The billionaire rightwing media mogul Rupert Murdoch has married for the fifth time, this time to retired molecular biologist Elena Zhukova.

The 93-year-old married 67-year-old Zhukova on Sunday at his Moraga vineyard in California. Pictures released by the Sun, a Murdoch-owned British tabloid newspaper, showed the couple smiling next to each other as Murdoch wore a yellow tie while Zhukova wore a long-sleeve white dress.

Murdoch’s fifth wedding comes a little over a year after reports emerged last April of him dating Zhukova four months after he ended his two-week long engagement to Ann Lesley Smith, a 67-year-old conservative radio host.

Murdoch met Zhukova through a large family gathering hosted by his third ex-wife, Wendi Deng, to whom he was married for 14 years before their divorce in 2013.

Her 42-year-old daughter, Dasha Zhukova, is a Russian-American art collector and philanthropist who was previously married to Roman Abramovich, a Russian oligarch and former owner of the Premier League football club Chelsea.

Murdoch divorced his fourth wife, 67-year old actress and model Jerry Hall, in 2022. Hall was apparently waiting to meet Murdoch at their Oxfordshire home when she received an email from him which allegedly said, “Jerry, sadly I’ve decided to call an end to our marriage … We have certainly had some good times, but I have much to do. My New York lawyer will be contacting yours immediately.”

Last September, following a seven-decade career of helming a media empire, Murdoch stepped down as chair of Fox and News Corp.

Murdoch’s publicly traded and New York-based company News Corp owns hundreds of local, national and international digital news outlets including the Wall Street Journal, Fox News and Sky News Australia, as well as the book publisher HarperCollins.

According to Forbes, Murdoch’s net worth is approximately $19.5bn.

Donald Trump risks being a “loser president” if he wins November’s election and imposes a bad peace deal on Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said, saying it would mean the end of the US as a global “player”.

In an interview with the Guardian in Kyiv, Zelenskiy said he had “no strategy yet” for what to do if Trump returned to the White House, and that the former British prime minister Boris Johnson had approached him on his behalf.

If Trump beats Joe Biden, he is widely expected to cut off US military support to Ukraine. Last year Trump boasted he could end the war in “24 hours”.

Trump’s aides have previously sketched out a possible plan that would involve giving Ukraine’s eastern regions to Russia, as well as Crimea. But Zelenskiy made clear that “Ukrainians would not put up with that”. Nor would they accept a Russian “ultimatum” that forced Ukraine to abandon integration with Europe and future membership of Nato, he said.

Zelenskiy acknowledged that a re-elected Trump could, if he really wanted to, impose a crushing military defeat on Ukraine. He could cut off “support, weapons and money”, and even “make deals” with Kyiv’s partners so they stop deliveries of vital arms.

“Ukraine, barehanded, without weapons, will not be able to fight a multimillion [Russian] army,” Zelenskiy told the Guardian.

Speaking inside his presidential headquarters, he said he thought this scenario was unlikely. But he said if it happened there would be grave consequences for the US’s standing in the world – as well as for Trump personally. “Does he want to become a loser president? Do you understand what can happen?” Zelenskiy said.

He predicted that Vladimir Putin would violate any Trump-brokered deal. “A ceasefire is a trap,” he said. After a pause Putin would “go further”, humiliating Trump and making him look “very weak” in the eyes of the world, he said.

Zelenskiy continued: “This is not about him [Trump], as a person but about the institutions of the United States. They will become very weak. The US will not be the leader of the world any more. Yes, it will be powerful, first of all, in the domestic economy because it has a powerful economy without a doubt. But in terms of international influence it will be equal to zero.”

Realising that Washington was no longer “a player”, other mostly authoritarian countries and leaders would “come into the arena” and emulate Putin’s aggressive “approach”, Zelenskiy suggested.

And this would ultimately end in global disaster: “The beginning of what everyone is so afraid to talk about. This is reality. And this is the real third world war.”

Asked whether Johnson had spoken to Trump on Ukraine’s behalf, Zelenskiy said: “I think he tried, and I think he spoke to him. I think so, yes, as far as I know.”

He added: “I am sorry that I am using Boris as an instrument.”

The initiative came as Kyiv lobbied pro-Trump Republicans in Congress and tried to persuade them to drop their opposition to Ukraine aid. The $61bn military aid package passed in April after a six-month delay.

Zelenskiy made his comments a day before a New York jury on Thursday convicted Trump of all 34 counts of falsifying business records. The verdict in the hush-money trial made him the first former president to be found guilty of felony crimes in the US’s near 250-year history.

In 2019, as president, Trump rang Zelenskiy and asked him to investigate his election rival Biden and Biden’s son Hunter. If Zelenskiy failed to find dirt on Hunter Biden, US security assistance to Ukraine would be withheld, Trump suggested, according to a leak of the call. The scandal led to Trump’s first impeachment.

Zelenskiy said he had invited Trump to visit Ukraine. “I want to talk to him openly. I want him to come and see the war for himself. And then to talk to him. I think he would need it to understand the situation better,” he said.

Zelenskiy said he understood that Trump “knows” Putin, based on the former president’s own “statements”. The pair have met at diplomatic summits. Trump has previously called Russia’s leader “a genius” and described his 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine as “pretty savvy”.

Communicating with Putin was not the same as knowing him, Zelenskiy said, adding that to understand him better Trump should “see the results of what he brought to Ukraine” – a reference to the destruction of towns and cities, murders of civilians and the daily bombardment from Russian missiles.

Volodomyr Zelenskiy has accused China of discouraging other countries from attending a peace summit in Switzerland later this month that is aimed at bringing peace to war-ravaged Ukraine.

Speaking at Asia’s biggest security conference, the Shangri-La Dialogue, in Singapore, the Ukrainian president sought to rally support among Asia-Pacific nations, urging them to attend the Swiss meeting.

“The world has to be resilient, it needs to be strong, it has to pressure Russia,” Zelenskiy said. “There is no other way to stop Putin – only diplomatic isolation, a strong Ukrainian military and for all the countries of the world to not balance between Ukraine and Russia but to defend international justice and law.”

Zelenskiy said he was “disappointed” some world leaders had not yet confirmed attendance.

Russia was seeking to undermine the summit by warning countries not to attend and threatening a blockade of agricultural goods and food products, he said.

He later told media that China had supported such efforts to deter leaders from participating. “Regrettably, Russia, using Chinese influence on the region, using Chinese diplomats also, does everything to disrupt the peace summit. It is unfortunate that such a big, independent, powerful country as China is an instrument in the hands of Putin,” he said.

Since a phone call between Zelenskiy and the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, one year ago, Ukraine had sought meetings with Chinese officials at all levels, he said, but this had not been granted. He had not met Chinese officials despite their presence in Singapore.

Earlier on Sunday, the Chinese defence minister, Dong Jun, told attendees of the Shangri-La Dialogue his country had “been promoting peace talks with a responsible attitude”. “We have never provided weapons to either party of the conflict. We have put stricter control on the export of dual use items and have never done anything to fan the flames. We stand firmly on the side of peace and dialogue,” Dong said.

But Zelenskiy said: “With China’s support to Russia, the war will last longer and that is bad for the whole world. You cannot say that we accept sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine and at the same time be on the side of the country that violates the principles of the UN charter and the principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine.”

Zelenskiy said on X he had met the US defence secretary, Lloyd Austin, on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue on Sunday morning. “We discussed the key issues: the defence needs of our country, bolstering Ukraine’s air defence system, the F-16 coalition, and drafting of a bilateral security agreement,” he said.

He said he was grateful to Joe Biden for his decision to allow Ukraine to use US-supplied weapons against targets in Russia. However, in comments to media he said that this was not enough as Ukraine still did not have the systems or permissions to target airfields from which Russia was “permanently firing”.

Weeds are undergoing a cultural makeover. Historically vilified as a threat in a nation of impeccable lawns, they are finally being embraced by gardeners, from front gardens to the Chelsea flower show.

The conservation charity Plantlife, which runs the annual No Mow May campaign encouraging gardeners to leave their lawns to grow for a month, said 46% of more than 2,000 people it surveyed would not mow more than once in May, with 40 local councils also pledging to leave wild spaces untended .

A summer-long exhibition at the Royal Horticultural Society’s Wisley garden in Surrey opened last month, celebrating William Robinson, a pioneering advocate of wild gardens.

After last year’s Chelsea flower show, in which weeds were declared “hero plants”, this year saw cow parsley and forget-me-nots, flowers that typically grow wild, win best in show in Ula Maria’s forest bathing garden.

Now a new book focuses on the beauty of these previously unwelcome plants.

Artist and writer Anna Chapman Parker spent a year studying the weeds that grew near her house in Berwick-upon-Tweed, Northumberland, writing and illustrating Understorey: A Year Among Weeds, which is published this week.

Chapman Parker said her year observing weeds everywhere she went – on the school run, walking her dog or out shopping – had allowed her to look at nature in a new light.

“Once you tune into what’s going on with these plants, the most unprepossessing walk becomes something really interesting and fresh,” she said. “One of the reasons I found this project so great was finding newness and freshness in that very routine, everyday rhythm.”

Chapman Parker’s work on Understorey began about five years ago, when, with two young children, she found she was missing time in her studio. She would take a sketchbook outside with her, drawing whenever she had a chance while her children were playing. “I wasn’t really thinking about what I was drawing,” she said. But often it was weeds.

While visiting the National Gallery in London, she had a lightbulb moment looking at Piero della Francesca’s The Baptism of Christ. Weeds were everywhere, “dotted all over the dry ochre earth, emerging from cracks in every rock,” she writes in the book. “No longer accidental green stuff that didn’t matter: they were a living constancy, a kind of wild connective tissue across time and place. I wanted to know them better.”

Armed with plant-identification apps and a copy of Wild Flowers of Britain by the photographer and botanist Roger Phillips, Chapman Parker learned about as many weeds as she could, making line drawings of them for the book, which spans a full year, showing the natural cycle of plants.

Zoe Claymore, an award-winning garden designer, said that the rehabilitation of weeds in our gardens had come as awareness grew of the climate crisis. “As our society becomes increasingly aware of the climate and biodiversity challenges we face, we are placing greater value on the ‘wild’,” she said. “This awareness drives us to take action in the spaces we can control, such as our gardens … We are reframing what a weed is in response to the climate challenges and biodiversity loss we are facing.”

As gardeners face increasingly volatile and unusual weather, weeds can also be useful, Claymore said. “As gardening requires more resilient plants – and we know the old set of ‘weeds’ are resilient by nature – they become more attractive. I think there is a push to recognise these robust plants and the role they can play.”

Take the groundsel, for example. One of the most widely distributed plants in the world, each specimen bears more than 1,000 seeds, which are resistant to frost, can self-pollinate and produce three generations in a year. “It’s an incredibly impressive plant,” said Chapman Parker.

Weeds are ecologically vital too. Since the second world war, the UK has lost 97% of its wildflower meadows. While most weeds would not be described as wildflowers, they would have grown in the meadows we have lost. Full wildflower meadows are harder to establish, but spaces given over to weeds can benefit pollinators and other insects, providing habitats and shelter for all kinds of animals, as well as capturing carbon.

Weeds, Chapman Parker said, have fantastic names. Groundsel is known as old-man-in-the-spring and there is also shepherd’s purse and ivy-leaved toadflax. Their names highlight a previous, closer relationship we once had with wild plants: we fed sow thistles to lactating pigs and chickweed to hens. Feverfew was a treatment for fevers and those with the “wort” suffix had medicinal uses.

Some weeds – notably the invasive Japanese knotweed – cause havoc or reduce biodiversity by overshadowing other species. But a few pots by the front door could harbour seeds blown on the wind or secreted by a bird.

“That happenstance element, or behaviour, of weeds, it’s so much more interesting than going along to the garden centre and chucking in a few bedding plants,” said Chapman Parker. “It’s really lovely.”

She described her garden as having “lapsed” since she took a keen interest in weeds, although she said she is “not a total rewilding romantic”. “Sometimes people say: ‘Don’t use the word “weed”, it’s negative.’ I think it’s more interesting to reclaim the word as neutral or potentially positive.

“The international conversation around ecology is pretty dark, and most of us feel incredibly powerless and despondent about it. I think these plants are a real signal of hope.”

It is a land of mire, mist and midges that could soon be awarded a special status among the planet’s wild habitats. In a few weeks, Unesco is set to announce its decision on an application to allow the Flow Country in north Scotland to become a world heritage site.

Such a designation is only given to places of special cultural, historical or scientific significance and would put this remote region of perpetual dampness on the same standing as the Great Barrier Reef, the Grand Canyon and the Pyramids.

The Flow Country straddles Caithness and Sutherland in the most northerly part of the British Isles and is the largest area of blanket bog in the world. Covering 4,000 sq km, it is also home to a remarkable range of wildlife that includes the black-throated diver, golden plover, greenshank, golden eagle, merlin and short-eared owl, as well as otters and water voles.

The land is carpeted with sphagnum moss that covers layers of peat that can reach down to depths of 10 metres, enough to bury a double decker bus, while the local plant life includes sundews, which use their sticky tentacles to feed on insects.

It is a remarkable habitat which was the subject of a formal request made last year by a partnership including the RSPB, NatureScot and the Highland Council to have the bogs, pools, lochs and hills of the Flow Country designated a world heritage site, a place of outstanding international importance that deserves ­special protection. Unesco has said that, after more than a year’s deliberation, it is ready to give its formal decision on the application in the next few weeks.

“There are many other, larger areas of peatland in the world – in Siberia, for example – but blanket bog is special,” said Roxane Anderson, professor of peatland science at the University of the Highlands and Islands, which is also involved in the Unesco bid. “Blanket bog can cover very steep slopes, unlike other types of peatland, and can envelop the landscape in a very complex mosaic. It is also very thick, not so much a blanket as a quilt that coats the entire terrain.”

As to the factors that sustain ­blanket bog, Anderson is clear. “It’s the rain and the fog. If you have peat and the weather gets warm and dry, it will dry, crack and fall away in steep areas. But in the Flow Country it never gets dry or hot, so the bog here remains intact, even on sharp inclines.”

The blanket bogs of Caithness and Sutherland have been growing for an astonishingly long time, since the last glaciers retreated from the north of Scotland more than 10,000 years ago. Over this time, they have played a critical role in storing carbon. The Flow Country covers a total of almost one million acres of land and stores more than 400m tonnes of carbon in its blanket bog, scientists have calculated. However, there is a downside to this mix of peatland and peace: midges. The Flow Country is rated as one of the worst places in Scotland for that eternal curse of Caledonia, Culicoides impunctatus. Midges appear as maddening clouds of biting bugs that will attack humans, livestock and pets and they thrive in the region’s boggy, acidic ground which provides a perfect environment for breeding.

The region is also remarkable because it provides an extensive area of wild land and solitude on the other­wise highly developed and densely populated British islands. This desolation was enhanced during the clearances of the 18th and 19th centuries, when many Highlanders were forcibly evicted from their homes in the wake of the failed uprising by the Jacobites. Vast tracts of the north of Scotland were depopulated as a result.

Just what the Flow Country will gain if it is made a world heritage site remains to be seen, however. “At present, tourists take the North Coast 500 route, a 500-mile circuit of roads that loop round the north of Scotland completely skirting the Flow Country,” said Frances Gunn, chair of the Flow Country World Heritage Project steering group. “We hope that, in future, if they see signs telling them they are passing a world heritage site, they might take a detour and visit us.”

A key site to appreciate the ­wonders of the Flow Country is the RSPB reserve at Forsinard which covers more than 21,000 hectares and provides sights of golden plover, dunlin, greenshank, hen harrier, skylark and meadow pipit. “It provides a perfect view of the glories of the Flow Country,” said the RSPB’s Milly Revill Hayward.

Gunn, who has lived in the area all her life, recalls the onset of summer when she was young. Families would set off to cut peat from land at the edge of the main part of the Flow Country. “It was a great social occasion that could last a long time, depending on the weather. For us, peat was a key source of energy. Today, we now realise that peat helps provide us with protection against ­climate change.”

From her house, Gunn has a clear view of the peatlands of the Flow Country, while from the other side of her home, in Tongue, she can ­witness the creation of another remarkable local project: the Sutherland Space Port which is being constructed on the nearby A’ Mhòine peninsula. In the near future, rockets fired northwards from the port, over the open seas, will carry satellites into orbits that will sweep over the poles and allow them to monitor the Earth below.

“It’s a neat juxtaposition,” said Gunn. “On one side, we will be working to protect the past in our neighbourhood and preserve the Flow Country. On the other, we will be launching space probes that will allow us to survey the state of the environment in every other part of the globe.”

Deontay Wilder’s career as an elite heavyweight came to a crashing end. For Daniel Dubois, the journey into the top flight is only just beginning. And the unceasing, unsentimental round-and-round of boxing’s glamour division turned in dramatic fashion early Sunday morning in the an-Nafud desert.

Wilder, who held the WBC’s version of the heavyweight title from 2015 through 2020, suffered a brutal fifth-round knockout at the hands of Zhilei Zhang in the main event of a joint Matchroom-Queenbury card that pitted the stables of British boxing’s leading promoters against one another.

The disastrous defeat marked the American’s fourth loss in his past five outings and the likely terminus for the 38-year-old fighter widely regarded as boxing’s biggest puncher, who had strongly hinted at retirement in the run-up to the crossroads fight at Riyadh’s Kingdom Arena.

“I have to pay attention to his right hand, but I successfully took his right hand away,” Zhang said through a translator. “I block a few punches, but hell yeah. He punches hard. I give him a lot of respect. He’s a heavy puncher.”

Zhang, the 41-year-old from China’s Henan province based in the suburbs of Newark, New Jersey, was coming off a December setback against Joseph Parker where he lost on points despite scoring two knockdowns. But he spent the opening four rounds on Sunday morning pressing an eye-opening weight advantage of 68lbs and methodically walking down the uncharacteristically timid Wilder, who appeared a silhouette of the Alabama knockout artist who raced to a record of 40 wins in 40 fights with 39 coming inside the distance before the first instalment of his heavyweight championship trilogy with Tyson Fury back in 2018.

Wilder roused from his slumber early in the fifth, landing a pair of wild right hands that moved his mountainous foe backwards, but the abrupt offensive created openings that Zhang wasted little time seizing on. Within moments he’d spun Wilder 180 degrees with a lead right hook that left the American stunned before following it up with a free shot: a second right hook that detonated flush and dumped him to the seat of his trunks. Wilder managed to beat the 10-count, but he was out on his feet and referee Kieran McCann correctly stopped it at the 1:51 mark.

“I lost to Parker,” Zhang said. “It was a fair loss. He was a better man that night. But I do think I learned a lot from that fight, because after I knocked out Joe Joyce [twice in 2023], I was overconfident and I underestimated Parker. So I learned that I had to stay focused. As long as the bell doesn’t ring, stay focused.”

The mostly dull affair, at least until the violent denouement, was in stark contrast with the all-action, defense-optional melee before it, which saw Dubois upset the odds and take a major stride toward a heavyweight title shot with an eighth-round stoppage of Filip Hrgović, a 2016 Olympic bronze medalist and the IBF’s mandatory challenger .

The twice-beaten Dubois, a 26-year-old from south-east London who lost by ninth-round knockout to unified heavyweight champion Oleskandr Usyk in August, absorbed heaps of punishment in the opening rounds as Hrgović found alarmingly consistent purchase with one punishing right hand after another. But the 31-year-old Croatian was cut over his right eye in the second round and over his left around the fifth and his conditioning wilted under the frenetic pace that he’d set from the opening minutes.

By the seventh Dubois was stalking Hrgović around the ring, throwing and landing heavy blows with his exhausted opponent in retreat. The bloodied Hrgović, whose white trunks had faded to an ominous pink, was badly hurt by a concussive right hand near the end of the frame, then a pair of explosive shots along the ropes that might have closed the show if not for the bell.

Dubois picked up where he left off in the eighth but it wasn’t long before referee John Latham called time, summoning the ringside physician to inspect Hrgović’s double wounds. When the doctor proved unsatisfied, Latham waved it off 57 seconds into the round and Dubois’ career-best performance was accomplished.

“I ate them shots, but it was all to wake me up,” Dubois said of his sluggish start. “Once I’ve felt a few shots, a few stings, I woke up and I was just on it. I just thought don’t wait. Don’t wait.

“The round before the last, I was getting to him. It was just coming together like magic. … I’m just so proud of myself for this. It’s all a learning experience. I’ve come from rock bottom last year and now we’re back on top.”

The heavy-handed Briton nicknamed Dynamite claimed the IBF’s interim heavyweight title with Sunday’s win, which could be upgraded to a proper world championship should Usyk, who outpointed Fury for all four major titles last month, be stripped by the sanctioning body ahead of their scheduled Demember rematch. Dubois could also move into a lucrative showdown with former two-time champion Anthony Joshua, who took in Sunday’s action from ringside.

“I’m glad I’ve got this IBF belt and on to the next,” Dubois said. “I’ve heard the next opponent will be AJ, so bring it on. I’m just anxious to to become the best. This is my era. This is my time, and I just need to keep improving and [keep] coming through these tests.”

Earlier, Liverpool’s Nick Ball gave Britain a second current male world champion by winning the WBA featherweight title from the American Raymond Ford in a razor-thin 12-round split decision.

One judge scored it 115-113 for Ford but was twice overruled by the same margin for Ball, who captured a world title in his second try after being cruelly denied in a controversial March draw with Mexico’s Rey Vargas.

“He’s a tough man and a class boxer. I had to dig deep to get the belt,” Ball said. “I’m made up. I should be two-time [champion] but it’s not the case. I’m the champ now so it doesn’t really matter.”

The 27-year-old Merseysider finished strong in a wildly entertaining back-and-forth scrap that surely demands a rematch. He joins WBO cruiserweight title-holder Chris Billam-Smith as Britain’s second man to currently hold a major world title.

Also on the undercard Russia’s Dmitry Bivol successfully defended his WBA light heavyweight title against Malik Zinad of Libya, scoring a knockdown in the opening session before winning by sixth-round TKO for his first stoppage win since 2018.

The unbeaten Bivol, one of the sport’s most gifted technicians and a fixture on pound-for-pound lists since a 2022 win over Canelo Álvarez, was initially slated to headline Saturday’s card against Artur Beterbiev in a hugely anticipated four-belt unification fight for the undisputed title at 175lbs. But Beterbiev was forced to withdraw due to a ruptured meniscus suffered in training camp last month, prompting Zinad’s call-up as a replacement opponent.

Afterward Turki Alalshikh, chairman of the General Entertainment Authority and the driving force behind Saudi Arabia’s expanding influence in boxing, entered the ring to announce that Bivol’s fight with Beterbiev was rescheduled for 12 October in Riyadh.

China’s Chang’e-6 lunar probe has successfully landed on the far side of the moon to collect samples, state media reported on Sunday.

The lander set down in the immense South Pole-Aitken Basin, one of the largest known impact craters in the solar system, Xinhua news agency said, citing the China National Space Administration.

It marks the first ever attempt to collect samples from the rarely explored area of the moon, according to the agency.

The Chang’e-6 is on a technically complex 53-day mission that began when it took off on 3 May.

The probe will attempt to scoop up lunar soil and rocks, and carry out other experiments.

That process should be complete within two days, Xinhua said. The probe would use two methods of collection: a drill to collect samples under the surface and a robotic arm to grab specimens from the surface.

Then it must attempt an unprecedented launch from the side of the moon that always faces away from Earth.

Scientists say the moon’s “dark side” – so-called because it is not visible from Earth, not because it never catches the sun’s rays – holds great promise for research because its craters are less covered by ancient lava flows than the near side.

Material collected from the dark side may better shed light on how the moon formed.

Plans for China’s “space dream” have been put into overdrive under its president, Xi Jinping.

Beijing has poured huge resources into its space programme over the past decade, targeting a string of ambitious undertakings in an effort to close the gap with the two traditional space powers: the US and Russia.

It has notched several notable achievements, including building a space station called Tiangong, or “heavenly palace”.

Beijing has landed robotic rovers on Mars and the moon, and China is only the third country to independently put humans in orbit.

But Washington has warned that China’s space programme is being used to mask military objectives and an effort to establish dominance in space.

China aims to send a crewed mission to the moon by 2030 and plans to build a base on the lunar surface.

The US is also planning to put astronauts back on the moon by 2026 with its Artemis 3 mission.

Stormy Daniels has called for Donald Trump to be jailed after he was convicted of 34 counts of falsifying business records.

The adult film star, who was paid $130,000 as “legal expenses” for her silence about her affair with the former US president, warned the presidential candidate is “completely and utterly out of touch with reality”.

“I think he should be sentenced to jail and some community service working for the less fortunate, or being the volunteer punching bag at a women’s shelter,” Daniels, 45, told the Sunday Mirror.

Daniels said she feels “shocked” but vindicated after a jury at a New York court quickly convicted Trump, which she said showed they believed her testimony.

But she said she cannot escape death threats from Trump’s supporters, which she has faced since she spoke out about a payment by Trump’s then-lawyer, Michael Cohen, which was allegedly to ensure she remained silent in the days leading up to the 2016 US election about the alleged sex she had with the businessman at a celebrity golf tournament 10 years earlier.

“You always feel like you’re the bad guy, even when you’re not just being up on that standard,” she told the paper.

“Being in court was so intimidating with the jurors looking at you but I’m glad that the stuff came out in court that wanted to come out and prove, like I said, I’ve been telling the truth the entire time.

“It’s not over for me. It’s never going to be over for me. Trump may be guilty, but I still have to live with the legacy.”

The verdict against Trump came after the jury deliberated for less than 12 hours in the unprecedented first criminal trial against a US president, current or former.

It marks a perilous political moment for Trump, the presumptive nominee for the Republican nomination, whose poll numbers have remained unchanged throughout the trial but could tank at any moment.

Trump was convicted by a jury of 12 New Yorkers of felony falsification of business records, which makes it a crime for a person to make or cause false entries in records with the intent to commit a second crime. He will be sentenced on 11 July at 10am ET.

Wembley officials were left embarrassed after three pitch invaders caused a delay to the Champions League final between Real Madrid and Borussia Dortmund despite the presence of more than 2,500 stewards as part of increased security measures.

An 18-month operation had been put in place in an attempt to avoid a repeat of violent scenes that marred the Euro 2020 final between England and Italy, with a large police presence at Wembley and throughout London.

Metropolitan Police said 53 arrests were made during the final, five linked to the pitch invasion and “the majority of others for attempts to breach security”.

It is the nature of the pitch invasion which will raise most questions. The game had to be halted barely 30 seconds after kick-off when three men made it on to the turf, with one attempting to take a selfie with Madrid’s Vinícius Júnior and Jude Bellingham before eventually being bundled off.

Another who had eluded security for almost a minute was eventually apprehended with the help of the Dortmund midfielder Marcel Sabitzer, with a fourth invader stopped before he could get over the barriers.

All those involved were wearing T-shirts which appeared to bear the name of the Belarusian streamer Mellstroy. The 25-year-old was reported to have offered £300,000 to anyone who ran on during the final with his name on their shirt.

The incident caused a two-minute delay to the match, with the UK broadcaster TNT Sports cutting away during its live coverage. An announcement at half-time reminded fans that entering the field of play was “an arrestable offence”.

After the serious disorder at the Euro 2020 final – and the 2022 Champions League final in Paris having been brought to the brink of disaster by organisational failures – officials had pledged an unprecedented security operation involving more than 2,500 stewards and a £5m investment in security infrastructure.

Speaking before Saturday night’s match, the FA’s tournaments, events and interim stadium director, Chris Bryant, had said: “It is vital we deliver and do every­thing we can control in the best ­possible way … We are in a really good place, we’ve been ­planning in detail for 18 months.”

A Met Police spokesperson added that footage circulating online after the game of groups of ticketless fans trying to force a way inside “does not necessarily represent successful attempts to enter the stadium. There are typically multiple further levels of security beyond an initial entrance.

“We are confident that the overwhelming majority of attempts to unlawfully gain access to Wembley this evening were unsuccessful thanks to the efforts of officers, stewards and other stadium staff.”

A Wembley spokesperson said last night: “We will support the relevant authorities to ensure appropriate action is taken.”

It is the competition that Real Madrid like to think they own and the reasons why were mapped out in graphic detail at Wembley. Yet again. Borussia Dortmund brought the punch of the underdog and they played with a stirring liberation in the first half, creating chances and, well, missing them. It was impossible to think they would not regret it.

Madrid reset at half-time and when they started to press, everybody knew they had seen this movie, especially the ending. If Vinícius Júnior was a symbol of Madrid’s travails in the first half – booked for a lunge at the Dortmund goalkeeper, Gregor Kobel; guilty of a lack of conviction, at times – he relocated his game to dazzling effect thereafter.

In the first period, the Dortmund right-back, Julian Ryerson, had been up close and physical against him, enjoying success. After the interval, Vinícius was simply too much, flicking on the afterburners, making his moves, including a jaw-dropping stop-and-go nutmeg on Ryerson.

It was Dani Carvajal who scored the crucial first goal, getting in front of Niclas Füllkrug to flick home a Toni Kroos corner. And something seemed to break in Dortmund at that point. Few people had believed Edin Terzic’s team would escape the group of death with Paris Saint-Germain, Milan and Newcastle, let alone get past PSV Eindhoven, Atlético Madrid and PSG in the knockout rounds. The only faith came from within their ranks.

Now it waned. Madrid poured forward. Jude Bellingham, who was below his best, was denied by a last-ditch Nico Schlotterbeck challenge; Eduardo Camavinga worked Kobel from distance; Nacho did likewise with a header from a corner. Dortmund have been the eternal bridesmaids in recent years and they would be so again, their fate confirmed when Ian Maatsen played a loose pass to Bellingham and he released Vinícius, who was never going to miss.

Dortmund’s cast-offs, journeymen and unheralded names would summon one last push on 87 minutes, Füllkrug flashing home a header from Karim Adeyemi’s cross only to be pulled back for offside. There was no fairy tale for the team that finished fifth in the Bundesliga. Against Madrid – in this tournament – they do not happen.

It was European Cup No 15 for Madrid, La Decimoquinta, and their ninth from nine finals since the Champions League rebrand in 1992. Milan are next on the list with seven. Madrid have won six in the last 11 seasons alone. For Carlo Ancelotti, it was his fifth as a manager – a record; he has two more from his playing days – while it was number six as players for Carvajal, Nacho, Kroos and the substitute Luka Modric, equalling Paco Gento’s all-time mark.

When Kroos was withdrawn for Modric in the 85th minute, he saluted the Madrid fans. He knew, not that there was any doubt by then. He had started the party and now retires from club football at the very pinnacle. Could there be a final act for him at Euro 2024 with Germany?

It was a typically star-studded occasion, Sir Alex Ferguson, Zinedine Zidane and Figo among those present; Jürgen Klopp, too. The former Dortmund manager was given a tremendous ovation by the club’s supporters when he was pictured on the big screen.

Dortmund dominated the first half, bringing the aggression in the duels, their No 8s, Marcel Sabitzer and Julian Brandt, stepping high. It was remarkable to see how they got runners in behind the Madrid defence. They enjoyed a concerted patch of pressure around the midway point when they created their openings and there were two huge ones.

The first was for Adeyemi, the winger sent through for a one-on-one with Thibaut Courtois, Madrid’s recently returned goalkeeper. In his four games in May – his only four of a season undermined by serious knee ligament problems – Courtois did not concede. Madrid needed him here. Spooked by Courtois, Adeyemi took a heavy touch, going too far wide. His shot was blocked by the covering Carvajal.

Brandt had enjoyed the first opening only to be crowded out and after Adeyemi had almost got on to a low cut-back, Dortmund had their second big moment. It was Maatsen who robbed Camavinga and, having raced back towards the Madrid goal, he released Füllkrug who guided first-time on the stretch for the far corner. The ball came back off the inside of the post. It was agonising.

Madrid offered next to nothing as an attacking force in the first 45 minutes and Dortmund had other flickers, Adeyemi extending Courtois from a tight angle; Sabitzer doing likewise from further out. Courtois had been the difference in Madrid’s previous Champions League final victory over Klopp’s Liverpool in 2022. “That fucker Courtois,” as Klopp called him a couple of weeks ago.

It had certainly been a strange start to the showpiece, a worrying one, too, from a security point of view. Three men ran on to the pitch in the opening few minutes, the first stopping to take a selfie with Vinícius. Where were the stewards? Nowhere. The first two invaders left of their own accord; the third ran back on before a few luminous bibs finally showed up.

Madrid stirred after the second half restart. Ancelotti wanted Kroos to drop deep to make the play, which he did, and Camavinga to push up in central midfield. The connections which were not there before the interval started to fire.

Kroos forced Kobel to tip a curling free-kick behind; from the corner, Carvajal headed off target. Carvajal also had a side-on volley blocked by Maatsen. Füllkrug planted a header straight at Courtois but the tide had turned, Madrid on the front foot. When Vinícius shaped a cross towards the far post, Bellingham was inches from making the decisive contact but the goal was coming. As it always does for Madrid.