Consumers and celebrities around the world covet it for its warm, earthy and musky scent, but Australian sandalwood’s popularity has come at more than just a hefty cost to the wallet, with some scientists warning the species is at risk of extinction in the wild.

“Australian sandalwood’s downfall is that it’s one of the most fragrant species of sandalwood in the world,” said Richard McLellan, an adjunct research fellow at Charles Sturt University.

“A lot of people know sandalwood very well but very few people know it’s declining in the wild and it’s been over-harvested for decades.”

McLellan has spent the past six years researching wild Australian sandalwood – Santalum spicatum – which is harvested in Western Australia for oil that is used in luxury perfumes, incense, cosmetics and other consumer products.

Dutjahn Sandalwood Oils is a 50% Aboriginal-owned business that sells sandalwood oil to companies such as Aesop and Givaudan – a multinational that supplies the Estée Lauder group, among others.

Its chief executive, Guy Vincent, said the business sourced Santalum spicatum from a combination of plantations, the WA government-owned Forest Products Commission and native title lands managed by traditional owners.

“From our perspective, the species is not threatened, it’s thriving especially on native title land where there are traditional owners managing their land,” he said.

He said regeneration of the species on native title lands was “monitored and validated scientifically”.

“Here we have this spicatum that is valued greatly by international fragrance houses and managed sustainably by Aboriginal people and gives opportunities for Aboriginal people.

“There needs to be a broader view of the sustainability in this context.”

In WA, the primary commercial harvest operator is the Forest Products Commission, which manages the harvest of up to 2,500 tonnes of wild Australian sandalwood each year.

Australian sandalwood is also harvested in plantations but the warnings from conservationists are focused on trees found in the wild and long-standing concerns that there is insufficient natural regeneration of the species.

Historically, Santalum spicatum grew across most of southern Western Australia and into South Australia. It was listed as a threatened species decades ago in South Australia but has no such protections in WA, where wild populations have largely retreated to the semi-arid parts of the state.

McLellan is hoping that could soon change with the federal threatened species scientific committee (TSSC) considering whether to list Australian sandalwood for protection under national environmental laws.

“My research shows it is a keystone species for native fauna and yet we pull it out of the ground to make perfume with no thought to its ecological value in the landscape,” he said.

The committee is due to deliver its recommendation to the environment minister, Tanya Plibersek, on 30 October, one of almost 50 expected recommendations – including on the conservation status of the maugean skate.

Three years ago, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) listed wild Australian sandalwood as vulnerable on its international red list of threatened species after scientific advice identified “unsustainable, legal wild harvest” as a major threat to its survival.

Prof Kingsley Dixon, a botanical specialist at Curtin University, said across its range, “we are seeing the species reduced in both abundance and vigour and vanished in many areas where it was once common”.

“The evidence is we have less sandalwood in the wild than probably ever in its evolutionary history,” he said.

The WA department of biodiversity, conservation and attractions manages wild sandalwood by imposing limits on how much can be harvested each financial year. The department is due to set new annual harvest limits in 2027.

A spokesperson said that review process would “respond to any decision by the commonwealth should sandalwood be listed as a threatened species”.

“As acknowledged in Western Australia’s sandalwood biodiversity management program, there is concern that a lack of natural regeneration in some areas in the wild is threatening long-term stability of populations,” they said.

“Therefore, re-seeding and regeneration programs are important for sandalwood conservation. WA’s sandalwood management program seeks to conserve, maintain or re-establish self-sustaining sandalwood ecosystems in the state.”

Peter Robertson, an environmental consultant and convener of the “Save our Sandalwood” network, said that – in addition to over-exploitation – climate change and grazing by feral animals were major threats.

“It’s in a dire state,” he said.

“We think that the minister must accept that advice and ensure that Santalum spicatum is listed as a threatened species.”

Donald Trump sat down for three hours on Friday with Joe Rogan, telling the US’s most-listened-to podcaster that the biggest mistake he made during his presidency was hiring “disloyal people”.

Those comments – which also described “neocons”, or neoconservatives who generally aim to promote democracy, as “bad people” – came days after the Trump White House’s former chief of staff John Kelly said the Republican nominee in the 5 November election met the definition of a fascist. Kelly also said Trump had no understanding of the US constitution and made admiring statements about generals commanded by Adolf Hitler, whose regime systematically murdered 6 million Jews as part of the Holocaust during the second world war.

At a rally on Friday that he held apart from his conversation with Rogan, Trump described Kelly as a “total whack job”.

Trump used his interview with Rogan on Friday to repeat his claim that his defeat in the 2020 presidential election against Joe Biden was a “rigged” outcome. But Trump changed the subject when Rogan asked him if he was ever going to release evidence proving the election was “stolen”.

Trump also said: “If I win, this will be my last election.” That was a true statement because the constitution would bar him from serving beyond a second term in the White House. Yet it seemed to contradict an earlier campaign promise that he would not run for the Oval Office again if he lost to Kamala Harris in the 5 November election.

In another part of the show, the former president tried to address the age-related questions which forced Biden, 81, to drop out of seeking re-election – and which have since been redirected at Trump, 78.

Trump tried to convince Rogan that Biden was in cognitive decline because of brain surgery.

“It’s not his age,” Trump said. “Those are not good operations.”

Rogan alluded to how brain surgeries saved Biden’s life after he endured two aneurysms in the 1980s, when he was a US senator for Delaware before serving as vice-president to Barack Obama and then winning the presidency himself.

The reach of Rogan’s show, estimated at 14 million listeners on Spotify with an 80% male audience split between Democrats, Republicans and independents, has developed a reputation as a useful platform for seekers of political office.

But the interview, which was recorded in Rogan’s Austin, Texas, studio, delayed Trump’s arrival at an outdoor rally in Traverse City, Michigan, in cold 50F (10C) temperatures. The Associated Press reported that some rallygoers were already leaving by the time Trump arrived.

The rally was expected to begin at 7.30pm, but by that time Trump was only then leaving Texas. The ex-president recorded a video from his plane urging his supporters to stay, seeming to suggest that many rallygoers would not have work the next day because it was Friday and promising: “We’re going to have a good time tonight.”

“I am so sorry,” Trump said when he arrived. “We got so tied up, and I figured you wouldn’t mind too much because we’re trying to win.”

Meanwhile, Harris was in Houston, Texas, with superstar singer Beyoncé to drive her message opposing the conservative state’s abortion ban as she attempts to become the first woman ever elected as US president.

“We are at the precipice of an incredible shift,” the Houston-raised singer told the crowd of 30,000 people. “Our moment is right now. It’s time for America to sing a new song.”

Water firms “passed” thousands of pollution tests under a self-monitoring regime … yet the tests were never even conducted, the Observer can reveal. The water firms’ own operational data for sewage plants across the country reveals how outflows of effluent had stopped – in some cases for just a few hours – on days that samples were supposed to be taken.

Despite testers being unable to check whether firms were allowing too much pollution to flow into rivers, the Environment Agency rules allowed these “no-flows” to be recorded as compliant with the environmental conditions of their operating permits.

Southern Water has already been found to have “deliberately manipulated” the effluent flow to avoid pollution detection. The number of no-flows it reported plummeted after its practices were investigated.

Peter Hammond, from the campaign group Windrush Against Sewage Pollution (Wasp), has conducted an analysis of no-flow events from 2021 to 2023 where the sewage plants were deemed to be compliant with their permits. He says such incidents should be properly investigated by the regulator and the regime should be overhauled.

“Water companies cannot be allowed to mark their own homework,” he said. “Monthly manual testing of treated sewage must be replaced by continuous automated sampling. Default assumption of permit compliance in the face of failed sampling is totally unacceptable.”

After being contacted by the Observer, the Environment Agency said it was changing its rules. The new changes to shut down the loophole will be made in early 2025.

Ministers last week announced an independent commission into the water sector and regulation, in what is expected to be the largest review of the industry since privatisation. The water regulator, Ofwat, could be overhauled or even abolished.

Water firms are allowed to “self-monitor” for pollution incidents under a controversial scheme introduced in 2009. The samples for lab testing are typically taken by water firm employees and are in addition to audits conducted by the Environment Agency. The environmental performance of firms is linked to bosses’ remuneration and the cost of bills.

Under the “operator self-monitoring system”, between 12 and 24 samples are taken from the outflows of sewage works each year to check if the treated effluent complies with the conditions of their environmental permit. In the event that no effluent is flowing, the plant is reported as compliant with its permit, providing the employee taking the sample is satisfied with the evidence of no flow.

In October 2019, Ofwat announced that Southern Water would pay £126m in penalties and rebates for breaches of licence conditions, including what it described as “artificial no-flows” at sewage plants on some sampling days. It said information on the dates of sampling by employees was supposed to be confidential, but the dates were easily predicted.

It said in its deliberation: “As a result of this manipulation, a false picture of Southern Water’s [wastewater] performance was provided internally within the company, to the Environment Agency and to Ofwat.” Ofwat calculated that Southern Water avoided price review penalties of £75m because of the manipulation.

Once Southern was under investigation, the number of no-flows it reported fell from 124 in 2017 to 12 in 2018. From 2021 to 2023, there were about 120,000 samples taken at sewage plants in England, with about 5,000 recorded as no-flows.

Wasp has compiled 18 examples at 14 plants involving seven water firms from 2021 to 2023 where no-flows were reported on the day that a sampler arrived. In some cases, previous tests had already shown the plants were at risk of breaching or had breached the environmental conditions of their permits.

Wasp says the agency should properly investigate the reasons in each case and it is unacceptable that the plant was deemed to be compliant when no samples were taken.

The water firms claim there were various legitimate reasons for the no-flows, which they have investigated. These include a blockage, a power cut, planned maintenance, tankering of sewage to other plants and intermittent flow. They say there are strict safeguards to prevent manipulation of operator self-monitoring or abuse of the system.

A Water UK spokesperson said: “It is up to the regulator to set the rules on testing, and for companies to follow whichever regime they impose. The current approach has tightly-controlled requirements that include detailed obligations about the timing and frequency of samples, and how they should be taken.”

The Environment Agency said the rules were being updated from 1 January, which would require water firms to reschedule a sample in the event of no flow of effluent from the plant. Water firms will be required to document when and why no-flows have occurred and make this available for subsequent audit by the agency.

The agency said that. on average, about 5% of samples a year are no-flows and this compares with no-flow rates when the agency took the samples. Officials say a water company may legitimately choose to tanker flows away from a plant rather than allow poor quality effluent to be discharged.

An Environment Agency spokesperson said: “We investigates no-flow samples where there is a risk to the environment or if we suspect that an offence has occurred.”

It is already carrying out its largest ever criminal investigation into potential widespread non-compliance by water companies. It is also recruiting up to 500 additional staff and increasing compliance checks.

Ofwat said it would review Hammond’s report. A spokesperson said: “We have ongoing enforcement activity against all 11 water and wastewater companies. As part of this investigation, we will consider whether they are fulfilling their obligations to protect the environment and minimise pollution. All relevant evidence will be taken into account.”

Southern Water said it instituted a “root-and-branch” review after the failings identified in the Ofwat report in 2019. “Processes and systems were radically changed to ensure that all no-flow events were genuine,” a spokesperson said. “We remain committed to transparently providing the best possible data and disclosure.”

Maria Elena Cárdenas is 76 and lives in a municipal shelter on Amargura Street in Havana’s colonial old town. The building has an elegant past, but for the last few days Maria has been cooking with sticks she had found on the street.

“You know, we Cubans manage the best we can,” she said. She lives in the shelter because her home collapsed, a regular occurrence in the poorest, oldest parts of the beautiful city.

Cuba’s government has spent the last days attempting to get the island’s national grid functioning after repeated island-wide blackouts. Without power, sleep becomes difficult in the heat, food spoils and the water supply fails.

Parts of Cuba’s communist system still function: the municipality sent Maria food. “We are three families here,” she said. “I live alone, the lady who lives next to me [does] also, and there are two children, the children’s mother, her aunt and an elderly man.”

A week after the blackout, the island has returned to the status quo ante with regular power cuts of up to 20 hours a day. But the crisis has left a deep, melancholy dread about the future.

“Cubans have a cheerful idiosyncrasy,” said Julio César Rodríguez, 52. “Even when things are bad we laugh. But this is really bad.”

This current crisis began on 17 September, when an order went out for all non-essential state workers to go home.

The effort to save power didn’t save the system, and a day later, the island went dark. Antonio Guiteras, one of the main power stations, shut down, crashing all the other big generating stations in the system.

“It’s very hard to restart a power station,” said a retired engineer from Antonio Guiteras, who asked to remain anonymous. “You need to produce a lot of electricity just to get it going.”

Antonio Guiteras was built in 1989, and is now battered and obsolete. “The truth is that it was built rotten,” said the engineer. He told harrowing stories of working with faulty safety equipment, political management who would disappear when problems arose and a system long pushed to its limit.

“There was a scheduled maintenance programme, but it was never followed,” he said. “The requirements were too tight. We were told: ‘The factory has to produce, so patch it up.’”

The government acknowledges the parlous state of its system, blaming the 62-year old-trade embargo imposed by the United States. President Miguel Díaz-Canel said “financial and energy persecution” made it difficult to “import fuel and other resources necessary”.

For most of its existence, Cuba’s government has relied on the largesse of allies – first Russia and then Venezuela. But those countries, facing their own difficulties, have cut supplies heavily. “It’s like trying to keep a sinking ship afloat with corks,” said one European diplomat.

In a televised address, Cuba’s prime minister, Manuel Marrero, said the emerging private sector would have to pay more for its power, while the government looks to renewables to secure its future energy needs.

The island is blessed by sunshine, but the multiple attempts to start solar projects have nearly all failed when the companies involved failed to get paid. “The government isn’t stupid,” said a foreign businessman. “But there is no money.”

Instead a deal has been cut with a Chinese firm to provide the materials for a slew of solar farms in return for access to Cuba’s nickel deposits. But with well over 10% of Cuba’s population having fled the economic crisis on the island in the last two years, there is scepticism whether the expertise remains to build such systems.

Joe Biden has said that while he’s “tough” on the Cuban government, he supports the Cuban people. But Washington could do much more help Cuba, argued the US academic William LeoGrande in the latest issue of Foreign Policy magazine.

“The proponents of regime change should be careful what they wish for,” he wrote. “A collapse of the regime would be a humanitarian disaster, spurring an emigration tsunami far larger than what we have seen so far. A breakdown of social order could unleash a surge of criminal violence.”

Unlike during previous power cuts, there has been very little protest this time , beyond the bashing of some pots and pans. People seem exhausted and government ministers have made it clear that the government will come down hard on any “indecent” behaviour.

Recent months have seen a new round of intimidation of journalists, with several forced to flee the country. On Wednesday, Amnesty International declared four people currently in Cuban jails – the journalist Félix Navarro and his daughter, Sayli Navarro, as well as protesters Roberto Pérez Fonseca and Luis Robles – as “prisoners of conscience”.

Meanwhile, one crisis begets another. Failures have been reported in the equally obsolete water supply system. Six hundred thousand people lack regular running water, but the blackouts appear to have multiplied that number by damaging pumps and pipes. Much of Havana is dry.

Dariel Ramírez was sitting on his stoop in the old town. He didn’t have much to eat because he had shared his stored food with others before it spoiled.

Asked how he was preparing for any repeat of the power crisis, he pointed towards the Museum of the Revolution, where the central symbol of communist rule is displayed: the boat on which Fidel and Raúl Castro arrived from Mexico in 1956.

“If this happens again, we need to prepare the Granma yacht,” he said. “So we can all sail away.”

Additional reporting by Eileen Sosin

Less than a fortnight before polling day, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are locked in a nail-bitingly close US presidential election race, triggering pessimism among Democrats and confidence among Republicans – even though polls suggest both candidates have a near equal chance of entering the White House.

The Guardian’s 10-day polling tracking average shows Harris, the Democratic nominee and US vice-president, maintaining the single-point advantage over her Republican rival she had a week earlier, 47% to 46%.

Surveys for the seven battleground states are equally cliffhanging and provide little obvious clue as to who will reach the threshold of 270 electoral votes essential for victory.

According to poll averages, Harris leads by a single point in Michigan and by less than 1% in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Wisconsin and Nevada. Trump has a two-point lead in North Carolina and a one-point lead in Arizona.

Taken at face value, the figures are no disaster for Harris and hardly represent a triumph for Trump. If they match the outcome on 5 November, Harris will win a majority of votes in the electoral college.

But you would never know this from the jarringly different moods in the two camps.

Amid increasingly apocalyptic warnings from Harris that Trump represents fascism and dictatorship-in-waiting, her Democratic supporters have emitted an air of panic in recent days.

“A growing number of top Democrats tell us privately they feel Vice-President Kamala Harris will lose – even though polls show a coin-toss finish 11 days from now,” Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei wrote in Axios on Friday.

“Our private conversations with Democrats inside and outside her campaign reveal broad concern that little she does, says – or tries – seems to move the needle. Democrats are already starting to point fingers at who’d be more responsible for a Harris loss – President Biden for dragging his feet, or Harris herself. ‘Going down?’ a top Democratic official texted.”

The Trump campaign, meanwhile, appears “shockingly confident”, talking in “granular detail” about White House posts and policy playbooks for next year.

Buoying them is evidence that the former president’s support level appears unaffected by his ominous campaign rhetoric in which he has threatened to jail his opponents, or by what should have been damaging revelations from his former White House chief of staff, John Kelly, that he repeatedly praised Hitler when he was in the Oval Office.

Yet the conflicting moods are not justified by the numbers, some pollsters say.

While fresh polls have shown Trump closing the gap on Harris’s previous lead and even edging ahead in some cases, Harris supporters still have reasons to be reasonably cheerful.

The latest data from the polling organisation FiveThirtyEight showed that Trump’s recent surge – where his chances of winning overtook Harris’s – may have peaked. The site’s latest odds in favour of a Trump win, based on a collection of nationwide and state data, was down from 53% on 21 October to 51% against 49% for Harris by the evening of 24 October. An Economist forecast also showed a dip in Trump’s chances from a Wednesday peak of 56% to 53% the following day

CNN’s polling expert, Harry Enten, put the gap between perception and reality bluntly in a midweek segment on the network.

“Kamala Harris, based upon … polling data … has a very clear path at this particular point, just based upon [battleground] states, to 270 electoral votes,” he said. “The bottom line is, I don’t understand the Democratic panic right now, because the path is clear.”

The key to that panic may lie in the motivation factors of Harris supporters, among whom the prospect of a second Trump presidency provokes alarm.

Some 52% of Harris voters said they would be angry if Trump wins, according to data cited by Enten, while just 42% of the Republican nominee’s backers said they would feel the same way about a Harris victory.

“I think Democrats feel like there’s a lot more on the line in this election, and that’s why they’re panicking,” said Enten.

A poll conducted by Morning Consult of more than 4,500 voters from the seven swing states tended to support that conclusion.

While consistent with other surveys that the two candidates were neck-and-neck, it showed that pro-Harris voters in all states are more strongly against Trump than the former president’s supporters are against her.

In a sign that Harris’s characterisation of Trump as “unhinged and unstable” may be resonating, the poll showed that 49% of battleground state voters believed the Republican nominee to be “dangerous” – compared with 34% who said the same about her. Harris also heavily outscored Trump in categories of “too old”, “mentally fit”, “honest” and “cares about somebody like me”.

Trump, who is 78, was rated “too old” by more than half of the voters, 51%, compared with just 5% who said the same of Harris. The vice-president, who celebrated her 60th birthday this week, was elevated to the top of the Democratic ticket following concerns about the advanced age and mental acuity of Joe Biden, prompting the president to stand aside as the party’s candidate in July.

Israel has struck military targets inside Iran in retaliatory attack that a senior US official described as “extensive but precise”. Iran said three sites were hit, and that “limited damage” was caused. Here is everything we know so far:

• Israel struck military sites in Iran early on Saturday, saying it was in response to “months of continuous attacks from the regime in Iran against the state of Israel”. The move was widely expected after Tehran’s strikes on Israel earlier this month. Kan, the Israeli public broadcaster, said dozens of fighter jets were involved.

• The Israeli military said on Saturday morning it hit missile manufacturing sites and aerial defences in several areas inside Iran and had completed its “targeted” air attacks, and that its planes had safely returned home. Israel’s public broadcaster said three waves of strikes had been completed. The Israeli military said after its airstrikes: “If the regime in Iran were to make the mistake of beginning a new round of escalation, we will be obligated to respond.”

• At least seven explosions were reported in the skies over the capital, Tehran, and nearby Karaj as well as the eastern city of Mashhad just after 2.30am local time on Saturday, as Israeli jets struck military targets in the country.

• Iran said its air defence system successfully countered Israel’s attacks on military targets in the provinces of Tehran, Khuzestan and Ilam, with “limited damage” to some locations. A semi-official Iranian news agency vowed a “proportional reaction” to Israeli moves against Tehran.

• A senior Biden official said the strikes were “extensive”, “precise” and against military targets across Iran in order to deter future aggression. The official stressed that the US considered the operation to be an “end to the exchange of fire between Israel and Iran” and that the US had no involvement in the Israeli military operation.

• US news outlet Axios reported on Saturday that US and Israeli officials assess that Iran will respond militarily but in a limited fashion.

• Iran and Iraq briefly suspended all flights after the Israeli strikes. Iran’s civil aviation authority later resumed flights from 9am (0530 GMT) on Saturday.

• Iranian media initially appeared to downplay the airstrikes, noting that Tehran’s airport was operating normally. State TV reported several strong explosions heard around the capital, while the state news agency, IRNA, said there had been no casualties. There was no immediate official comment about the source of explosions, which Iranian news outlets reported were under investigation. Air defence systems were activated around the country.

• The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) took the rare step of acknowledging the attack on Iran, in a confirmation in a statement that a decades-old shadow war between the enemy states has now firmly moved into the open. The IDF posted on X: “In response to months of continuous attacks from the regime in Iran against the state of Israel – right now the Israel Defense Forces is conducting precise strikes on military targets in Iran.”

• The attacks were widely expected as a retaliation to a missile barrage launched by Iran on 1 October that saw an estimated 180 ballistic missiles fired towards Tel Aviv and military bases, in an unprecedented direct altercation between the two regional enemy states.

From the rooftop of the castle where I’m standing, a panorama of blue-grey turrets stretches into the distance. The effect is like staring into a kaleidoscope. It’s a fairytale sight, the intricate white-painted fronts and curved balconies resembling a collection of adult-sized doll’s houses.

The fantasy quickly falls apart, though. Many of the castles further into the complex have only bare concrete facades. In between them, spaces intended for manicured lawns have been reclaimed by wildflowers, some so tall that their petals and fronds stretch up to the first-floor balconies. An eerie silence is broken only by birdsong and the occasional passing car.

It is a warm summer day in August 2023 and there is no one here except a bored security guard and Adem Tekgöz, our tour guide to this bizarre ghost town in the Turkish countryside. Tekgöz represents the Sarot Group, the developer of this crumbling fantasy land, and his surly demeanour suggests he is not keen to show off their work to new visitors. “It gets cold in the winter, so we stopped construction. We’re preparing to restart next summer,” he says, brushing aside the question of why no work is taking place now. No matter: Tekgöz appears confident that a lick of paint and reconnecting the electricity to the wires strung between the castles will breathe life back into the project.

As we inspect the interiors, where wires dangle from bare ceilings, it’s clear that some of the rooms have water damage, presumably from the snow that blankets the surrounding valley each winter. Tekgöz’s tour also means stumbling across frequent evidence of neglect, including a bloodied bird carcass and what I hope are animal droppings near a concrete cavity in the basement of one castle. In the deserted centre of the complex, one floor of what is supposed to be a shopping mall and luxury hotel is littered with evidence of how much work is still to do: piles of abandoned filigree mouldings and unused turrets lie on the concrete.

When drone footage of the complex of 732 castles appeared online a few years ago, they quickly became a viral phenomenon: there are dozens of YouTube videos marvelling at the cluster of Disney-like chateaux. Since then, the mystery of whether they will ever be finished has only deepened.

The castles were supposed to bring a welcome injection of Gulf money to this part of Turkey. On paper, it was a tempting pitch for prospective purchasers from Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain: a luxury development named Burj Al Babas (a nonsensical mashup of Arabic and Turkish, playing on the name of local hot springs). Each castle, when completed, was meant to have its own pipeline to the healing spring waters, feeding private indoor swimming pools. Then there was the location: a lush spot away from the intense 45C heat of Gulf summers, conveniently located between Istanbul and the capital Ankara, and only a short distance from Mudurnu’s peaceful town square and quiet streets of squat, Ottoman-era wooden houses.

Instead, since construction abruptly stopped in 2016, the project has become a bizarre white elephant. As the scandal has dragged on, it has sparked multiple lawsuits, one attempted suicide, a bitter vendetta between one contractor and the Sarot Group, and even a minor diplomatic incident between Turkey and Kuwait. The castles have become a freakish local tourist attraction, luring influencers to break into the site and film inside. Music videos have been shot there, including one for an Italian dance act featuring a motorbike and plentiful use of fire and red smoke flares.

The deserted castles have come to symbolise the financial problems and mismanagement that have dominated Turkey’s construction sector during president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s two decades in power. Companies with links to the government have cut corners with impunity – a state of affairs illustrated most dramatically by 2023’s twin earthquakes, in which cities were damaged across an area the size of Germany. The castles have also led to a major rift among the villagers in Mudurnu, between those who see the whole development as an eyesore and those who still hold out hope that the project might be good for local businesses. The only thing the hundreds of angry castle owners, local residents and the Sarot Group can agree on is that the castles aren’t going anywhere – but whether they will ever be completed remains unknown.

‘It’s a rich drama,” says Jassim Alfahhad, 55, a Kuwaiti air force colonel turned management consultant and academic, who heads a group of almost 150 disgruntled clients in Kuwait City, each of whom paid $150,000-$450,000 (£115,000-£345,000) for their identical castles. “The property owners have suffered for almost a decade.”

When we speak by phone, Alfahhad tells me he maintains two homes for his two families and sets of grandchildren (polygamy is legal in Kuwait). One he says was built to resemble a Victorian house, and the other in a more traditional Islamic architectural style. “It really looks like a castle, but a traditional Moroccan one,” he says. “I like historical architecture.”

Alfahhad had contemplated buying property in Turkey before, but the idea of a holiday home in a castle, or at least something resembling one, was just too good to ignore. After hearing about the project from a friend in the spring of 2015, he took the Sarot Group up on its offer of a free tour, and found himself enchanted. Where others dismissed them as kitsch, Alfahhad saw in the pointed turrets references to Istanbul’s Galata Tower and the Maiden’s Tower, both of which date back centuries. He remembers studying for a master’s and then a doctorate in Britain, where his weekends were spent touring stately homes and castles across Scotland and Wales. Even though the chateaux were close together, he felt they were perfect for someone like him who longed for the isolation of the temperate Turkish countryside.

Back in Kuwait, he visited the Sarot Group’s sales office and met co-director Bülent Yılmaz, who helped Alfahhad pick the idea spot on the hillside, one he said would be away from the bustle of the shopping mall and supermarket. His castle cost $290,000. Alfahhad paid the first of several instalments, and began the wait.

“That’s how the tragedy starts,” he says. “The contract stated that by 31 December 2018 the project would be finished and we would be able to receive our villas. Of course, that did not happen.” The contract also stated that any delay to the castles’ delivery date would incur a fine of $2,000 a month, payable to each buyer.

Mudurnu is an unlikely location for bold feats of architecture. The townspeople are proud of the 130-year-old wooden clock tower, built in the same style as the Ottoman-era buildings that housed traders travelling the Silk Road. With its population of 5,500, Mudurnu is the kind of place where residents know their neighbours intimately. Locals here have taken to referring to Burj Al Babas as “the Dracula castles”.

“This is a town where people don’t lock their doors. We trust one another,” says Mehmet Cantürk, sitting under an awning in the garden of his 200-year-old wooden home. Cantürk is a softly spoken, white-haired environmentalist who can name every species of plant in his garden and the surrounding area. Mudurnu, he explains, is a place that’s all about respect for “traditional values, and that means opposing consumerism”.

“If I had the power, I would completely destroy the whole thing,” he says of the development. “I would simply grant nature the power to reclaim the entire area.”

Cantürk first heard about the project in 2011, when he sat on the local council. Among his concerns are the way the construction clashes with local traditional architecture, the abundant use of concrete, and assorted prejudices about an influx of Gulf visitors not understanding Mudurnu. Then there is his objection to the privatisation of the Babas hot springs underneath the site to feed the castles’ swimming pools. The Sarot Group acquired the right to extract the spring water from the land, a resource Cantürk says should be public.

He believes that plenty of others share his views, even if they have been less willing to complain to the local authorities. For the residents of Mudurnu, the project steamrolled from a slideshow to a construction site with an eerie sense of inevitability. He adds ruefully: “When there’s one person who objects, it doesn’t have a lot of impact on the municipality.”

Mudurnu, like much of Turkey, is trying to weather high unemployment and an economic crisis that in recent years has seen Erdoğan turn to the Gulf, notably the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, for a bailout. The country is dotted with a string of failed efforts to attract Gulf money, including an abandoned dinosaur park in Ankara that cost $801m, according to the capital’s mayor, who has criticised his predecessor for greenlighting it. None of this dissuaded former Mudurnu mayor Mehmet İnegöl from granting the Sarot Group planning permission for 80 castles in 2011. Four years later, an adjacent plot of land was rezoned to become part of Mudurnu, and İnegöl gave Sarot permission to build the rest of the 732 castles, with half intended for wealthy Gulf buyers and the remainder marketed as timeshares for domestic tourists. He says his motivation was the promise of jobs – but some also point to İnegöl’s relationship with Mehmet Yerdelen and the Sarot Group.

Since then, the Sarot Group’s timeshare empire has spread across the verdant hills outside Mudurnu. There’s the Sarot Thermal Park up a winding path on a hillside, which boasts spa facilities, healing pools and treatment rooms. Next door is the Sarot Thermal Palace with its golden rooftop, a cavernous atrium, timeshare hotel rooms and rows of pink plastic cherry blossom trees near swimming pools that when we visit are bustling with visiting families. The hotel’s pillars and mouldings appear to be carved from crimson marble, but a light touch reveals some far cheaper material and a hollow interior. Adjoining this is a cluster of squat timeshare apartments, the Sarot Thermal Valley Holiday Village.

One shop owner from Mudurnu cautiously describes how she bought a timeshare there, but was burnt when she bought a second in a nearby valley that was never delivered. This was the Sarot Village – a group of buildings shaped like giant grey birdhouses, all made entirely from concrete, including the roofing. The unconventional design choice is explained by the Sarot Group’s in-house concrete company, which seemingly churned out every part of the strange buildings around the same time as the castles. Now, their deserted rows are lined with tall grass, making this an ideal setting for a horror film. The shop owner refuses to give her name, saying she was too scared to take legal action at the time, and even now fears reprisals from the Sarot Group or those connected to them. “I feel we were scammed,” she says.

The Yerdelen family, who primarily control the company, also have deep ties to the Saadet party, a conservative Islamist group that splintered from the same parent organisation as Erdoğan’s Justice and Development party (AKP). At least two members, including Mehmet Yerdelen, have held local office for the party in Istanbul. The wedding of Yerdelen’s son Enes was attended by an array of stars from Turkey’s conservative Islamist movement, and included a fiery speech from the son of the late prime minister Necmettin Erbakan, godfather of Turkish Islamist politics, and Erdoğan’s mentor.

Yerdelen insists that the Sarot Group does not “have a political identity” and that purchasers’ fears about reprisals are unfounded. He maintains that approval for the Mudurnu project was granted at a level above İnegöl, downplaying the former mayor’s role in approving the project. He also says his friendship with İnegöl pre-dates any thoughts of the castles, describing him as “a friend whose only purpose is to serve the people of Mudurnu”.

İnegöl lost his position as mayor in 2019. He says the Sarot Group has done nothing illegal, and defends what he calls his “acquaintance” with Yerdelen. “Politicians and investors are always close,” he says. Even now, the former mayor describes the castles as an economic boon to the town just waiting to happen. “Unhappy people could never properly understand the development,” he says. He claims its detractors will someday be the “first to bring their children to be employed” there.

Yerdelen blames Turkey’s economic crisis for the delay in construction, along with buyers failing to make payments – a claim contradicted by Alfahhad and his group in Kuwait. He insists the Sarot Group will someday resume building. Mudurnu’s newly elected mayor, Doğan Onurlu, says: “It’s a private company, so we’re not responsible. It would be good to finish the construction. That’s all we’re going to say,” before hanging up the phone.

Construction of the castles ran into problems not long after the Sarot Group broke ground in Burj Al Babas. On arriving at the site in 2014, contractor Çapan Demircan turned whistleblower and filed a complaint with local prosecutors, claiming the construction company was breaching environmental laws by dumping rubble on the pines that cover the hillside.

When we meet in the bright conference room at the offices of a local paper near Demircan’s home in Istanbul, he is bursting to talk about what has become a years-long obsession. Demircan has complained persistently to the authorities about the castle project, badgering any official he could find in Mudurnu or the surrounding Bolu provincial government. To hear him tell it, no one was willing to listen. “I was seen as a troublemaker just creating problems out of nothing,” he says.

In February 2015, a group of workers began to protest over unpaid wages at the construction site. According to local media, one of them climbed to the top of a tower that housed the Sarot Group’s on-site concrete manufacturing facility, threatening to jump to his death if he wasn’t paid. A photo that ran in many Mudurnu papers shows him gripping the railing on the roof of the building. His death, they said, was ultimately prevented by local firefighters who arrived at the scene.

Demircan says he pulled out of the project not long afterwards, citing myriad concerns about how it was run, and by then he says the Sarot Group owed him almost $700,000 in unpaid wages. He describes how, after his initial complaint about environmental violations, he and Yerdelen attempted to sue one another for defamation, but their legal battles eventually fizzled out.

His eventual showdown with Yerdelen took place at the Sarot Group’s offices in Mudurnu, in the summer of 2016. Demircan says he arrived at the glass-fronted building to see Yerdelen’s sleek black four-wheel-drive parked outside. Demircan tells me he didn’t plan on getting violent, but describes a heated exchange with a man he says he recognised as an employee of Sarot, who moved to attack him. Demircan says he hit back, striking the man in the nose and mouth, after which Yerdelen abruptly sped off in his car. (Yerdelen denies the incident took place, or that Demircan was owed money.) The former contractor says he received a quarter of his fees, but others weren’t so lucky.

Demircan says he tracked down İnegöl in 2018, at a street festival in Bolu, the provincial capital. Again, Demircan claims he threw a punch, before security and a local official intervened. İnegöl says he only found out about this incident later from his security team. “If he made such an attempt, I didn’t notice it,” he says. Demircan says he then drove from the festival to Mudurnu, where he began to patrol in front of İnegöl’s house. When the local police got involved, along with the town prosecutor, Demircan abandoned his vendetta and left town. He hasn’t returned to Mudurnu since, and has dropped his lawsuit alleging environmental damage and other complaints against the company.

By late 2016, it had started to become clear to Alfahhad, the Kuwaiti buyer, that construction work on the castles wasn’t happening on schedule. The Sarot Group initially blamed the cold winter weather, then the after-effects of a failed military coup, which shook Turkey that July. Cantürk and others in Mudurnu began to notice contractors were no longer showing up at the site, and suspected complaints about pay were to blame.

As the months wore on, the Kuwaiti buyers began discussing other options. Some attempted to sue the Sarot Group, but the cases stalled. Alfahhad claims some members even attempted to introduce Yerdelen’s co-director Bülent Yılmaz to wealthy Kuwaiti investors who offered to take over the project, but that Yılmaz shrugged them off. Yılmaz declined to answer questions, claiming he left the Sarot Group in 2017, although records show he remained on its board until last year.

The Sarot Group entered bankruptcy proceedings in 2018, with Yerdelen blaming the buyers for not making payments on time. Alfahhad shows me a document from the Sarot Group to prove that he has paid in full, and says Yerdelen’s comments only irked them more. Sure enough, an Istanbul bankruptcy court ruled that the Sarot Group was comfortably in credit in late 2022.

By this time Alfahhad and his group were despairing of the Turkish judicial system, believing that only diplomatic intervention could save their castles. He began using his connections as a former Kuwaiti prime ministerial adviser, calling the Kuwaiti foreign ministry and setting up a meeting with the Turkish ambassador to Kuwait. He also flew to Ankara several times to meet the Kuwaiti ambassador there, reassured by his pledge to treat the castles “like an emergency” and raise the issue at the highest echelons of the Turkish state.

The issue appeared deadlocked until May this year, when the emir of Kuwait, Sheikh Meshal al-Ahmad al-Jaber al-Sabah, made a state visit to Ankara. Arriving in sunglasses and sweeping gold-fringed robes to a full military welcome, the emir met Erdoğan, and the two leaders were pictured walking down a pale blue carpet to the presidential palace, their hands clasped. It was a welcome development for Alfahhad and the other buyers, who understood that the emir and Erdoğan found time to discuss the hundreds of unfinished concrete castles. The Turkish presidency has declined to comment.

Whatever took place behind the ornate doors of the presidential palace, the emir’s visit does seem to have turned things around for Burj Al Babas. Or, in the words of lawyer Selim Sarıibrahimoğlu, who has advised the castle owners, it has “pumped some warm blood into this issue”. Now an Istanbul court that examines financial and organised crimes has taken up the case, and is combing through the Sarot Group’s finances, as prosecutors accuse them of defrauding investors and using Burj Al Babas as a front company for suspicious transactions; Yerdelen says there is no truth to allegations of money laundering. All 14 of the companies run by Yerdelen and the Sarot Group, including those overseeing construction of the castles, have been entrusted to a Turkish state fund partially controlled by Erdoğan’s office and intended to rectify the finances of troubled businesses.

Sarıibrahimoğlu points to a puzzle that has hung over the project for years: Yerdelen and the Sarot Group had millions of dollars in sales, more than enough to finish building the castles. Surely it would have been easier just to finish the project rather than endure these years of trouble? “It really is an odd thing,” he says. “I don’t know why they put themselves in this situation. But these things can always be solved at a political level. We are happy now that everything is under the control of the Turkish state.”

Others – like political consultant Selim Sazak – contend that the trickle-down corruption of the Turkish state under Erdoğan is what allowed the castles to be built in the first place.

“These people were powerful enough, socially and maybe politically, to get the construction permits they got and to market them to the Gulf,” he says of the Sarot Group. The castles, he adds, are “a monstrosity”, a project that shows how even those with political connections far from the presidential palace “can end up doing something this brazen”.

As the court proceedings drag on, the castles remain untouched. The weeds and wildflowers have grown taller, but the project remains frozen in time. Yerdelen says he believes “with all my heart” that his company will one day not only finish building the castles, but throw a grand opening party to celebrate. He dismisses state control of his companies as something “temporary”, adding: “We plan to continue construction where we left off.”

Alfahhad also believes that he and the other buyers will eventually get their castles on the hillside, but not from the Sarot Group. Then there’s the small matter of the late fees that the Sarot Group owe each buyer, which he says they intend to claim. The company currently owes him almost $150,000, half of what he paid for his castle; Yerdelen says buyers should direct their demands about fees to the Turkish state fund.

“We remain optimistic that this will end soon – but of course it won’t be like receiving one five or six years ago,” says Alfahhad. “Some of the other buyers lost loved ones – they died before this project was finished. They just wanted to go and sit in their castles.”

It is the mother tree of perhaps the most popular cooking apple in the world. But the original bramley apple has been neglected and barred from public view, according to descendants of the gardener who discovered it.

The 220-year-old apple tree is still fruiting in the garden of a cottage in Southwell, the Nottinghamshire village that on Saturday hosts an annual festival celebrating the bramley apple.

But Celia Stevens, great-granddaughter of Henry Merryweather, the man who first spotted the potential of the unique hybrid apple, says the owners of the cottage garden, Nottingham Trent University, are neglecting the tree.

According to Stevens, the tree is surrounded by nettles, with honey fungus, a pathogen that is slowly killing the ageing tree, allowed to run rampant.

“When the university bought the cottage we thought, oh wonderful, they can now take care of the tree and the public can see its importance and what it represents,” she says. “But it’s surrounded by nettles and I even saw some honey fungus when I was allowed to visit it. It’s a tiny garden and its surrounds do not reflect this wonderful tree and what it’s done for our country.”

The cottages that come with the garden, which were purchased by Nottingham Trent University in 2018, are used as student accommodation and there is no public access to enjoy the tree.

The artist Dan Llywelyn Hall has painted the tree and will be raising money from the sale of prints of his paintings to present a fund to the university to pay for a maintenance programme for the tree and provide more public access.

He says: “It’s appalling that it’s not open to the public. The university keeps saying the tree is about to die and it’s not going to last another year but it’s in very good shape and is still fruiting. I was pleasantly surprised when I saw it but it’s very neglected and in an unloved state. The surrounding garden is in a bad state.”

Every single bramley apple ever eaten can be traced back to the tree, which was planted from a pip by a young girl, Mary Ann Brailsford, in the early 19th century. Brailsford moved out of the house after she married, and did not live to see the fame of the bramley apple.

The apple was discovered and first sold by Merryweather in 1876, and was named after a later owner of the house and tree, Matthew Bramley.

Merryweather grew grafts from the original tree and successfully produced more bramley apples. Nicknamed the “King of Covent Garden”, the bramley became the only British cooking apple available all year round, its natural acidity adored by cooks.

In 2002 the Queen’s golden jubilee cited the original tree as one of the 50 “great British trees” in recognition of its national heritage. For the platinum jubilee of 2022, the bramley was one of 70 ancient trees dedicated to the Queen.

Llywelyn Hall’s newly unveiled painting, Swansong of the Mother Bramley, is on show in Southwell Minster during the bramley apple festival. Prints can be purchased via a crowdfunding page to help rescue the tree.

A Nottingham Trent University spokesperson said: “The university is incredibly proud to be custodian of the original bramley apple tree and recognises its significance to the local and wider community. The tree was dying due to an incurable honey fungus infection when NTU became its custodian and it has already outlived its natural life span by quite some time. At some point it will perish due to disease.

“Despite this, the tree still bears fruit and the university continues to work hard to look after it to try to prolong its life … While the tree sits in a private garden, which the university maintains, we open it up for members of the public upon request and also for events, such as the annual Heritage open day and bramley apple festival.”

Five unusual apple varieties

The bloody ploughman

The secret to a successful apple is a good origin story. This historic variety, first described in 1883, was said to have grown from a bag of apples stolen by a ploughman who was shot for stealing. The resulting seedling was supposedly saved and nurtured by a fellow labourer. It sounds too perfect to be true, especially when its apples are naturally coloured a vivid blood-red.

Flower of Kent

This ancient variety – a red cooking apple rival to the bramley – is from Isaac Newton’s apple tree. Newton developed his theory of gravity supposedly after watching an apple fall from the tree outside his window at Woolsthorpe Manor in Lincolnshire. Despite being blown down by a storm in 1820, the tree regrew from its original roots and numerous descendants and clones can be found – especially within universities – worldwide.

The bardsey apple

Residents of Ynys Enlli had enjoyed the fruits from a knobbly tree on the tiny Welsh island for generations before they were spotted by Ian Sturrock, a holidaying fruit tree expert. The apple was declared the world’s rarest variety when it was examined by experts and cuttings were taken from the tree the following spring to propagate more of the fruit. The bardsey apple, noted for its lemony aroma and flavour, could be the survivor of an orchard nurtured by monks who moved to the holy island more than 1,000 years ago.

The bastard foxwhelp

This variety is a small cider apple originating in Herefordshire. It sounds like an internet hoax but it was catalogued in the Herefordshire Pomona (1878-84). A small round apple, it has a smooth, glossy skin washed with bright red and darker stripes on the sun-exposed face. The origin of the name is unknown.

Roger Deakin’s Kazakhstan apple

Roger Deakin was a co-founder of the charity Common Ground, which launched Apple Day in 1990 to celebrate the thousands of local, historic apple varieties, many of which were in danger of being obliterated by tasteless supermarket-friendly fruit. On a trip to Kazakhstan, to research the wild ancestors of all domesticated apples, he pocketed some pips belonging to the ur-apple, Malus sieversii. Potted by Deakin, and rescued after his death by his successors, one tree planted by his friend Robert Macfarlane in a Cambridge garden continues to bear fruit.

Israel has launched direct airstrikes against Iran in a high-stakes retaliatory attack that brings the Middle East closer to a regional war that could draw in the US.

At least seven explosions were reported over the capital, Tehran, and nearby Karaj as well as the eastern city of Mashhad just after 2.30am local time on Saturday, as Israeli jets struck what were described as “military targets” in the country.

It was not immediately clear if that marked the end of the attack. The Wall Street Journal, citing US officials, reported about two hours after the initial salvo that a second wave of strikes had hit Iran.

Iranian media initially appeared to downplay the airstrikes, noting that Tehran’s airport was operating normally. State TV reported several strong explosions heard around the capital, while the state news agency, IRNA, said there had been no casualties. There was no immediate official comment about the source of explosions, which Iranian news outlets reported were under investigation. Air defence systems were activated around the country.

The semi-official Iranian Fars news agency said later on Saturday morning that several military bases in the west and southwest of Tehran had been targeted.

In a statement, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) took the rare step of acknowledging the attack on Iran, in a confirmation that a decades-old shadow war between the enemy states has now firmly moved into the open.

Kan, the Israeli public broadcaster, said dozens of fighter jets were involved in the operation.

“In response to months of continuous attacks from the regime in Iran against the state of Israel — right now the Israel Defense Forces is conducting precise strikes on military targets in Iran,” the IDF said in a statement posted to X.

The attacks were widely expected as a retaliation to a missile barrage launched by Iran on 1 October that saw an estimated 180 ballistic missiles fired towards Tel Aviv and military bases, in an unprecedented direct altercation between the two regional enemy states.

Tehran said the unprecedented salvo was fired in support of its Lebanese ally Hezbollah after Israel’s ground invasion, as well as in response to the killing of Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’s leader, in the Iranian capital in July.

While most of the missiles were shot down, dozens managed to strike the Nevatim airbase, demonstrating that Iran could at least partially penetrate Israel’s sophisticated air defence systems at some of the country’s most highly protected sites. One person was killed in the occupied West Bank.

US president Joe Biden had said that Israel should not target Iranian nuclear or oil facilities in an effort to prevent an escalation of the conflict that could lead to a direct war.

Miscalculation could propel Iran and Israel into full-scale hostilities; the US, Israel’s staunch ally and main arms supplier, is wary of being drawn into the fighting and of negative impacts on the global oil industry.

Before Israel launched the airstrikes on Saturday, Iran had repeatedly warned there were “no red lines” for Iran on the issue of defending itself. Last week, the country’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, also indirectly threatened US forces against operating in Israel after Washington dispatched a Thaad advanced missile defence system battery and 100 troops to aid its ally amid the tensions.

However, an Iranian Revolutionary Guards commander implicitly stated in remarks on Thursday that Tehran would be unlikely to retaliate further if Israel’s attack was considered “limited” and did not cause casualties.

US news outlet Axios reported on Saturday that US and Israeli officials assess that Iran will respond militarily, but in a limited fashion.

In the statement on Saturday, Israel’s military said the attacks were a retaliation for a number of attacks against Israel, including the 7 October 2023 raid by the Iran-allied Palestinian group Hamasin which 1,200 Israelis were killed and another 250 abducted.

Israel responded by launching the war in the Gaza Strip, which has devastated the region and killed at least 42,000 Palestinians. Israel has also launched aerial and ground operations against Hezbollah, another powerful militia in Tehran’s “axis of resistance”, in Lebanon, after a year of tit-for-tat cross-border fire which displaced hundreds of thousands of people on both sides of the border. The fighting in Gaza has draw in other Iranian proxies operating in Syria, Iraq and Yemen.

“The regime in Iran and its proxies in the region have been relentlessly attacking Israel since October 7th – on seven fronts – including direct attacks from Iranian soil. Like every other sovereign country in the world, the state of Israel has the right and the duty to respond.”

Israel is fearful of a costly war of attrition with Iran while it is fighting in Gaza and Lebanon. After Tehran fired its first ever direct salvo at Israel in April in retaliation for the killing of a senior Iranian Revolutionary Guards commander in Syria, Israel heeded western calls for restraint, striking an air defence battery at an Iranian airbase.

The Israeli response this time is expected to be more severe.

Israel’s defence minister, Yoav Gallant, said this week that enemies would “pay a heavy price” for trying to harm Israel.

The White House was notified shortly before Israel carried out airstrikes on Iran, a spokesperson said. The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, had said on Wednesday that Israel’s retaliation should not lead to greater escalation.

“We understand that Israel is conducting targeted strikes against military targets in Iran as an exercise of self-defense and in response to Iran’s ballistic missile attack against Israel on October 1st,” said Sean Savett, the White House national security council spokesperson.

There was no US involvement in Israel’s operation in Iran, an anonymous US official told Reuters.

In a possible indication of the scope of Israel’s attack on Saturday, state media in Syria also reported Syrian air defences had intercepted what was described as “hostile targets” and “sounds of explosions” near the capital city, Damascus, without elaborating.