texas, funded by the National Institute of Justice, found this to be a consistent trend, across all different categories of crimes, from traffic offences to property crime.

It concluded that undocumented immigrants are arrested “at less than half the rate of native-born US citizens for violent and drug crimes and a quarter the rate of native-born citizens for property crimes”.

Still, President-elect Trump often conflated immigration with criminality on the campaign trail, stirring fears of violence.

He used those fears to blast his rivals in the Democratic Party, accusing President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris of allowing “open borders”.

Irregular migration across the US-Mexico border did reach a record high under Biden’s presidency, but it has since declined to levels akin to Trump’s first term, from 2017 to 2021.

Monthly border patrol “encounters” in October, for example, slumped to 106,344. According to a press release that month from US Customers and Border Protection, the number of border patrol apprehensions was “the lowest it has been” since the 2020 fiscal year.

Biden has also imposed strict policies to limit asylum at the border, similar to actions Trump himself had taken. One measure, announced in June, allowed the suspension of asylum applications if irregular border crossings surpassed 2,500 people per day.

Others included penalties like a five-year ban on reentry and possible criminal prosecution.

Nevertheless, Trump lashed Biden and Harris, the Democratic candidate in the 2024 race, as dangerously irresponsible in their border enforcement policies.

Leaning into dark, nativist rhetoric, he warned of a migrant “invasion” besieging the country and pledged to pursue a campaign of “mass deportation” on his first day in office.

To do so, Trump has indicated he plans to invoke the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which gives the federal government the power to deport foreigners during times of war.

“We will begin the largest deportation operation in the history of the United States,” Trump told supporters at a campaign stop in October. “We will close the border. We will stop the invasion of illegals into our country. We will defend our territory. We will not be conquered.”

Trump has also called for the “death penalty for any migrant that kills an American citizen or a law enforcement officer”.

Critics, including the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), accuse Trump of undertaking an “unparalleled execution spree” during his last term in office: His administration oversaw 13 federal executions in its final six months alone.

The Republican leader frequently played a video of Alexis Nungaray at his rallies, describing in heart-wrenching detail how she discovered her daughter strangled to death.

“She would be alive today if Kamala had done her job,” Trump posted on his social media account earlier this year.

Maximiliano Dávila, also known as “Macho”, is accused of facilitating cocaine smuggling to the US during his time as the head of Bolivia’s anti-narcotics agency.

His extradition, which took place on Thursday, was approved by Bolivia’s Supreme Court in late November. He denies any wrongdoing.

Dávila had been imprisoned in Bolivia on corruption charges since February 2022.

That same month, US officials unsealed an indictment accusing the 60-year-old of cocaine trafficking, and a related weapons charge.

The US Department of State alleges Dávila was involved in narcotics trafficking before and during his time as director of the Bolivian Special Forces for the Fight Against Drug Trafficking (FELCN).

It says Dávila exploited his position to “safeguard aircraft used to transport cocaine to third countries, for subsequent distribution in the United States”.

If convicted, he faces a minimum sentence of 10 years in prison and a maximum term of life in prison, according to US documents.

The state department in 2022 offered a reward of up to $5m (£4m) for information that could lead to his conviction.

Dávila was FELCN director under former President Evo Morales, who governed Bolivia from 2006 to 2019.

Shortly after Dávila’s extradition, Morales criticised the move and said “Bolivia is once again a US Colony”, in a post on his X account.”Bolivians are handed over to the North American Empire, violating international agreements, without first being tried in their homeland where they supposedly committed crimes”, he added.

In 2008, Morales expelled the US ambassador and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) from Bolivia for allegedly conspiring against his government.

Morales himself is under investigation for alleged statutory rape and human trafficking, which he denies. His supporters recently staged blockades around the country for weeks demanding the end of the investigation against him.

In November, he shared a video of his car being shot at, in what he called an “assassination attempt” against him.

The Bolivian government rejected Morales’ claims that it was behind the attempt on his life.