The California governor and top Democrats in the state have abandoned a last-minute plan to ask voters whether a landmark criminal justice bill should be reformed.

California Democrats over the weekend had outlined plans to put a measure on the November ballot that would ask voters to approve major reforms to Proposition 47, a 2014 ballot measure that changed some theft and drug possession felonies to misdemeanors.

But on Tuesday, they abruptly changed course and said they would not be able make Wednesday’s cutoff to finalize the measure’s inclusion on the ballot.

Gavin Newsom, the governor, blamed a tight schedule for withdrawing the proposal.

“We are unable to meet the ballot deadline to secure necessary amendments to ensure this measure’s success, and we will be withdrawing it from consideration,” Newsom said in a statement.

The Democrats’ proposal was a last-minute response to a competing ballot measure, called “the homelessness, drug addiction and theft reduction act”, that was proposed in September and officially made it to the ballot on 28 June. The coalition’s proposal would technically not repeal Prop 47, but would undo key components of it by increasing penalties for a third theft offense and create a new class of offense, called “treatment-mandated felony”, to charge those in possession of hard drugs like cocaine, meth and fentanyl.

The proposal has the backing of district attorneys, business leaders and law enforcement, who have argued that Prop 47 has left officers and prosecutors hamstrung and unable to deal with lower-level theft and drug offenses.

Other proponents, which include the San Francisco mayor London Breed and many district attorneys, say it would help fight retail theft, as well as a growing homelessness and addiction crisis.

Detractors of the measure say it would do little to address the complex problems the state is facing, and instead drive up the number of incarcerated people costing the state millions of dollars that through Prop 47 were saved and passed along to local re-entry, mental health and drug treatment programs.

“It’s one of those monumental pieces of legislation, and it got us over the hill for something we’ve been fighting for for so long,” Kent Mendoza, associate director of advocacy and community organizing the anti-recidivism coalition, said of Prop 47. “It gives counties an opportunity to be bold and approach these things differently. This is what allows us to maybe save 10 people who wouldn’t have this support.”

Newsom and many Democrats have fiercely opposed the coalition’s proposal, arguing that undoing Proposition 47 was a misguided and ineffective approach to tackling retail theft, and instead proposed a set of legislative reforms.

“I don’t think there’s a need to have it on the ballot. Why have something on the ballot that doesn’t actually achieve the goals that are intended?” Newsom said in June. “Why do something that can’t be done legislatively with more flexibility? I think it’s a better approach to governing.”

The governor and the lawmakers tried to negotiate with the coalition to drop the initiative. But as those negotiations failed, they announced their own ballot initiative over the weekend.

Their measure, which they intended to call Prop 2, proposed to punish repeat thieves more harshly if their convictions occurred within a spate of three years.

Greg Totten, the co-chair of Californians for safer communities, the primary group backing the ballot measure that would gut Prop 47, said that he was “pleased” to see Newsom back away from his counter legislation and hoped that both sides could find a path forward.

“We are pleased The Governor and Legislature have dropped their countermeasure and welcome them to join our campaign to responsibly amend Prop 47 to deal with retail theft, the fentanyl crisis and homelessness,” Totten said in a statement.

And as November nears and the fate of Prop 47 rests in the hands of voters, Mendoza with ARC said that his group will likely begin education campaigns for voters to shift perceptions about what causes people to commit crimes and the best ways to keep them out of the cycle.

“It’s probably gonna be a communications strategy: sharing success stories,” Mendoza said. “Uplifting the success of people who have been in prison to show that people can do good. We might do town halls in communities that need more education, in communities who may not see these things the way we tend to say we see it.”

Forget stuffy traditions, Wimbledon’s women tennis players have been pushing the boundaries this year with their imaginative on-court outfits.

Coco Gauff, the world No 2, has worn a custom-made, cut-out dress that fans have said is reminiscent of Serena Williams’ 2019 Wimbledon outfit. The 20-year-old US Open champion said she asked New Balance for a design featuring cut-outs, which gave her dress the appearance of being a two-piece.

Speaking after defeating Romania’s Anca Todoni in straight sets on Wednesday, Gauff said she tried to be creative with her on-court style while sticking to Wimbledon’s strict all-white dress code.

“I mean, honestly, Wimbledon there’s not too much you can do in the colour department. We just tried to do something different with the cut of the dress. I like to wear crop tops a lot. That cut is kind of supposed to be like a crop top, [in] an elegant Wimbledon-type way,” she said.

She added: “I just think of Wimbledon as a tradition. Even with my nails, I always usually get like French or white here just to match that elegance of it, so I think that was the inspiration from it. The only thing you can really do here is play with the texture.”

Gauff, who has previously said that she planned her grand slam outfits a year or two in advance, said her dress was not inspired by Williams. “Serena has just done every iconic dress fit in the game that unintentionally you can have something inspired by her,” she added.

Naomi Osaka, the four-time grand slam champion who returned to the tour in 2024 after the birth of her first child, also wore a distinctive custom-made set as she battled the American Emma Navarro, 23, on Centre Court on Wednesday. Osaka was defeated 6-4 6-1 in the second round match.

The 26-year-old former world No 1’s Nike two-piece, featuring asymmetric ruffles and a pleated skirt, divided fans. But Wimbledon described it as “an elaborate outfit that wouldn’t have looked out of place at the Met Gala”.

Meanwhile, Ukraine’s Marta Kostyuk wore a white V-neck outfit which was inspired by her own wedding dress during her first-round triumph against Slovakia’s Rebecca Šramková on Monday.

The 22-year-old 18th seed’s sleeveless, open-backed Wimbledon dress was designed by Wilson, the Chicago-based sports equipment and apparel brand that designed her wedding dress.

Kostyuk’s wedding dress featured a short underdress under a long silk organza gown with hand-appliquéd flowers. In an interview published by Vogue on Monday, Joelle Michaeloff, Wilson’s head of design, said Kostyuk’s SW19 dress was “basically the original [under]dress, but with a built-in ball short in this one”.

She added: “We added an underlayer component and then raised the neckline a little bit – we don’t want any mistakes in Wimbledon.”

Wimbledon’s all-white dress code dates back to the late 19th century, but the fashion has evolved over the years. In 1965, Italy’s Lea Pericoli wore a mini dress with a floral detail, while the American Anne White wore a Lycra unitard 20 years later. In more recent years, tennis stars have continued to push the boundaries with Maria Sharapova wearing a tuxedo inspired two-piece and Serena Williams donning a trenchcoat-style dress in 2008.

Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s Ineos has delayed the launch of its Fusilier electric SUV, blaming weak consumer demand and uncertainty about government policies.

Ratcliffe only unveiled plans to produce the low-emission vehicles in February, with production expected to begin in 2027.

However, it emerged on Wednesday that the project to build the Fusilier, to be marketed as a plug-in hybrid and electric vehicle (EV), had been delayed indefinitely.

Ratcliffe is the founder and chief executive of Ineos, the fracking to chemicals group. The company is also a minority investor in Premier League football club Manchester United and has been pushing into new sectors, including electric car-making.

Ratcliffe had said the Fusilier vehicle, smaller than the company’s existing Grenadier 4×4, would be equipped with an electric motor powered by a battery, as well as a range-extender option using a small gas engine to keep the battery charged up.

However, the company said regulatory changes could hurt the viability of its gas-engine range-extender.

The company said: “We are delaying the launch of the Ineos Fusilier for two reasons: reluctant consumer uptake of EVs, and industry uncertainty around tariffs, timings, and taxation.” It added that there needs to be long-term clarity from policymakers to meet net zero targets.

An Ineos Automotive spokesperson said that the gas-powered range-extender would be banned in Europe and the UK in 2035, according to Bloomberg, which first reported the delay.

If the Labour party are successful in Thursday’s general election, it has pledged to bring forward the ban on the sale of new petrol cars by five years to 2030.

The EU’s move to impose new tariffs on imports of Chinese-made EVs into the trading bloc has prompted fears of a global trade war, centred on EVs.

The tariffs of up to 38% on imports of Chinese EVs come into effect on Thursday barring a last minute U-turn. They will be imposed on top of the existing 10% levy on cars imported into the EU, meaning Chinese-made EVs face total tariffs of up to 48%.

On Wednesday, the BMW chief executive, Oliver Zipse, criticised the move. “The introduction of additional import duties leads to a dead end,” he said. “It does not strengthen the competitiveness of European manufacturers.”

Name: XL gullies.

Age: First identified in March.

Appearance: Winged and dangerous.

Not more irresponsible dog breeding … wait, did you say “winged”? That’s right. XL gullies are “Britain’s HARDEST seagulls”.

“Britain’s hardest seagulls” should be a Ross Kemp show. Indeed; there is genuine drama to this story. A new breed of seagull is terrorising the country.

There’s no such thing as a seagull. OK, smartypants. We’re mainly talking about herring gulls. Britons believe they are getting bolder, fiercer and more successful at stealing our snacks. See, for instance, reports of a “jacked-up gargantuan”, “top-level boss” gull operating out of Liverpool city centre.

Yikes. How exactly is it operating? Carrying out laser-focused smash-and-grab attacks on people’s snacks (Greggs is reportedly its favourite).

Give me more incidents of gull crime. With pleasure. For a deep-dive report, the Daily Mail sent journalists to Margate in Kent and St Ives in Cornwall to walk around with chips and see what happened.

And what happened? Gulls ate their chips.

Astonishing. Are those towns chip-theft hotspots? No, XL gullies are everywhere. Reddit users have been comparing notes on no-go zones. Aberdeen gulls are “psychotic” and “absolutely ruthless”; mid-Wales ones are “pure evil”; Tenby gulls are “as big as turkeys”; Rhyl gulls “need Asbos”; and Cornish gulls are “pterodactyls”.

This is like a sinister avian version of the Beach Boys’ California Girls. Especially the “They knock me out when I’m down there” bit. (Southern gulls are “more willing to approach people”, according to preliminary results from a recent study by the universities of Glasgow and Plymouth.)

Are gulls actually violent? Not unless they’re defending their chicks. There are occasionally reports of minor injuries when they swoop to steal food – but it’s definitely chips they want, not blood.

It may not be a balanced diet, but isn’t this expected gull behaviour? Absolutely – and it’s our own fault. Gulls are “very intelligent … opportunistic and extremely adaptable”, according to the naturalist Dominic Couzens. Since people discard so much food, the gulls have altered their foraging strategies, including by helping themselves. It’s not crime, but rather “kleptoparasitism”.

Can anything be done? You can grass up gulls to various councils, or report interactions to researchers via Glasgow and Plymouth’s Gull’s Eye app. Liverpool has recently deployed a Harris hawk to try to deter the top-level boss and his capos. But like all wild birds, herring gulls are protected – their number is declining – so any retaliation against them is illegal. The best thing to do is stay out of their way (especially when eating chips).

Do say: “Increasing overlap between anthropogenic landscapes and wildlife habitats has given rise to more human-wildlife conflicts.”

Don’t say: “I wish they all could be California gulls.”

Rishi Sunak has confided to members of his inner circle that he is fearful of losing his Yorkshire constituency at the general election, the Guardian has been told.

The prime minister, who would be the first sitting leader of the country to lose his seat, told confidants before a Conservative rally on Tuesday that he thought the vote in Richmond and Northallerton was too close to call.

In 2019, he won the seat with a majority of more than 27,000 and 63% of the vote.

One source said: “He is genuinely fearful of a defeat in Richmond: the risk that it could be tight has hit him hard. He’s rattled – he can’t quite believe it’s coming so close.” Another source added: “He’s taken so much friendly fire from his own side I’m amazed he’s had the strength to keep going.”

A Conservative source flatly denied Sunak feared losing in his constituency, saying: “The PM is confident he will hold his seat.”

Mel Stride, a close ally of the prime minister, said on Wednesday that Labour was likely to win “the largest majority any party has ever achieved”.

Sunak is weighing a return to the financial services industry, whether or not he stays on as an MP, the Guardian understands. A former colleague has offered him office space in Mayfair in London – a hotspot for hedge funds. He has also discussed spending a greater share of his time in California, where he has a home, although he had no immediate plans to relocate there full time, sources said.

A Conservative source said Sunak had “no interest” in going back into financial services and planned to stay in Yorkshire “come what may”.

No incumbent prime minister has ever lost their seat, and only 12 serving cabinet ministers have lost their seats since 1974, according to the Institute for Government.

Polls have varied, with most suggesting Sunak should retain his seat even amid a landslide victory for Labour across the country. Savanta and Electoral Calculus analysis for the Telegraph suggested he could lose it, however.

Conservative activists working in Sunak’s constituency had been particularly alarmed by a drop-off in support among the farming community, some of whom had cited challenges arising from Brexit to their businesses and a failure to control illegal immigration, sources said.

Sunak was a supporter of Britain’s exit from the EU, and his government has struggled in its efforts to discourage small-boat crossings in the Channel.

Activists fear that low turnout for the Tories, rather than just a swing to Labour or a groundswell for Reform, may prove to be the greatest risk for the prime minister.

Last month, the Guardian reported four sources’ claims that activists in Yorkshire had been diverted to campaign in Sunak’s seat. At that time, Conservative sources denied they had redeployed resources to try to bolster support in the prime minister’s constituency.

Broader efforts to support cabinet members’ campaigns are also under way, with activists diverted to the home secretary James Cleverly’s seat of Braintree, the deputy prime minister Oliver Dowden’s Hertsmere constituency, and the environment secretary Steve Barclay’s seat in North East Cambridgeshire. All were won, like Sunak’s, with majorities of more than 20,000 at the last general election.

Sunak has denied suggestions he would move to California after an election defeat. In June, speaking on the fringes of the G7 Summit in Italy, he said he would stay on as an MP for the full five years of a new parliament, even if the Tories lost the election.

UK fruit and vegetable production has plummeted as farms have been hit by extreme weather.

The country suffered the wettest 18 months since records began across the 2023-24 growing year, leaving soil waterlogged and some farms totally underwater. The impact on harvests has been disastrous. Data from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs shows that year-on-year vegetable yields decreased by 4.9% to 2.2m tonnes in 2023, and the production volumes of fruit decreased by 12% to 585,000 tonnes.

Scientists say that climate breakdown caused by the burning of fossil fuels is likely to bring more extreme weather to the UK, including more frequent floods and droughts.

Farmers said they were not able to plant due to the wet weather, and this is borne out in the statistics. The growing area of vegetables was down, falling by 6.5% to 101,000 hectares. A dry early summer in 2023 also did not help, as those who could not irrigate found it hard to plant.

Wet weather in the autumn and winter meant that the planted area of brassicas decreased by 3.1% to 23,000 hectares, leading to a 0.4% fall in broccoli yields and a 9.2% year-on-year fall in cauliflower volumes. Onions fared similarly, with volumes down by 13% and a fall in production area of 3.6%. So did carrots; their yields fell by 7.2%.

Farmers said the next government needed a proper plan for food security as the UK’s climate becomes less predictable, with more extreme weather hitting farms.

Guy Singh-Watson, the founder of Riverford fruit and vegetable boxes, said the data was a “wake-up call, showing the dire state of British horticulture”.

He said the next government must plan to safeguard food security. “We urgently need a long-term and legally defined plan from government – not just on the environment, but to tackle the exploitative practices of supermarkets and their suppliers.” he said. “It’s high time we reinstated honesty and decency in our supply chains.”

The chair of the National Farmers’ Union horticulture and potatoes board, Martin Emmett, said: “These stark statistics are sadly not a surprise. Recent shortages of some of the nation’s favourite fruit and vegetables shows we cannot afford to let our production decline and that we must value our food security.

“The UK horticulture sector has the ambition to produce more and is an area ripe for growth, but it needs investment from the next government to match our ambition by backing our horticulture strategy.”

Julian Marks, group chief executive of Barfoots Farms, told the Grocer: “The latest set of Defra stats highlight the challenges growers have faced in the last 12 to 18 months with weather-related risk and extraordinary levels of input cost inflation.”

He added: “Though inflation has eased somewhat recently, it hasn’t gone away and weather risks have intensified over the winter, with heavy rain affecting soils and the ability of growers to plant for the coming season.”

The UK government recently published its first official food security index, which described food security as “broadly stable”, and facing “longer-term risks” from climate change.

The issue is briefly mentioned in the manifestos for this week’s general election. The Conservatives pledged a UK where the “national, border, energy and food security are put first” and said they would introduce a legally binding target to enhance the UK’s food security.

Labour similarly said in its manifesto that “food security is national security” and that the party would “champion British farming whilst protecting the environment”. The Liberal Democrats have promised to put an extra £1bn a year into the farming payments schemes and pledged to introduce a “holistic and comprehensive national food strategy to ensure food security”.

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs was contacted for comment.

When she went viral in a video clip showing her coining the onomatopoeia “hawk tuah” to describe what intimate act reliably drives men wild in her experience, Hailey Welch thought about keeping herself hidden from the masses.

Then the rumor circulated that the photogenic blonde in the video with the thick southern drawl was actually the daughter of a humiliated religious leader. The attention had caused the woman to be fired from her education job, another rumor claimed. And social media users started creating fake accounts with photos of her.

Welch changed her mind about keeping a low profile and came forward for the first time Monday on the Plan Bri Uncut podcast, dispelled everything said about her before as falsehoods – and detailed how the clip has upended her life, ranging from cameos alongside celebrities to offers from strangers to buy a sample of her spit.

“It’s a hit or miss what comes out of my mouth – I just talk out of my ass,” Welch told podcast host Brianna LaPaglia. “The one time I say something like that, of course there’s a camera in my face.”

The 21-year-old had just quit social media and was working in a bed spring factory in her Tennessee home town when she learned she had achieved a level of internet virality that provided a relatively pleasant distraction for a country grappling with climate change-fueled extreme weather as well as another contentious presidential election cycle.

It stemmed from an 11 June Instagram video posted by YouTubers Tim & Dee TV that showed a street interview in Nashville, Tennessee, with two women whose names were not revealed. As KnowYourMeme.com noted, Welch was asked, “What’s one move in bed that makes a man go crazy everytime?”

She replied with a giggly, obvious oral sex allusion, saying: “Aw, you gotta give him that hawk tuah and spit on that thang – you get me?”

In short order, the clip reverberated across the digital world, well beyond the pun-driven memes that are the lifeblood of social media. One of the countless notable instances involved a country song about the exchange that was purportedly created with artificial intelligence – and turned out to be quite the ear-worm, in the opinion of many.

Readers treated New Orleans’ Times-Picayune newspaper to its own moment of virality by headlining an article about the city’s NBA team acquiring a former Atlanta Hawks player with the words, From a Hawk to a Pelican.

Eventually, amid an obsession among some to learn who the girl in the infamous video was, clues about Welch’s identity began to trickle out. And by late June, she had penned a merchandise deal with the company Fathead Threads for hats emblazoned with the wet-sounding phrase she immortalized.

The company had reportedly hawked more than $65,000 worth of merchandise almost immediately – though on Tuesday owner Jason Poteete told the Guardian that Fathead Threads was so busy trying to meet demand for its wares that there had not been time for him to calculate a precise tally of the sales, which are being split with Welch.

On Monday, Welch said “the guy [who] makes my hats” received an offer to pay $600 for her to spit in a jar and send it to the interested party.

“That’s just disgusting, is it not?” Welch told Plan Bri Uncut, likening the overture to those interested in buying the used underwear of social media influencers whom they find attractive. “And I was like, ‘Should I do it?’ Then I was like, ‘Naw, don’t do that.’”

By Saturday night, Welch was singing on stage with country star Zach Bryan. Four-time NBA champion and television commentator Shaquille O’Neal was on X two days later bragging about having taken pictures with her. She now has a publicity team.

Yet, perhaps inevitably, the disinformation trolls came out of the woodwork. Posts claimed that Welch’s father was a preacher who had been mortified by her scandalous behavior. Others said she was a school teacher whose naughty language cost her her post.

All of that was as false as the “kind of creepy”, fake social media accounts containing stolen photos of Welch that prompted her to take off her veil of anonymity once and for all, she explained on Plan Bri Uncut.

Welch said her parents think “it’s so funny” that a video of her has had the internet in shambles for much of the summer. “They know how I am,” Welch remarked.

Nonetheless, she also suggested that she looked forward to a time when her 15 minutes of fame had run out.

“I don’t really want that to be, like, my image,” Welch told LaPaglia regarding the hawk tuah craze. “I just – I don’t see that being, like, my thang, you know?

“I don’t want to be known as that.”

Like most people, I’ve never had a particularly intimate relationship with my feet. They get me places and occasionally give me blisters, and that’s about it. I regard them as roughly on a par with my elbows – un-glamorous but mainly functional. That is, until I discovered them on Wikifeet.

If you’re not already familiar with Wikifeet, think of it as an online directory of celebrity foot pictures, lovingly maintained by a volunteer army of foot fetishists. I stumbled across it in 2022 while trying to Google a photo that somebody had taken of me at a fashion industry event. There I was, or rather there were my feet: on a kink website that gets 20m views a month. I had naturally assumed that journalists were not the target focus of a celebrity fetish website, given that I have yet to star in a James Bond film or become an Estée Lauder brand ambassador. Unfortunately, it seems like anybody who does a mildly public-facing job is considered fair game, and a few podcasts and brief TV appearances were enough for me to qualify.

My profile featured photos of my feet going back nine years, on a surf holiday with friends. Then the ultimate insult: after scouring my social media accounts for any pictures of my exposed feet, the anonymous users of Wikifeet had rated me a deeply average score of 3.5 out of 5 – a whole one and a half stars less than Knives Out actor Ana de Armas. According to Wikifeet, this makes my feet merely “OK”.

Sexualising my lower digits was bad enough. To be given the equivalent of a pat on the head and be told “nice try” was an indignity too far. My inner perfectionist kicked in: “If I must have foot perverts looking at my toes, I want them to like them!” I fumed to a friend. We agreed that while I would ideally not be on Wikifeet at all, the second choice would be to have a perfect Wikifeet rating.

I have nothing against people with a thing for feet, which I roughly view in the same way I do bungee jumping: I can theoretically see why you might be into it, but it’s just not for me. But the idea of faceless people staring at my feet – maybe zooming in on my toenails, which I’ve never managed to trim in an even line – made me feel extremely self-conscious. I began cropping my feet out of photos. Slingbacks became my best friend at summer weddings. At one point, I even debated if leather strappy fishermen’s sandals were too risque. Were they basically bondage harnesses for toes?

I fully acknowledge this is ridiculous, since I have no understanding of what makes a “sexy foot” in the same way I have no idea what constitutes a “good-looking elbow”. (I’m guessing that being bunion-free doesn’t quite cut it.)

Still, I was rankled by my disappointing rating enough to post about it on Instagram. “Just OK?” I questioned in faux outrage. When I checked back a week later, my ranking had gone up to four out of five, garnering me a respectable “nice feet” tag. Clearly, some people following my Instagram were already on the site – I just hoped that it wasn’t anybody I knew in person.

Later on, I discovered that – contrary to my assumption – women actually make up 22% of Wikifeet’s audience. Call me sexist, but the idea of women appreciating my feet made me feel a little less creeped out, mainly because I presume women might be more likely to look approvingly at my feet out of sisterly spirit. After all, we were subject to the same oppressive podal beauty standards, albeit ones I still find incomprehensible.

While I know that changing my appearance to avoid the gaze of the internet’s No 1 foot fetish site is a faintly ludicrous and pointless enterprise, I now feel less embarrassed about it given that I am perfectly on trend – gen Z also hates getting their feet out, apparently, according to Vice.

It helps that a user left a highly complimentary comment that read “incredibly attractive long feet and long toes on a very funny, intelligent lady”, which at least makes me think that some of these nameless people on the internet also appreciate my personality (thank you, @Feetgrinder). Two years on, I’m able to see the funny side of being on Wikifeet. I’ve even got my eye on a pair of fishermen’s sandals for an upcoming holiday. Don’t expect me to post them online, though.

Beloved by Shakespeare and the Beatles, the blackbird and its sweet song have captured the imagination of Britons for centuries.

But now the songbird is facing decline, and the British public has been asked to contribute to a survey by the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) to find out why.

Their numbers have plummeted in Greater London and southern England at rates not seen in the rest of the UK.

It is thought the bird is suffering from Usutu virus, first detected in the UK in London in summer 2020. This disease is potentially fatal to blackbirds and is thought to be spreading across south-east England. It was first identified in South Africa and has spread across mainland Europe.

The growth of the disease has been attributed to climate breakdown; native UK mosquitoes can transmit the virus when it is warm outside.

Blackbird numbers in London fell 50% in 2020 compared with 2019. Numbers recovered somewhat, but are still about 32% lower now than in 2019. Overall, their numbers have decreased by 18% UK-wide since the 1970s due to factors including habitat loss.

Their numbers were already decreasing slightly in London before the arrival of the virus, so scientists want to know if there is anything else contributing to their decline and what can be done to help.

Dr Hugh Hanmer, a senior research ecologist with BTO, said: “Blackbird numbers have been decreasing in Greater London for some time. However, from 2020 they started declining more strongly, which coincided with the detection of Usutu virus. There is now evidence of a wider decline in southern England, not seen in other UK regions.

“The BTO survey seeks to understand why this change is happening and to identify any link to the emergence of Usutu virus. By better understanding how blackbirds use our gardens, we hope to halt the declines.”

Researchers want to see if there are similar patterns in other large cities in the UK and if there are differences between rural and urban areas.

Transmission of mosquito-borne bird diseases is likely to increase as climate breakdown accelerates, according to BTO researchers. Using this survey, they hope to find out how to slow and hopefully stop transmission, so bird populations are not wiped out as new diseases come to the UK’s shores.

It is hoped the survey will help BTO scientists better understand how blackbirds use different types of garden, how successful birds are at rearing young, which factors may influence the risk of disease transmission and how all these factors differ at different levels of urbanisation.

Blackbirds are widely loved because of their complex song, which is very mellow and almost sounds as if it is in a major key. They deliver low-pitched, flute-like verses and are able to mimic each other, and other birds.

The BTO survey is open until October.

The US has sent back 116 Chinese migrants in the first such “large charter flight” in five years, the Department of Homeland Security has said.

“We will continue to enforce our immigration laws and remove individuals without a legal basis to remain in the United States,” homeland security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in a statement.

The flight, which happened over the weekend, comes amid intense political debate ahead of the US presidential election over the issue of Chinese immigration.

The department said it was working with China to “reduce and deter irregular migration and to disrupt illicit human smuggling through expanded law enforcement efforts”. It did not respond to questions about how long the migrants had been in the US.

The department said it was working with China on more removal flights in the future but did not give a timeline for when the next one would happen.

In recent years, the US has had a difficult time returning Chinese nationals who do not have the right to stay in America because China has resisted taking them back. Last year, the US saw a surge in the number of Chinese immigrants entering the country illegally from Mexico.

US border officials arrested more than 37,000 Chinese nationals on the southern border in 2023, 10 times the number during the previous year.

Chinese migration has increasingly become a rallying cry for Republicans and former president Donald Trump who have raised suspicions about why Chinese migrants are coming to the US.

Asian advocacy organisations are concerned the rhetoric could encourage harassment of Asians, while migrants themselves have said they’re coming to escape poverty and repression.

Earlier this year, the US and China resumed cooperation on migration issues. The Chinese government has said it is firmly opposed to “all forms of illegal immigration”. In a statement in May, China’s US embassy said the country’s law enforcement was cracking down “hard on crimes that harm the tranquility of national border, and maintained a high pressure against all kinds of smuggling organisations and offenders”.

Earlier this year, a charter flight carried a small but unknown number of deportees to the north-eastern Chinese city of Shenyang, according to Thomas Cartwright of Witness at the Border, an advocacy group that tracks deportation flights.

Homeland security officials did not say how many people were on that 30 March flight, but the Gulfstream V aircraft typically has a seating capacity of 14. It also made a stop in South Korea before heading back to the US, Cartwright said.

The announcement of the weekend’s large charter flight comes amid efforts elsewhere to shut down key routes used by Chinese migrants to get to the western hemisphere.

On Monday, the US announced that it would cover the costs of repatriating migrants who enter Panama illegally, under a deal agreed with the Central American country’s new president who has vowed to shut down the treacherous Darién Gap used by people travelling north to the US.

Also, as of 1 July Ecuador in effect reinstated visas for Chinese nationals after the South American country said it had seen a worrying increase in irregular migration.

Ecuador was one of only two mainland countries in the Americas to offer visa-free entry to Chinese nationals and had become a popular starting point for Chinese migrants to then trek north to the US.