A California city has agreed to pay $900,000 to a man who was subjected to a 17-hour police interrogation in which officers pressured him to falsely confess to murdering his father, who was alive.

During the 2018 interrogation of Thomas Perez Jr by police in Fontana, a city east of Los Angeles, officers suggested they would have Perez’s dog euthanized as a result of his actions, according to a complaint and footage of the encounter. A judge said the questioning appeared to be “unconstitutional psychological torture”, and the city agreed to settle Perez’s lawsuit for $898,000, his lawyer announced this week.

The extraordinary case of a coerced false confession has sparked widespread outrage, with footage showing Perez in extreme emotional and physical distress, including as officers brought his dog in and said the animal would need to be put down due to “depression” from witnessing a murder that had not actually occurred.

The incident began on the evening of 7 August 2018 when Perez Jr’s father, Thomas Perez Sr, whom he lived with, left the house with their dog to get the mail, according to a summary of the case written by Dolly Gee, a federal judge. The dog returned a few minutes later, but Perez Sr did not; the next day, his son called the police and reported him missing.

Officer Joanna Piña, who took the call, reported Perez Jr’s demeanor as “suspicious”, claiming he seemed “distracted and unconcerned with his father’s disappearance”. She and her supervisor, Cpl Sheila Foley, went to Perez’s house, and then brought him back to the police station for questioning. Police then searched his house, where they claimed they found “visible bloodstains” and that a police dog smelled the presence of a corpse.

Jerry Steering, Perez Jr’s lawyer, said there had been no blood in the home. He provided a photo that police had submitted as evidence, which showed a small, indecipherable stain on a carpeted staircase.

Perez Jr sat for hours of initial questioning while officers obtained additional search warrants allowing them to access devices they had seized. At one point, two officers took Perez out of the station and drove him around to different locations “purportedly to investigate his father’s disappearance”, the judge wrote. The officers berated him, insisting he killed his father and did not remember it, and telling him he did not need his medication as Perez begged for medical attention.

“Where can you take us to show where Daddy is?” one said.

“We’re not going to go to the hospital, because that’s not going to help you,” another added.

The officers eventually returned to the station, where Perez Jr faced further questioning, the judge said.

Video of the interrogation revealed hours of two officers accusing him of murder while Perez was distraught and crying, said the judge, who noted Perez was “sleep deprived, mentally ill, and, significantly, undergoing symptoms of withdrawal from his psychiatric medications”. The officers at one point brought in his dog, with one of them saying: “It did happen … you killed [your father], and he’s dead … You know you killed him … You’re not being honest with yourself … How can you sit there and say you don’t know what happened, and your dog is sitting there looking at you, knowing that you killed your dad? Look at your dog. She knows, because she was walking through all the blood.”

During the interrogation, Perez Jr started pulling out his hair, hitting himself and tearing off his shirt, nearly falling to the floor, at which point the officers laughed at him and told him he was stressing his dog, the judge summarized. The footage showed him at one point lying on the floor holding on to his dog. Officers also said he would be “charged” $1m in restitution if he did not lead them to his father’s body.

Eventually, detectives falsely told Perez his father’s body had been located, that he was in the morgue with stab marks, Perez’s complaint says. Perez then falsely confessed and was left alone in the room, where video captured him trying to hang himself.

“[Perez] was berated, worn down, and pressured into a false confession after 17 hours of questioning. [The officers] did this with full awareness of his compromised mental and physical state and need for his medications,” the judge wrote. “[The officers’] conduct impacted Perez so greatly that he falsely confessed to murdering his father and attempted to commit suicide in the station.”

Perez was then transported to a hospital on an involuntary psychiatric hold and, for the first time, read his Miranda rights indicating he had a right to remain silent, the judge said. That night, one of the detectives received a call from Perez Sr’s daughter, who confirmed that her father had been located and was alive.

Steering, Perez Jr’s lawyer, said Perez Sr had left their home to visit a friend, which is why he had not returned, and that his daughter informed the police that he was at the airport on his way to visit her in northern California. Steering said police did not, however, inform Perez Jr that his father was alive and instead kept him isolated in a psychiatric hold for three days while he believed both his dog and father had been killed.

Steering said detectives took the dog to a pound, but that Perez Jr was eventually able to track him down due to the dog’s chip and rescue him.

Perez Jr’s ordeal and the settlement were first reported by the Southern California News Group.

Fontana police spokespersons and lawyers for the city did not respond to inquiries on Friday and have not said whether any officers faced disciplinary action. Lawyers for officers David Janusz and Jeremey Hale, who conducted parts of the the interrogation, did not respond to inquiries. A third officer involved in the interrogation, Kyle Guthrie, who was not a named as a defendant, could not be reached.

“Between mentally torturing a false confession out of Tom Perez, concealing from him that his father was alive and well, and confining him in the psych ward because they made him suicidal, in my 40 years of suing the police I have never seen that level of deliberate cruelty by the police,” Steering said in a statement.

In an interview, the lawyer said watching the footage laid bare how officers can force people to make false confessions: “This case shows that if the police are skilled enough, and they grill you hard enough, they can get anybody to confess to anything.”

Joe Biden’s re-election campaign has released a high-profile new video ad they are calling Snapped, which attacks Donald Trump as a candidate who will stop at nothing to grab power again.

The aggressive, 30-second spot is voiced by an old Hollywood foe of the former president, the actor Robert De Niro, and will be distributed nationally.

Against a backdrop of dramatic orchestral music and news images from Trump’s presidency, the De Niro voiceover begins: “From midnight tweets, to drinking bleach, to teargassing citizens and staging a photo-op, we knew Trump was out of control when he was president, and then he lost the 2020 election and snapped.”

In relevant photographs, Trump is shown on his phone on Air Force One and at the podium in the White House briefing room in a notorious press conference in 2020 when he suggested that being treated internally with bleach might combat Covid-19. Then he is shown posing with a Bible outside what’s known as the Church of the Presidents, near the White House, after nearby demonstrations against racial injustice and police brutality, following the murder of George Floyd in May, 2020, had been violently cleared by the authorities.

Then it goes on to show the deadly attack on the US Capitol on 6 January 2021, when extremist supporters of Trump, encouraged by the then president, broke into US congressional chambers to try, ultimately in vain, to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s election victory over him.

De Niro continues that Trump was “desperately trying to hold on to power”. Then adds: “Now he’s running again, this time threatening to be a dictator, to terminate the constitution.”

Footage of Trump shows him warning there will be a “bloodbath” if he does not win in 2024, and additional images showing a mob carrying pro-Trump and election-denying flags clashing with police.

“Trump wants revenge and he’ll stop at nothing to get it,” the voice of De Niro continues.

The US president then says in his voiceover: “I’m Joe Biden and I approve this message”. The closing image is Biden walking towards a doorway and saluting the troops that guard him.

Footage from an elite German party island of people singing a Nazi slogan in place of the lyrics of a disco hit has gone viral and triggered a wave of outrage.

The film shows a group on Sylt in North Frisia drinking and dancing together to the 2001 song L’amour Toujours by the Italian musician Gigi D’Agostino. Some in the group sing an old Nazi slogan “Germany for the Germans – foreigners out” in place of the song’s apolitical lyrics.

Among the participants, who are dressed casually and appear to be holding glasses of Aperol, rosé, and champagne, was one man dressed in an open-necked white shirt who lifts his right arm in an apparent Nazi salute as he imitates the Hitler moustache by putting two fingers above his upper lip.

Both the slogan and the salute are illegal in Germany.

The film appears to have been made during the recent Whitsun bank holiday weekend by a young woman who is herself singing into the camera.

Police in the state of Schleswig-Holstein said they were “checking the film for criminally relevant” contents.

The slogan “Germany for the Germans – foreigners out” is a chant originating in the 19th century that was used by the Nazi leader Adolf Hitler and has also been deployed as an election slogan by the far-right National Democratic party.

The owners of Pony, a fashionable bar and club on Sylt’s Strönwai street outside which the film was shot, are cooperating with the police. In an Instagram post they said they were “deeply shocked” and distanced themselves “from any type of racism or discrimination”.

Tim Becker, a co-owner of Pony, later told the daily TAZ that footage from CCTV cameras newly installed outside the club had been compared with the 14-second online video and the same group was identified. Sound from the video showed only about five guests had been singing the anti-foreigner version, while the others were singing the original, he said.

“You can hear that very clearly and that was a relief to us,” he said.

He said neither he nor the club’s DJs had been aware that the D’Agostino hit, which he said was popular throughout Europe, had been in effect hijacked by the far right. “Often it’s just played briefly, in order to stoke up the mood. We didn’t know that the song was used by the far right … We will never play it again,” he said.

In the Instagram post, Pony’s owners wrote that anyone who “recognises themselves on this video … will be barred from our premises”. Becker urged anyone who knew who the individuals were “to report them to us or the police”.

Partygoers at Pony, situated on the island’s Whisky Mile in the town of Kampen, had reportedly paid €150 (£128) for entry to the summer season opening party at which the incident took place. According to Pony, about 500 people attended.

The Bavarian broadcaster BR recently reported that the Nazi version of L’amour Toujours had become popular at public gatherings and discos across Germany, including at a disco in Greding in January that took place after a party conference of the far-right Alternative für Deutschland. The disco was attended by MPs and members of the party, as well as members of the AfD’s youth wing, who allegedly joined in singing the Nazi version.

Reacting to the video, the Social Democrat party member Sawsan Chebli posted on X: “‘Germany for the Germans. Foreigners out. Foreigners out.’ Location: Sylt. And they feel so confident.”

Dunja Hayali, a prominent news anchor, wrote on the same platform: “With Hitler moustaches and champagne. But no ‘foreigners’. #Sylt 2024.”

Sylt is known as the go-to holiday island for Germany’s rich and famous. It is where the finance minister and chief of the pro-business Free Democratic party, Christian Lindner, married his partner in July 2022.

Schleswig-Holstein police said in a statement on X: “A video of people celebrating on #Sylt is currently circulating on social media. This video is known to us and is being checked for criminally relevant content. We would like to thank you for the numerous pieces of information that we have forwarded to the responsible authority.”

Members of the state government of Schleswig-Holstein also expressed outrage. The state’s minister with responsibility for integration, Aminata Touré of the Greens, told the news network RND: “This is not some stupid youthful prank, but the worst sort of Nazi caterwauling by adults, on a public stage. Despicable and nauseating. They should be ashamed of themselves. Criminal proceedings should now follow.”

The daughter and son-in-law of a Republican politician are among three US missionaries who have reportedly been killed by gang members in Haiti as it emerged that the long-awaited deployment of an multinational security force tasked with rescuing the Caribbean country from months of bloodshed had been delayed.

Ben Baker, a Republican state representative from Missouri, announced the news of the couple’s murder on Facebook late on Thursday, writing: “My heart is broken in a thousand pieces. I’ve never felt this kind of pain.”

Baker said his daughter Natalie Lloyd and her husband, Davy – both missionaries in Haiti – “were attacked by gangs this evening and were both killed. They went to Heaven together.”

Their group, Missions in Haiti Inc, said the couple and another member of the group named only as Jude had been “ambushed by a gang of 3 trucks full of guys” while leaving church and were “shot and killed” at about 9pm on Thursday. “We all are devastated,” the group posted on Facebook.

The killings came just hours after Joe Biden voiced optimism that Haiti’s security crisis – which began spiraling out of control in late February after a coordinated gang insurrection – could soon be solved with the arrival of a 2,500-strong Kenya-led multinational policing force.

“We’re not talking about a thousand-person army that is made up of trained [personnel],” Biden said of the Haitian gangs who have plunged the country into mayhem and forced the country’s previous prime minister, Ariel Henry, from power. “This is a crisis that is able to be dealt with.”

The first Kenyan members of that force were supposed to land in Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince, this week to spearhead the operation, with their arrival timed to coincide with a state visit the Kenyan president, William Ruto, is making to the US.

Speaking alongside Biden on Thursday, Ruto also voiced confidence that the US-backed policing mission could “break the back of the gangs and the criminals that have visited untold suffering” on Haiti since the start of a coordinated criminal insurrection in late February. Armed criminals would be dealt with “firmly, decisively [and] within the parameters of the law,” Ruto vowed.

But the first contingent of Kenyan officers did not arrive as planned this week, with confusion surrounding the reasons for the postponement.

One source with knowledge of the mission told Reuters the Kenyan officers were given no explanation for the last-minute delay but ordered to remain on standby. A second source said “conditions were not in place in Port-au-Prince to receive the officers”.

Other sources in Kenya’s interior ministry told the Geneva-based civil society group Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime that an advance team sent by Kenya had found Haiti “ill-prepared for the deployment”.

Some observers suspect the delay could be related to security concerns over giving the heavily armed gangs advance warning of the mission’s arrival – something which might allow criminals to launch surprise attacks on incoming planes.

Diego Da Rin, a Haiti specialist from the International Crisis Group, said that if and when it arrived, the multinational force would face a massive task trying to subdue an estimated 5,000 gang members who control more than 80% of the capital.

“The gangs have never controlled so much territory in Haiti. They have expanded their armies and their arsenals and they have established strongholds in areas the police have not been able to access, sometimes for years,” he said.

In recent days, armed groups have intensified their attacks, completely or partly demolishing at least four police stations in a striking show of strength seemingly designed to coincide with the anticipated arrival of Kenyan forces.

“That’s a message and it is not a veiled message … The message is: ‘Don’t come here, because if you come … you will be treated as invaders and enemies’,” Da Rin said.

Documentary-maker Morgan Spurlock, the director of films including Super Size Me and Where in the World Is Osama Bin Laden? died on Thursday aged 53.

His family announced in a statement that he “passed away peacefully surrounded by family and friends on May 23, 2024, in New York from complications of cancer.”

His brother Craig Spurlock said: “It was a sad day, as we said goodbye to my brother Morgan. Morgan gave so much through his art, ideas, and generosity. The world has lost a true creative genius and a special man. I am so proud to have worked together with him.”

More details soon.

Scientists are racing against the clock to save the world’s orchids by discovering the soil fungi they need to thrive, breeding them and then, in a first for conservation, transplanting them into orchid habitats.

Among the showy blooms at Chelsea flower show this week was a moss-covered exhibit, sprouting from which were the types of rare, native flowers one does not normally see at horticultural exhibits.

Scientists from botanic gardens in the UK and the US set up a stand at the flower show to display the rare and threatened orchids from around the world and raise awareness of their plight. It showcases the tiny, delicate flowers seen in the meadows of the UK alongside the larger, gaudier species from India and North America.

Disappearing orchids are often one of the first signs of the effects of climate breakdown on soil microbiology and pollinator abundance, as they are so sensitive and need such specific conditions to grow.

Melissa McCormick, a researcher at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center in the US, explained: “They need certain fungi to grow, they have to identify with the underground habitat, then they also need specific pollinators to set seed. So they’re taking in all these different things that are changing above ground and below ground, and they become an indicator of the quality of the environment.”

Orchids in some parts of the world have declined by 50%, which has been linked to climate breakdown. A recent report from Kew Gardens found that orchids are among the plants that are most under threat of decline. If scientists do not act fast to protect them, they could disappear forever.

“We’re working very hard to identify the other species that orchids need and to incorporate these into our conservation methods so we can more easily conserve orchids,” McCormick said.

The research team is in the process of identifying, growing and transplanting the soil fungus: “We go in and we identify the fungi that they need, we grow the fungi so that it can be used for conservation efforts. We have living fungal collections at the Smithsonian for this purpose.”

However, it is not a simple task, as orchids even of the same species require different soil biology depending on where they are growing, she said: “We want to make sure we have an idea of the fungi different orchids need in different parts of the range, so we’re not transplanting inappropriate fungi with the orchids. So if they need one fungus up here and a different fungus down further south, we want to make sure that we have both of those fungi so that if the orchids are being transplanted into a northern habitat, they have the fungus that works with them up north, and the same in the south.”

McCormick added that she and the team had done a “little bit” of transplanting in North America so far. She said: “We are in the middle of it, we’ve just started a big effort called native orchid propagation for sustainability, where we are working to develop all of the propagation protocols that are needed to grow orchids both in garden setting but also to reintroduce them to habitats where they’ve perhaps been lost or to supplement populations that exist already.”

Peter Zale, who leads the orchid research programme at Longwood Gardens in Pennsylvania, said horticulturalists had a huge part to play in the conservation of orchids and other rare plants.

He said: “Orchids are the largest family of flowering plants on the planet, and roughly half of them are conservation concerns. So everywhere they occur, they’re rare. And I think part of the reason we’re doing the display here is a recognition that horticulture has a role to play in conservation. A lot of conservation is about saving the habitat. But I think this is a perfect marriage of how we can grow plants and sort of use the horticultural end of it to really show what can be done for conservation.”

This is what he does in the botanic gardens, growing orchids and finding out their perfect conditions so they can be put back in the wild if necessary: “We develop a propagation database to grow them from seed and we’re developing ex situ collections where learn how to propagate, learn how to grow them or grow them at our garden. We keep a genetic repository, so maybe right now they don’t need restoration in the wild, but it’s possible that they could in the future, and so having them all backed up as living plants, as seeds, as fungal cultures, as different things, really completes the story.”

The scientists are calling for people to learn how to identify, report and protect the orchids near where they live.

Johanna Hutchins, orchid floriculturist at the Chicago Botanic Garden, said: “Most people, when they think of orchids, they think of the more tropical ones they see at the checkout in the grocery store. I’m from Chicago, we have between 40 and 50 species, similar to in the UK, but people just don’t know about them. If we raise awareness, people will be able to appreciate and protect what they have growing near them. But if people do want to see the orchids, they should go and take pictures, not trample the earth around them, be respectful and definitely do not take them from the habitat.”

A small North Yorkshire town has been found to have the highest concentration of “forever chemicals” in the UK, it can be revealed.

The market town of Bentham, which is home to 3,000 people and set on the banks of the River Wenning, is also home to the Angus International Safety Group – locally known as Angus Fire – which, since the 1970s, has been producing firefighting foams containing PFAS at a factory near the town centre.

PFAS, short for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances and commonly known as forever chemicals owing to their persistence in the environment, are a family of about 10,000 chemicals that have been linked to a wide range of serious illnesses, including certain cancers. They are used in a huge range of consumer products, from frying pans to waterproof coats, but one of their most prolific uses is in firefighting foams.

Angus Fire

The firm has not breached any rules in terms of the PFAS it has produced or tested at its Bentham site, and it stopped testing PFAS foams there in 2022 as the industry prepares for the banning of PFAS foams containing the known carcinogen PFOA in 2025.

However, data obtained by the Ends Report under a series of freedom of information requests and shared with the Guardian, has revealed for the first time that the highest known levels of PFAS contamination in the UK have been recorded in the groundwater on the firm’s Bentham site. Among these chemicals are PFOA and PFOS – forever chemicals with known human health impacts.

Angus Fire has also repeatedly breached its environmental permits, with one permit breached 20 times in the past 10 years. Last year, the firm was warned by the Environment Agency that its permit could be suspended after the regulator found unpermitted discharges of PFAS to the environment in Bentham.

Under its permit, the firm is required to test the soil and groundwater on the site. The results of this testing, obtained by the Ends Report, show that in 2008 the groundwater samples recorded a PFAS sum of 1,199,000 ng/l.

Dr Patrick Byrne, a reader in hydrology and environmental pollution at Liverpool John Moores University, said these were the “highest concentrations of total PFAS that I have ever come across in any environment in England”.

Byrne said it was “particularly concerning” that these samples were from groundwater, rather than raw effluent coming directly from the foam production.

Within this total sum of PFAS was 18,100 ng/l of PFOA and 36,100 ng/l of PFOS. PFOA is categorised as a class one carcinogen, and both substances are now banned.

To put these numbers in context, the government’s environmental quality standard for PFOS – which is intended to protect waters from the harmful effects of contaminants – is 0.65 ng/l – 55,538 times lower than that recorded on the Angus Fire site.

In 2010, groundwater sampling recorded 47,200 ng/l of total PFAS, and 63,400 ng/l was recorded in 2018.

On a separate occasion in 2018, two soil samples were found to have PFOS concentrations of 359,000 ng/kg and 124,000 ng/kg. Samples taken elsewhere for comparison had a PFOS concentration of 300 ng/kg.

These samples were all taken from near Angus Fire’s wastewater lagoons, which until 2020 received contaminated runoff from the PFAS firefighting testing.

The lagoons are located just off a residential street, metres away from a row of terrace houses.

Residents said foams from the test site used to make their way on to this street. One woman, who lived on it from 1997 to 2016, said her children used to play in the foam.

As the public has become increasingly aware of the danger posed by PFAS chemicals, pressure has mounted on local and public authorities to take action to minimise any harm posed to people.

Water companies test for PFAS in public drinking supplies, but private water supplies are not governed in the same way, with local authorities in charge of regulating them.

In response to concerns raised by a member of the public about drinking water contamination in Lancaster, separate documents obtained for this investigation have revealed that in March last year, Lancaster city council, which neighbours North Yorkshire council, where Bentham is located, launched a “district-wide assessment” of all private drinking water supplies within its remit.

The council said it subsequently took water samples from two private supplies at residences in Tatham, Lancaster, but “did not find any PFAS at these locations”.

An Environment Agency spokesperson said: “We are currently reviewing Angus Fire’s environmental permit in relation to PFAS. We will continue to assess any risks associated with the historic presence of these chemicals, including potential contamination.”

An Angus Fire spokesperson said: “We no longer manufacture or test any PFAS-containing foam products at Bentham, or anywhere else in the world. The business is focused on developing environmentally-friendly products, including JetFoam, the world’s first ever fluorine-free firefighting foam capable of extinguishing aviation fuels.

“We have played a significant role in our local community in North Yorkshire for 100 years, and it’s hugely important for us to maintain our positive relationships with the people of Bentham, and to play a responsible role in village life. As Bentham’s biggest employer, we actively address all concerns related to local environmental impact and compliance. We are committed to continuous improvement in our operations, transparency, and working collaboratively with regulatory bodies to protect public health and the environment.”

The head of the Environment Agency has admitted that freedom of information requests have been buried by the regulator because the truth about the environment in England is “embarrassing”.

Philip Duffy, the body’s chief executive, told an audience at the UK River Summit in Morden, south London, this week that his officials were “worried about revealing the true state of what is going on” with regards to the state of the environment.

The regulator holds information including about pollution, the state of England’s waterways, the meetings its bosses have with water company CEOs, and other data about the state of nature in the country.

The Information Commissioner’s Office, which oversees the law on the Freedom of Information Act, has warned the regulator that the public have a right to have their requests answered and that transparency should be taken seriously.

An ICO spokesperson said: “People have the legal right to promptly receive information they’re entitled to and we take action when they don’t. We’ve been clear that public sector leaders should take transparency seriously and see the benefits it brings, including scrutiny of processes and approaches that can then benefit from improvement.”

Under the act, public bodies legally have to answer information requests, and disclosure of information should be the default – in other words, information should be kept private only when there is a good reason, which is permitted by the act.

Duffy said: “I see these letters and these FOI requests and I’ve got great volumes of them, and I see local officers going through quite a contorted processes to not to answer when they know, often, the answer but it’s embarrassing.

“They do it because they are frightened. They are worried about revealing the true state of what’s going on, they’re worried about reaction from NGOs and others, and possibly from the government, about the facts of the situation. And they’re often working at a local level but in a very nationally charged political environment, which is very difficult for them.”

Duffy suggested nature charities were asking questions in a manner that made it harder for Environment Agency staff to respond: “I think the first step there is to understand how hard that is for many of my staff, when they’re faced with often very expert NGOs who are asking very good questions – the right questions ultimately – but [it’s about] how they lower that tone a bit, and manage it.”

Under the FOI Act all requests have to be treated equally, whether they are made by a member of the public, an NGO or a journalist.

Last year, the Environment Agency was served with an enforcement notice by the ICO because of evidence seen by the commissioner about its performance in relation to its statutory duties under the FOI Act.

An Environment Agency spokesperson said: “Philip is completely committed to the highest standards of transparency, as he repeatedly stressed at the River Summit. He wants to make more EA data readily available, and we are already looking at how this can be achieved. He was referring to the concern that some staff working on water feel due to the current tone of the debate, which is often not constructive. This does not impact the process of releasing the information.”