Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte has conceded he “made the wrong assessment” by not intervening against plans by the royal family to holiday in Greece. King Willem-Alexander and Queen Maxima headed off on Friday but flew back a day later, following a public backlash. They left as the Dutch government introduced a new partial lockdown – which included discouraging unnecessary travel – but did not break any rules.

Mr Rutte has acknowledged that he had been aware of the royal plans. In a letter to parliament, the prime minister said he had “realised too late” that the holiday “could no longer be reconciled with the increasing infections and the stricter measures. “This should have prompted me to reconsider the intended holiday. I bear full ministerial responsibility,” he added. The royals flew out on a government plane but were immediately criticised for going on holiday when people were being advised to stay at home as much as possible to curb the spread of Covid-19. They flew back on a scheduled KLM flight on Saturday evening.(BBC)…[+]

Thousands have attended rallies across France in support of Samuel Paty, the teacher beheaded after showing cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad to his pupils. People in the Place de la République in Paris carried the slogan “Je suis enseignant” (I am a teacher), with PM Jean Castex saying: “We are France!” A man named as Abdoulakh A was shot dead by police on Friday after killing Mr Paty close to his school near Paris.

An 11th person has now been arrested as part of the investigation. No details have been given about the arrest. Four close relatives of the suspect were detained shortly after the killing. Six more people were held on Saturday, including the father of a pupil at the school and a preacher described by French media as a radical Islamist. President Emmanuel Macron said the attack bore all the hallmarks of an “Islamist terrorist attack” and the teacher had been murdered because he “taught freedom of expression”.(BBC)…[+]

A former Mexican defence minister has been charged with drug trafficking and laundering money while holding public office, US prosecutors say. Gen Salvador Cienfuegos Zepeda was arrested at Los Angeles airport on Thursday. He is due to make a court appearance on four charges in California on Friday. His charges include conspiracy to distribute heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine and marijuana to the US.

Prosecutors accuse Mr Cienfuegos, a retired general known as “The Godfather”, of helping the H-2 Cartel – “an extremely violent Mexican drug-trafficking organisation” – smuggle drugs into the US. “In exchange for bribe payments, he permitted the H-2 Cartel – a cartel that routinely engaged in wholesale violence, including torture and murder – to operate with impunity in Mexico,” prosecutors alleged in a court document released on Friday. Prosecutors say they have evidence of communications between Gen Cienfuegos and a senior leader of the H-2 Cartel.  They have requested that Mr Cienfuegos be held in detention until his trial, arguing the general poses “a significant risk of flight”. Should he be convicted, the former defence minister could face a jail term of ten years or more, prosecutors say.(BBC)…[+]

Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has urged Americans to take coronavirus “seriously” after spending days in intensive care with Covid-19. Mr Christie, a Trump administration ally, revealed on Thursday he had recovered from the disease. He was one of several virus cases confirmed at the same time as President Donald Trump in early October. The infections have been linked to a “superspreader event” at the White House. More than a dozen cases have been traced to the Rose Garden event on 26 September, including two senators, the White House press secretary and President Trump’s former counsellor Kellyanne Conway. All appear to have recovered. Mr Christie said he attended the event, a ceremony where Mr Trump formally announced his nomination of the conservative Judge Amy Coney Barrett for a Supreme Court vacancy, believing he had “entered a safe zone”.(BBC)…[+]

A 12-year-old boy made the discovery of his lifetime when he found dinosaur skeleton dating back 69 million years. The amateur palaeontologist was out hiking with his father in a fossil-rich part of Alberta, Canada this July, when he saw bones protruding from a rock. On Thursday, the skeleton’s excavation was completed.

The boy, Nathan Hrushkin, says when he first laid eyes on the bones, he was “literally speechless”. “I wasn’t even excited, even though I know I should have [been],” he tells the BBC. “I was in so much shock that I had actually found a dinosaur discovery.” Nathan, who has been interested in dinosaurs since he was six, often goes hiking in the Nature Conservancy of Canada’s protected site in the Albertan Badlands with his father. “I’ve always just been so fascinated with how their bones grow from bones like ours to solid rock.” A year ago, they had found small fragments of fossils, and his father guessed that they were falling down from the rock above. So this summer Nathan decided to inspect. The fossilised bones were growing out of the side of a hill.(BBC)…[+]

The US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) have seized their largest-ever domestic haul of methamphetamine – more than 1,000kg (2,200 pounds). The drugs were found during raids just outside of Los Angeles this month. Another federal agency intercepted an even larger amount of meth at a San Diego port the week before. The two hauls are “enough to provide a dose of meth, for every man, woman, and child in the United States and Mexico”, a DEA chief said on Wednesday.

Timothy Shea, the acting agency administrator, told a press conference that the latest seizure came from two apparent stash houses in the Moreno Valley and Perris. Officials also found 400kg of cocaine. They said the drugs had been stuffed inside dozens of duffel bags, which were ready for distribution. In the prior raid, US Customs and Border Protection officials – acting on information from the DEA – recovered almost 1,400kg of meth at the Otay Mesa Port of Entry in San Diego. They also discovered heroin, fentanyl powder and pills laced with fentanyl – all disguised in a lorry delivering medical supplies from Mexico.(BBC)…[+]

Democratic vice-presidential candidate Kamala Harris will halt campaign travel until Monday after two members of her staff tested positive for coronavirus. The California senator’s communications director, Liz Allen, and a flight crew member received the results on Wednesday, a Biden official said. Neither aide had close contact with the candidates in the 48 hours prior to their positive tests, she added. Ms Harris had been scheduled to fly to North Carolina on Thursday. Biden Campaign Manager Jen O’Malley Dillon said the senator had no close contact with either infected staff member in the two days before the positive test, and was therefore not required to quarantine. “Regardless, out of an abundance of caution and in line with our campaign’s commitment to the highest levels of precaution, we are cancelling Senator Harris’s travel through Sunday,” she said…[+]

Spain’s north-eastern region of Catalonia has said bars and restaurants are to close for 15 days from Thursday as the country tries to slow the spread of coronavirus. Across Europe, governments are introducing new restrictions to battle a second wave of infections. The Czech Republic has shut schools and bars, Dutch cafes and restaurants are closing, and France may impose curfews. In the Netherlands a partial lockdown comes into force at 22:00 (20:00 GMT). Also on Wednesday, French President Emmanuel Macron is set to detail new measures for Paris and other cities. Across Europe, infection rates are rising, with Russia reporting a record 14,321 daily cases on Wednesday and a further 239 deaths. But even in countries that have had greater success than most in keeping transmission down, infections are rising.

To photograph one of rarest creatures on Earth you have to be incredibly skilled and remarkably lucky. But Sergey Gorshkov is clearly both – as demonstrated by his stunning picture of a Siberian, or Amur, tiger deep in the forests of Russia’s Far East. The image has just won him the title of Wildlife Photographer of the Year.

The female tiger is seen embracing a tree, rubbing herself against the bark to leave her scent and mark territory in Land of the Leopard National Park. “The lighting, the colours, the texture – it’s like an oil painting,” says WPY chair of judges Roz Kidman-Cox. “It’s almost as if the tiger is part of the forest. Her tail blends with the roots of the tree. The two are one,” she told BBC News. (BBC)…[+]