One of the world’s largest music companies has been accused of depriving “potentially hundreds” of artists and bands of their royalties by the 90s nu-metal band Limp Bizkit.

Three decades after it rose to prominence, the band and its founder, Fred Durst, alleges that Universal Music Group (UMG) owes more than $200m after fraudulently concealing royalties from the band.

In a lawsuit filed in California, attorneys representing Durst, Limp Bizkit and Flawless Records accused UMG of using software “deliberately designed to conceal artists’ (including Plaintiffs’) royalties” so it can pocket the profits.

UMG is one of the most powerful forces in the global music industry, with a roster spanning from Taylor Swift and Neil Diamond to Dr Dre and Renee Rapp. The company did not respond to multiple invitations to comment.

Limp Bizkit claims it was not paid “a single cent by UMG in any royalties” until taking legal action, despite a “tremendous” resurgence in popularity in recent years, with its songs played hundreds of millions of times on streaming platforms in 2024 alone.

The lawsuit, filed in California federal court, claims that many more bands and acts might also be getting shortchanged. Attorneys for Durst, Limp Bizkit and Flawless Records go so far as to suggest that a pre-trial discovery process – in which both sides of a case exchange information – will “show that potentially hundreds of other artists have likewise been wrongfully defrauded regarding their royalties, showing that the system was intentionally designed to commit fraud on Plaintiffs and other artists”.

“These accusations are massive,” said Jay Gilbert, a music industry consultant and former executive at UMG and Warner Music Group. He is skeptical.

“My gut tells me that this isn’t a systematic scheme to withhold royalties. It’s more of an accounting issue that’s blown up,” Gilbert said. “It sounded pretty damning and pretty heavy-handed, but in my experience, I think it’s something less dramatic.”

This lawsuit was “the nuclear option”, added Mark Tavern, who previously worked at record companies including UMG and Sony Music. “I think it’s designed to force a settlement, and make it happen quickly.”

“It’s a bit over the top,” said Tavern, who now lectures on the music industry at the University of New Haven. “It can probably be easily explained by bureaucracy, or incompetence,” or the sheer volume of payments processed by a music firm as large as UMG, he said.

Durst claims he was told by UMG that he had not received any royalty statements because his account was still so far from recoupment, with executives at the firm suggesting it had paid Limp Bizkit some $43m in advances over the years, according to the lawsuit.

When representatives of Durst and Limp Bizkit gained access to UMG’s portal for royalty statements in April, however, they claim to have noticed balances that indicated it owed more than $1m.

In August, UMG paid just over $1m to Limp Bizkit and $2.3m to Flawless Records, according to the lawsuit, which says executives blamed the failure to pay sooner on an error with new software.

Questions over royalty payments arise “all the time”, according to Gilbert, but rarely explode into the open. “This sort of dirty laundry is not aired commonly,” he said, with issues typically resolved through audits “behind the scenes”.

The global music industry has been rapidly transformed over recent decades, first by the rise of downloads, and then by streaming. Finding and listening to songs has never been easier, thanks to hundreds of millions of tracks that stack the libraries of platforms like Spotify and Apple Music.

Take Break Stuff by Limp Bizkit. It was first released in May 2000, but you might hear it in passing while watching TV, scrolling through social media, or playing a video game. Gone are the days when you would visit a local record store, go through the racks, find the album, and ultimately listen back to the song. It’s just a few taps away.

Even Limp Bizkit’s attorneys acknowledged that the band – which split up in 2006, and reformed in 2009 – had a “relatively quiet period” in the early 2010s. In the lawsuit, however, they claim that interest in the band began to increase “exponentially” around 2017, leading it to sell out arenas and headline festivals.

“There is a big pop-punk revival going on,” observed Tavern. “The current generation [of fans] is looking back 20 or 25 years.”

Such “heritage” acts and artists, as they are referred to by music industry executives, are prized by record labels.

UMG sought Durst’s approval to reissue Limp Bizkit’s 2000 album Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavored Water on vinyl last year, according to the lawsuit, and “repeatedly asked” him to get involved with an anniversary rerelease of Significant Other, another of its albums. To Durst, it seemed like a “money grab”.

The complaint alleges that the plaintiffs are still owed much more than they have been paid. Durst, Limp Bizkit and Flawless Records are demanding a jury trial. Their case is already making waves.

​“Everyone is talking about it,” observed Tavern, who noted the complicated nature of calculating music royalties in the streaming era had led to widespread confusion – and, sometimes, suspicion of the industry’s dominant firms. ​

“The way the money gets paid is totally different now, and much more convoluted,” he said. “You can point to 450 million streams, but that is not the same as 450 million records.”

Gilbert said: “I think cooler heads will prevail,” suggesting that attorneys for either side would probably meet privately to examine the facts. “This thing will be resolved,” he said. “I think it’s going to go away.”

‘Israel is not invading Lebanon, it is liberating it.” So proclaimed France’s pre-eminent liberal philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy as Israeli tanks drove across the border and its war planes bombed villages in the south and residential districts in Beirut. “There are moments in history,” he exulted, when “ ‘escalation’ becomes a necessity and a virtue.” For Lévy, it is not just Lebanon that Israel is liberating, but much of the Middle East, too.

Lévy is not alone in rejoicing at Israel’s spreading military offensive. For many, Israel is waging war, not merely in “self-defence” but, in the words of president Isaac Herzog, “to save western civilisation, to save the values of western civilisation”, a claim echoed by many of its supporters. And the destruction of Gaza, of its hospitals and universities, and the killing of 40,000 people? And the 2,000 people killed in Lebanon in a fortnight, and the fifth of its population displaced? Collateral damage en route to saving civilisation.

I should not need to say this but, as it has become commonplace to portray anyone criticising Israel’s wars in Gaza and Lebanon as supporting Hamas or Hezbollah or celebrating the slaughter on 7 October last year, let me say that what Hamas did was barbarous, and that, as I wrote at the time, “Hamas represents a betrayal of Palestinian hopes as well as a threat to Jews”. The same can be said of Hezbollah.

And yet, until 7 October 2023, the prime minister of Israel, and much of his government, was far more supportive of Hamas than I was or would ever wish to be. “Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas,” Benjamin Netanyahu told a Likud meeting in 2019. “To prevent the option of two states,” observed former Israeli general Gershon Hacohen, who for years backed Netanyahu’s policy, “he is turning Hamas into his closest partner. Openly, Hamas is an enemy. Covertly, it’s an ally.”

Israel’s support for Hamas goes back decades, an “attempt to divide and dilute support for a strong, secular PLO by using a competing religious alternative”, as a senior CIA agent told UPI more than 20 years ago. So successful was this strategy that Hamas swept to power in Gaza in 2006, and the Palestinian Authority was cut in two, with Hamas controlling Gaza and Fatah the West Bank.

In recent years, the Times of Israel observed, “Israel has allowed suitcases holding millions in Qatari cash to enter Gaza through its crossings since 2018”, while practically turning “a blind eye to the incendiary balloons and rocket fire from Gaza”. On 7 October, it added on the day after the slaughter: “The concept of indirectly strengthening Hamas went up in smoke.”

Hamas was responsible for the butchery of 7 October. But Israel had helped nurture it for the explicit aim of denying Palestinians a state. And now, in the attempt to undo its previous work, it has laid Gaza to waste. Israel has to enforce “another Nakba [catastrophe]”, Hacohen insists. “The Gazans have to be expelled from their homes for good.”

Yet, however cynical it may have been, there was nothing exceptional about Israel’s strategy. For decades, western governments sought to exploit Islam to help pursue their political ends, from the funding of international jihadists to drive out the Red Army in Afghanistan after the Soviet invasion of 1979 to secular France encouraging the building of prayer rooms in factories, regarding Islam, in the words of Paul Dijoud, immigration minister in Valéry Giscard d’Estaing’s government, as a “stabilising factor which would turn the faithful from deviance, delinquency, or membership of unions or revolutionary parties”. Such policies often created a space in which more radical Islamist movements could flourish. We are still living with the blowback from this strategy.

Netanyahu’s aim in expanding Israel’s wars, and in threatening to turn Lebanon into another Gaza, is not to “liberate” anything or anyone but to maintain control, internally and externally. The lessons of previous invasions of Lebanon – in 1978, 1982 and 2006 – should be clear enough. On the first two occasions, Israel invaded to confront the Palestine Liberation Organisation, on the third to try to eliminate Hezbollah, which had emerged, with Iranian backing, in response to the 1982 invasion and occupation. Each invasion was marked by considerable bloodshed – including, in 1982, the massacre of up to 3,500 Palestinians and Lebanese Shia in two Beirut refugee camps, Sabra and Shatila, by Israel’s allies the Lebanese Christian Phalangist militia – and nothing that anyone could call “liberation”.

There is a deeper issue here, too. In modernity, the historian Ronald Schechter wrote, “Jews became good to think [with]”, a comment echoed by David Nirenberg who, in his classic history of “Anti-Judaism”, similarly observed that “modernity thinks with Judaism”. What they meant was that the symbolic roles imposed on Jews became a means of addressing wider social issues. “The ‘Jewish Question’ ”, Nirenberg wrote, is not “simply an attitude towards Jews and their religion, but a way of critically engaging with the world”.

This use of “the Jew” as a means of making sense of the world is most true, of course, of antisemitism. For antisemites, belief in mythical Jewish power explains the evils of the world. It is true also of many strands of philosemitism, a term coined originally by antisemites but which has come to be used more widely to describe the views of those who have particular admiration for the Jewish presence in the world.

And, increasingly, it has become true of perceptions of Israel, which, too, has acquired a symbolic status on both sides of the debate. For many of those hostile to Israel, the state has become totemic of many of the ills of the modern world. For supporters of the Jewish state, it is an especially moral nation, carrying the burden of defending civilisation against barbarism. The one view leads to the celebration of Hamas’s murderous assault on 7 October as “resistance”, the other to viewing the destruction of Gaza and the invasion of Lebanon as a necessary defence of western values and of “civilisation”.

If 7 October was an act of “resistance”, and if the destruction of Gaza and the brutalisation of Lebanon can be dismissed as essential steps towards a more civilised world, then I suggest we need to rethink what we mean by “resistance” and “civilisation”.

Kenan Malik is an Observer columnist

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Two of England’s biggest water firms dumped raw sewage into rivers across the country in suspected illegal breaches of their permits, despite being given the highest possible rating by the regulator for their environmental performance, the Observer can reveal.

Severn Trent Water and United Utilities were responsible for 1,374 raw sewage spills from sewage treatment works in apparent breaches of permits over a two-year period in more than 80 watercourses, according to an analysis of previously unpublished operational data. It is alleged the suspected illegal discharges were during dry weather or at times when the plants were not at operating capacity.

The two firms were both given the four-star rating by the Environment Agency this year for their performance in 2023. Over the past five years, the firms have paid out a combined £2.8bn in dividends to shareholders and millions of pounds in bonuses to bosses, with both repeatedly citing their top ratings from the regulator.

In response to the revelations, Emma Hardy, the water minister, said: “For too long, water companies have pumped record levels of sewage into our rivers, lakes and seas. This government will never let this happen again.”

Ashley Smith, founder of the campaign group Windrush Against Sewage Pollution (Wasp), which conducted the studies, said it was shocking the two firms had been given the top rating while apparently “permitting illegal discharges on a massive scale”.

He said: “These environmental performance assessments lie at the heart of the deceit that has allowed the privatised water industry to pay huge dividends and bonuses.

“They have been a tick box exercise, providing a cover for profiteering and regulatory failure. It is a national disgrace.” The water firms say the findings are based on “assumptions” and consider them unreliable.

The Environment Agency provides an annual assessment of the environmental performance of the nine water and sewerage companies operating in England. Severn Trent has been given the highest rating five years in a row. United Utilities was given the top rating for the years 2020, 2021 and 2023.

In response to the new findings, the agency said a four-star rating does not mean a firm is a “perfect performer”. It also said it was consulting on changes to the environmental performance assessments.

An agency spokesperson said: “Overall water company performance, including for Severn Trent and United Utilities, isn’t where it needs to be and a major area for company improvement is in stopping unacceptable ‘dry day spills’”.

Water firms have faced public fury after it was first revealed by the Guardian in July 2020 that they had discharged raw sewage into England’s rivers on more than 200,000 occasions in just one year.

The firms are permitted to discharge raw sewage at times of heavy rainfall, but the latest analysis examines potentially illegal spills. The rivers campaign group Wasp matched rainfall records against the water firms’ operational data for their sewage treatment works (2021-2022) and regulatory permits to expose the scale of the suspected illegal discharges.

Its analysis found that Severn Trent had made 494 suspected illegal spills of sewage in 2021 and 309 in 2022 from 50 sewage plants. One sewage treatment works at the village of Colwall in Herefordshire discharged 72 times in suspected breach of permit conditions in 2021 and 2022.

A treatment works at Derby appears to have illegally discharged sewage into the River Derwent on 35 days over the two-year period, according to the data. There were also suspected illegal spills into the Severn, the Trent and the Cam in Gloucestershire.

Wasp’s analysis of United Utilities found the firm had made 308 suspected illegal spills in 2021 and 263 in 2022 from 35 sewage plants. At a sewage works at Newbiggin on Morecambe Bay, which is designated a special area of conservation, there were 84 suspected illegal discharges in 2021 and 2022.

Peter Hammond, the author of Wasp’s reports, said there may have been hundreds of other illegal spills by the companies, but the data from the recording equipment in those cases could not be considered robust enough to distinguish between legal and illegal spills. Hammond said that the government “must replace current devices with flow meters to record frequency, duration and volume”. Any bonuses based on unreliable environmental data should be clawed back, he said.

Hammond and Smith, who have been labelled the “sewage sleuths”, previously used machine learning to detect untracked sewage discharges, with a paper published in March 2021. Eight months later, the Environment Agency announced its biggest criminal investigation into potential breaches of environmental conditions at sewage treatment works.

Ofwat, the industry regulator, last week ordered water firms to return £158m to customers through bills because of poor performance. Severn Trent and United Utilities, however, were reported to have exceeded their targets and will be able to charge customers more next year.

Charles Watson, chair of the charity River Action, said: “It’s only through the relentless work of citizen scientists that we now know about the state of our rivers while our regulators have been missing in action. The fact that any dividends and bonuses have been paid by firms complicit in persistent widespread illegal activities is an outrage.”

Liv Garfield, chief executive of Severn Trent, was given a £3.2m pay deal in 2023/24, including a bonus of £584,000. Louise Beardmore, chief executive of United Utilities, was paid £1.4m in the year to 31 March 2024, including a £420,000 annual bonus.

A United Utilities spokesperson said: “The methodology used in this report is not one that is used by regulators or companies and continues to be based on assumptions rather than actual evidence or measured data.” The spokesperson said it understood people’s concerns about sewage discharges and had embarked on the “largest environmental investment in a century” in its infrastructure.

Severn Trent said: “Our sites have complex hydraulic configurations with multiple interdependencies that need to be assessed using site specific assured data, whereas desktop analysis like this can only produce assumptions and unreliable conclusions.

“We’re making progress to improve river health and an extra £1bn raised by our investors is accelerating delivery, with £450m being invested this year alone to reduce spills.” The firm said it considered the works at Colwall was operating “in line with its permits”, and that the Environment Agency performance assessments were “challenging and intensive” and it was the only water firm to achieve the highest rating five years in a row.

A government spokesperson said a new water bill going through parliament will strengthen regulation, including the powers to ban the payment of bonuses to bosses of polluting firms. It will also conduct a review of the water sector.

A spokesperson for Water UK, the trade association for the industry, said: “No sewage spill is ever acceptable, and we have a plan to put it right. Water companies have proposed investing £11bn to reduce spills by 40% by 2030. We now need Ofwat to give us the green light so we can get on with it.”

The centuries-old mystery over Christopher Columbus’s nationality has been revealed by scientists in a Spanish TV documentary after using DNA analysis.

The 15th explorer was Jewish and from Spain, according to Columbus DNA: His True Origin, a programme broadcast on national broadcaster RTVE on Saturday to mark Spain celebrating its national day and commemorating Columbus’s arrival in the New World.

Researchers led by forensic expert Miguel Lorente tested tiny samples of remains buried in Seville Cathedral, long marked by authorities there as the last resting place of Columbus, although there had been rival claims. The team compared them with those of known relatives and descendants.

Countries have long argued over the origins and the final resting place of the divisive figure who led Spanish-funded expeditions from the 1490s onward, opening the way for the European conquest of the Americas.

Many historians have questioned the traditional theory that Columbus was from Genoa in north-west Italy. Other theories ranged from him being a Spanish Jew, Greek, Basque or Portuguese.

Lorente, briefing reporters on the research on Thursday, had confirmed previous theories that the remains in Seville belonged to the explorer.

He said: “Today it has been possible to verify it with new technologies, so that the previous partial theory that the remains of Seville belong to Christopher Columbus has been definitively confirmed.”

Research on the nationality had been complicated by a number of factors including the large amount of data but “the outcome is almost absolutely reliable,” Lorente added.

Columbus died aged 55 in the northwest Spanish city of Valladolid in 1506 but wished to be buried on the island of Hispaniola that is today shared by the Dominican Republic and Haiti.

His remains were taken there in 1542, then moved to Cuba in 1795 and then, it had been long thought in Spain, to Seville in 1898.

In 1877, workers found a lead casket buried behind the altar in a cathedral in Santo Domingo, the capital of the Dominican Republic, containing a collection of bone fragments the country says belong to Columbus.

Lorente said both claims could be true as both sets of bones were incomplete.

King Charles and his family have failed to reveal their official gifts for the past four years, despite previously promising to publish an annual list.

Palace officials have blamed the pandemic, the change of reign, and then planning for last year’s coronation for their inability to publish details of the gifts received by members of the royal family.

The royal family’s reticence follows controversy over a cash-for-honours scandal involving the king’s main charitable foundation, which led to a police investigation that was dropped last year without a full explanation from either Scotland Yard or the Crown Prosecution Service. It also comes after revelations that Charles, when he was Prince of Wales, accepted £2.6m in cash in bags from a Qatari politician for another of his charities, the Prince of Wales’s Charitable Fund.

The Duke of York also faced allegations that when he was a working royal he used official overseas trips to conduct private business deals.

But unlike MPs, who have to register gifts, donations and hospitality, there is no public register of interests for members of the royal family. Instead, they act on the advice of their private secretaries in deciding what to declare.

Annual gift lists were introduced after media criticism of attempts by the royal household to conceal the origin of lavish jewellery given to Queen Camilla by a Saudi royal in 2006 and worn by her on an official visit to the US in 2007.

The last annual list, detailing official gifts received by all working members of the royal family in 2019, was published in April 2020 but since then there has been nothing, apart from the occasional description of an exchange of presents during a state visit or pictures when they are given gifts during an engagement.

Over the years, the annual list has led to controversy, such as in 2012 when it emerged that the king of Bahrain and his country’s prime minister had given a “suite of jewels” to Prince Edward’s wife, Sophie, while facing criticism over human rights abuses.

But many presents, including sensitive ones, were often concealed, even though official gifts are not the personal property of the royals and are in effect accepted on behalf of the nation.

Saudi Arabia’s controversial crown prince Mohammed bin Salman gave the Duchess of Sussex a £500,000 pair of diamond chandelier earrings as a wedding present in 2018. In October that year Meghan wore them at a state banquet in Fiji only a few days after the crown prince was accused of ordering the murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi. But when journalists asked where she got them, palace officials said they were “borrowed”. She wore them again that November at a Buckingham Palace dinner to celebrate the then Prince Charles’s 70th birthday. It was only in March 2021, shortly before the Duke and Duchess of Sussex gave a controversial television interview to Oprah Winfrey, that their true provenance was leaked.

The Prince and Princess of Wales, William and Kate, chose not to release a list of any gifts they had received at their wedding in 2011. Only a handful of official gifts received by Queen Elizabeth for her platinum jubilee in 2022 were disclosed and it is not clear what, if any, were given to King Charles and Queen Camilla to mark their coronation.

It was all very different back in 1947, when the then Princess Elizabeth married Philip Mountbatten. An exhaustive list of gifts to the couple was published and more than 2,500 items went on show to the public.

Charles ordered a formal review of the royal household’s policy on official gifts in 2003, after a scandal over staff selling unwanted presents. It resulted in clearer definitions as to what constitutes an official gift and a personal present.

Official gifts are those received in connection with official duties or from businesses or individuals not personally known to the family member. They include gifts from dignitaries, such as other heads of state or elected representatives, during events and are not the family members’ private property.

Personal gifts are those from people they know privately with no connection to official duties.

Graham Smith, chief executive of Republic, which campaigns for an elected head of state to replace the monarch, said: “It is vital that the public knows about any possible conflicts of interest or attempts to curry favour with royals, as they have direct access to the highest levels of government.”

He added: “Charles and senior royals have access to government papers, can have secretive meetings with ministers and the prime minister and they have leverage to pressure government to do favours for them and their friends.

“The royals have form when it comes to blurring the lines between what’s theirs to keep and what’s an official gift. So full disclosure is needed on what’s been received and where those gifts are now. If we demand high standards from politicians, we must demand those same standards from the royals.”

A spokesperson for Buckingham Palace said: “The royal gifts lists will be published in due course.”

At least 22 people have been killed in airstrikes in northern Gaza, with Israeli forces stepping up their campaign on the besieged Palestinian territory even as fighting in the new war in Lebanon escalates.

On Saturday, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) renewed its evacuation orders for Palestinians still living in the decimated northern half of Gaza, although many residents say the fighting and Israeli sniper fire make it impossible to leave.

Avichay Adraee, an IDF spokesperson, told people that the area includes parts of Gaza City’s Sheikh Radwan neighbourhood and sections around Jabalia, the urban refugee camp.

In a social media post, Adraee asked people living there to head south to al-Mawasi, a coastal area of southern Gaza where hundreds of thousands of people are already displaced. A total of 84% of the territory is currently under evacuation orders, pushing civilians into ever-dwindling “humanitarian zones” which Israel has bombed regardless.

The UN says an estimated 400,000 people are trapped by the latest ground fighting and artillery fire centred in Jabalia, which has now entered a second week.

“It is getting tougher every day. The fear and the conditions are unspeakable,” said Badr Alzaharna, 25, from Gaza City. “I cannot leave. I want to travel but I can’t. Rafah crossing has been closed since May.”

Gaza’s ministry of health appealed on Friday for medical teams to be allowed access to the northern half of the strip to evacuate the wounded, and for fuel deliveries to the north’s struggling hospitals, warning that civilians caught up in the intense shelling and airstrikes are running out of food and water. Seven World Health Organization missions were impeded from access to northern Gaza by Israeli forces this week, the UN body said. Also on Saturday, the World Food Programme, the UN food agency, reported that no food aid has reached northern Gaza since 1 October, with a 35% drop in the supply of food to families around the rest of Gaza, raising new fears of extreme hunger and famine that have already plagued the strip for a year.

The last food supplies – canned food, flour, high-energy biscuits and nutrition supplements – have been distributed to shelters and health facilities in the north, and it is unclear how long they will last. Israel has consistently denied blocking aid and food to Gaza.

Airstrikes overnight on Friday on Jabalia destroyed an entire building and severely damaged several more, according to medics and first responders, who are still recovering missing people from under the rubble and ruins created by a 20-metre deep impact crater.

At least six women and seven children were among the dead, and a strike in another part of Jabalia in the early hours of Saturday killed two parents and injured their baby, the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory said. Hospitals across Gaza reported receiving a total of 49 bodies and 219 wounded people in the past 24 hours.

The IDF did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the latest strikes and civilian deaths in Gaza.

Israel has nominally controlled the northern half of Gaza since the beginning of the year, and has cut the territory in two by creating what it calls the Netzarim corridor, which separates what was once the densely populated Gaza City from the rest of the strip. However, it has since frequently re-entered Gaza City and other areas in the north of the strip where it says Hamas fighters are regrouping.

In Lebanon, the health authority said that 60 people were killed and another 168 wounded in the past 24 hours, and the United Nations peacekeeping force that operates on the blue line separating Israel and Lebanon said its headquarters in Naqoura had been targeted a second time. It was not immediately clear who was responsible for the fire.

Israel stepped up its campaign against the Lebanese militia Hezbollah last month after a year of tit-for-tat fire triggered by Hamas’s 7 October attack and the ensuing war in Gaza.

The new war in Lebanon has heightened the risk of a region-wide escalation drawing in Iran and the US. Ceasefire talks on ending the fighting in Gaza have been stalled since July.

The Scottish DJ and producer Jack Revill, known to many as Jackmaster, has died aged 38, his family has announced.

Revill died in Ibiza on Saturday morning after “complications arising from an accidental head injury”, his family said.

A statement said: “It is with profound sorrow that we confirm the untimely passing of Jack Revill, known to many as Jackmaster.

“Jack tragically died in Ibiza on the morning of October 12, following complications arising from an accidental head injury.

“His family – Kate, Sean and Johnny – are utterly heartbroken.

“While deeply touched by the overwhelming support from friends, colleagues, and fans, the family kindly requests privacy as they navigate the immense grief of this devastating loss.”

Born in Glasgow, Revill worked at the well-known record shop Rubadub in Glasgow, and went on to become the co-founder of the record label Numbers.

He had recently released the single Nitro, featuring Kid Enigma, telling Electronic Groove music magazine: “It was about feeling hyped and inspired in the club.

“Sadly, those moments are rare now. Blame the phones and people who don’t dance.

“I am so grateful for my fans, but I got into music because I love dancing. It’s a lost art form at the moment, I think.”

The electronic duo Disclosure were among those paying tribute, writing on Instagram: “Can’t believe this. Heart broken. Thank you for all the amazing memories & inspiration Jack. This is just awful awful awful.”

A post from the official Instagram account of DU duo CamelPhat on Revill’s Instagram page said: “Can’t believe what I’m reading… in an industry full of Ego you were hands down one of the nicest fellas we ever met along the way. Our thoughts are with family & friends. RIP my friend x”.

Alex Salmond, the former first minister of Scotland who led Scotland to the brink of independence, has died at the age of 69.

Salmond served as first minister of Scotland from 2007. He stood down from the role after failing to secure independence in the 2014 referendum, handing over to his deputy, Nicola Sturgeon.

Reports suggested that he collapsed after delivering a speech in North Macedonia on Saturday.

Scotland’s first minister, John Swinney, said he was “deeply shocked and saddened”.

“Alex worked tirelessly and fought fearlessly for the country that he loved and for her independence. He took the Scottish National party from the fringes of Scottish politics into government and led Scotland so close to becoming an independent country.”

The British prime minister, Keir Starmer, said Salmond had been a “monumental figure” for more than 30 years.

“He leaves behind a lasting legacy,” he said. “As first minister of Scotland he cared deeply about Scotland’s heritage, history and culture, as well as the communities he represented as MP and MSP over many years of service.

“My thoughts are with those who knew him, his family and his loved ones. On behalf of the UK government, I offer them our condolences today.”

Sturgeon said: “I am shocked and sorry to learn of Alex Salmond’s death.

“Obviously, I cannot pretend that the events of the past few years which led to the breakdown of our relationship did not happen, and it would not be right for me to try.

“However, it remains the fact that for many years Alex was an incredibly significant figure in my life. He was my mentor, and for more than a decade we formed one of the most successful partnerships in UK politics.

“Alex modernised the SNP and led us into government for the first time, becoming Scotland’s fourth first minister and paving the way for the 2014 referendum which took Scotland to the brink of independence.

“He will be remembered for all of that. My thoughts are with Moira, his wider family and his friends.”

The former SNP leader and former first minister Humza Yousaf said Salmond had “helped to transform the SNP into the dominant political force it is today.

“Alex and I obviously had our differences in the last few years, but there’s no doubt about the enormous contribution he made to Scottish and UK politics.”

Anas Sarwar, the leader of Scottish Labour, said the “sad news of Alex Salmond’s passing today will come as a shock to all who knew him in Scotland, across the UK and beyond”.

He described him as “a central figure in politics over three decades” whose “contribution to the Scottish political landscape cannot be overstated”.

Tom Tugendhat, the UK’s shadow security minister, said Salmond was a “towering figure who shaped our politics for a generation”.

Joanna Cherry, the former SNP MP, said: “I am devastated to hear this news. He was one of the most talented politicians of his generation, and by any measure the finest first minister our country has had. He changed the face of Scottish politics.

“Sadly, he was ill-used by many of his former comrades, and I am particularly sorry that he has not lived to see his vindication. Above all, I shall remember him as an inspiration and a loyal friend. My heartfelt condolences go to Moira, his family, and all who loved him.”

Salmond began his second stint as SNP leader in 2004, securing power in Holyrood in 2007. That was followed by a sweeping victory in Scottish parliamentary elections in 2011 – the precursor to the independence vote.

Salmond was a huge but divisive figure, gaining criticism for his appearances on the Russian state channel RT. He quit the channel after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

He resigned from the SNP in 2018, after allegations of sexual misconduct during his time as first minister in 2013. After lengthy legal battles, he was arrested in 2019 and charged with 14 offences.

He was acquitted of all charges of sexual assault in 2020, when he was found not guilty of 12 charges of attempted rape, sexual assault and indecent assault after six hours of jury deliberations. The jury reached the uniquely Scottish verdict of “not proven” on one charge of sexual assault with intent to rape. Another charge was dropped.

The subsequent Holyrood inquiry into the Scottish government’s handling of the initial harassment complaints led to huge splits within the SNP, with some senior figures backing Salmond, and accusations that he had been the victim of a witch-hunt within the party.

He went on to form the Alba party in 2021, which challenged the SNP on its failure to deliver a second referendum but failed to make electoral headway.

Salmond was rumoured to be considering a return to frontline politics at Holyrood at the next Scottish parliament elections in 2026, with speculation that he might stand for the regional list in the north-east of Scotland.

Reflecting recently on the referendum result, Salmond said he had started to write his concession speech after the first result was declared on the night of the vote. The yes campaign lost the vote, 45% to 55%.

The first result came from Clackmannanshire, often seen as reflecting national sentiment. Voters there backed staying within the UK by 53.8% to 46.2%. “When I saw that result, I started to write my concession speech,” Salmond said.

“Nobody gave us a chance at the start. I always reckoned if we got to the positive side of the argument, if we claimed the positive side for ‘yes’, which in itself is an affirmation, then once we got into the campaign, I thought we’d pick up ground, and so we did.”