gshc2020.com

He recovered to ninth but now trails Mercedes team-mate Kimi Antonelli by 102 points in the Drivers' Championship with six rounds remaining, so is all but mathematically out of the title fight.

• How Kimi Antonelli could win F1 world title as soon as the next race
• F1 2026 Calendar | F1 2026 Standings | F1 Gossip Column
• Download the Sky Sports app for expert analysis, best video & more📱
• Not got Sky? Latest Sky Sports deals or stream F1 with no contract 📺

Prior to his Malaysia reliability woes, Mercedes had planned for Russell to take on a new power unit at the United States Grand Prix, which takes place next weekend in Austin, as they expect to have an upgrade ready, but it appears Russell will take on the new part three races later in Las Vegas on November 20-22.

Mercedes are taking up the upgrade opportunity they were granted by the FIA's ADUO (Additional Development and Upgrade Opportunities) system to improve their engine.

The ranking of Mercedes' engine performance below Red Bull's by the sport's governing body caused some dispute, with the Milton Keynes squad arguing that the Silver Arrows, who are dominating the Constructors' Championship, already have the best power unit.

Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player

"It will probably be later in the season now to be honest - maybe Las Vegas. But it will be there at some point," Russell told Sky Sports F1 when asked when he will take on the upgraded power unit element that will trigger a grid penalty.

"Now we have the choice to take it when we wish and we will choose slightly easier tracks [to overtake at]."

Formula 1 2026 remaining races

Russell: Goal is to get on top of upgrades

Russell came into 2026 as favourite for the championship with many pundits predicting Mercedes would have the best car and Antonelli, in just his second F1 season, not ready to challenge for the title. However, Russell has largely been outpaced by Antonelli with just three wins to the Italian's eight this season.

Mercedes brought an upgrade package to Malaysia which did not give them the instant performance they anticipated, so ran the pre-Malaysia car with Russell and the new upgrades with Antonelli in Singapore.

Red Bull's Max Verstappen topped every competitive session of the Sprint weekend in Singapore, although Russell was leading the Sprint race until he crashed.

Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player

"The goal right now is to try to improve the car. We were very much the dominant team for this whole season," said Russell.

"You look at the recent races and Red Bull have been very much best. In Baku, Max was a similar level to me. We go to Malaysia, a totally different track, and Singapore another different track, and he's dominated the last two weekends.

"Right now, the goal is to try and get on top of these updates."

Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player

Antonelli finished on the podium in Sunday's race after making late overtakes on McLaren's Lando Norris and Ferrari's Lewis Hamilton.

The championship leader finished 25 seconds behind race-winner Max Verstappen and thinks Red Bull have done an "incredible step forward", while Mercedes are yet to extract the most from their own upgrades.

"I feel like it was a very progressive weekend, where we started off the pace and I've definitely been struggling with the new package," Antonelli said.

Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player

"But the team did incredibly well on putting the car in a better window. And now we understand a lot more the aero package, how it works, which is very different compared to the old one. It's about trying to find the right window for the car.

"All in all, I feel like we're seeing the light at the end of the tunnel and we're going to keep pushing on this package because, also on my side, I want to help the team as much as possible in trying to understand it, also to understand which way to take for the future car as well."

Formula 1 next heads to The Americas for another triple header with the United States Grand Prix in Austin up first on October 23-25, live on Sky Sports F1. Stream Sky Sports with NOW - no contract, cancel anytime %!s()

A call comes in over the radio about a stolen Ford Transit van. Within 25 minutes officers have found it, chased it down and arrested a suspect.

Officers tell us the night has been successful, with further arrests made, yet across the UK a car is stolen every four minutes.

Despite a recent drop, vehicle thefts are up almost 50% in England and Wales compared with a decade ago, according to Home Office data. Last year, just 3% of vehicle theft offences resulted in a charge or summons.

As well as spending time on the front line in London and Sussex, we have privately spoken to 20 police officers from six forces.

They told us while they have the skills and experience to tackle vehicle crime, they are overstretched, under-resourced and struggling to keep pace with increasingly sophisticated criminal networks.

Thieves are becoming more confident. A man who claims he receives stolen vehicles and breaks them into parts at a so-called "chop shop" told the BBC he does not fear the authorities, because they "couldn't catch a cold".

Once the preserve of joyriders and opportunists, vehicle theft is now a lucrative global criminal business. Cars are stolen to order, and moved across the country or dismantled within hours, say police, making them difficult to recover and suspects hard to track. Many vehicles are sent overseas to places like the United Arab Emirates, The Democratic Republic of Congo and Jamaica.

Victims of car theft have told us they feel frustrated and helpless. One woman said it took car thieves just 35 seconds to steal her BMW, yet police only began investigating a day later. Another man said he feared for his life when masked thieves broke into his home demanding his car keys.

The success criminals are having is also hitting motorists more widely, with insurance quotes having risen by 82% since 2021, according to security think tank the Royal United Services Institute (Rusi).

Our night-time ride in the unmarked police car takes place during an eight-hour Metropolitan Police operation targeting vehicle crime.

"Havering has been affected quite badly," PC Yoosef Outaleb tells us - partly because thieves use the back roads as a cut-through to neighbouring Essex.

Police say the county has particularly high numbers of illegal "chop shops", which dismantle vehicles for parts so they can be sold and exported.

"They [the criminals] don't have borders, whereas we do," he says. When criminal activity straddles police force boundaries, investigations can often slow down - which gangs look to exploit.

Two stolen vehicles are recovered, yet Met officers also uncover other crimes.

They pursue armed robbers on e-bikes, apprehend a drunk driver and arrest three men in a car full of Class A drugs, cash and phones.

It is all important work, but police admit that responding to these crimes diverts them away from targeting known vehicle thieves.

The thieves, known as "grafters" within criminal networks, are out every night stealing cars, the man claiming to work at a chop shop told us.

Many vehicles are then broken into parts. Such is the demand, he says, that deals to re-sell the parts are often done before he has even finished dismantling a vehicle.

Some stolen vehicles are left intact, given new number plates and sold in the UK or abroad, while others are used to facilitate drug dealing and human trafficking, or as getaway vehicles for robberies and break-ins.

Stolen: Chasing Britain's Car Thieves

Join police on the hunt for high-tech thieves behind a wave of UK car crime. See the latest weapons gangs are using in action, including electronic skeleton keys and military grade signal-jammers.

While the long-term trend presents difficult reading for police, reported vehicle thefts fell 5% in England and Wales last year, to 119,000. In Scotland and Northern Ireland, vehicle thefts remained largely flat, at about 5,000 and 1,200 a year respectively.

Fifteen of the 32 police forces in England and Wales that responded to a BBC Freedom of Information request said they do not employ any full-time, specially-trained stolen vehicle examiners, who can carry out detailed examinations of cars and bolster investigations.

But Assistant Chief Constable Sarah Grahame, the national police lead on tackling vehicle crime, tells us officers' efforts - like the night-time operation in east London - are having an impact.

UK forces are also collaborating with Interpol, shipping companies and vehicle manufacturers to address an issue "that spans globally", she says.

She admits current theft levels are unacceptable, but says there is no funding to routinely carry out large-scale operations within current police budgets, set by the Home Office.

Instead, forces organise "intensification weeks" aimed at disrupting criminal networks.

One involving 32 forces last month, called Operation Alliances, led to at least 286 arrests and 319 vehicles seized.

In East Sussex in September, where we witnessed a smaller, targeted operation, we were told that 17 cars had been stolen in the Hastings and Rother areas in the previous two months.

Many of the vehicles were keyless Toyota RAV4s - taken by thieves using technology that bypasses vehicle security systems. Three of the vehicles had been taken the previous night.

Within hours, officers recovered all three vehicles and arrested three suspects, including one they believe had been in charge of the other two.

Two suspects have now been charged, including one arrested after a stolen Toyota was found near his home.

Sussex vehicle crime lead Ch Insp Oliver Fisher, says police resources are now being focused on "the top of that criminal network... that's where you'll seize the most assets and cause the most disruption".

Without catching criminal bosses, experts agree, others lower down will continue carrying out thefts to order - often using tech such as cloned keys to access vehicles.

Manufacturers need "a constant focus on security", says Thatcham Research - a body that works with carmakers, police and government to improve vehicle security.

"Within months" of a car being launched, thieves can develop targeted tools to steal it, it says.

At Thatcham Research's headquarters, we are shown a device hidden within a wireless speaker that can start a car by tapping into its internal communication system. We also see a military-grade signal jammer, left behind by criminals after a theft, that can block out all electronic signals for miles around.

While manufacturers are meeting security guidelines, the government should update regulations to ensure "sophisticated [theft] countermeasures are on a vehicle as standard", says Thatcham Research's principal engineer for automotive security, Steve Launchbury.

Tech that puts a key to sleep while motionless is one option, he says, so thieves cannot hack into it. In future, it may be possible for manufacturers to remotely lock down a car reported by the owner as stolen, he adds.

The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders told us car makers go "above and beyond regulatory requirements", while Toyota said it "continuously enhances vehicle security".

Mike, 33, believed he had done everything he could to prevent his BMW M2 from being taken. He had CCTV, a house alarm and a protective container for his keys.

But just two months after he bought the car, two masked men broke into his home in the middle of the night and demanded the keys.

"I was kind of scared for my life," he says. Avon and Somerset Police says it is "following up all lines of enquiry", but his car has not been recovered.

Rose-Marie Clarke has been a victim of car theft twice in three years. Most recently, in March, her BMW was stolen from outside her home using an antenna to amplify the signal from the key fob inside her house. It took thieves just 35 seconds.

Clarke, like many victims we have spoken to, is critical of the police.

She says officers told her they knew the likely suspect, who had recently been released from prison, but they had been unable to prove it was him. "It's disheartening… you feel powerless because the police are powerless," she says.

Warwickshire Police said despite "extensive enquiries… an offender could not be identified". BMW UK said it worked "continuously" to improve security.

Many victims we spoke to told us they had also been hit hard by a rise in their car insurance premiums.

Across the UK, car insurance quotes have risen by 82% since 2021 and Eli Glantz, an expert in organised crime and policing at security think tank Rusi, says vehicle crime "is certainly a factor".

"As more vehicles are stolen, insurers are forced to pay out more often. Premiums are going to rise," he adds.

Vehicle crime costs the UK economy £1.7bn a year, Rusi estimates.

Since April, it has been an offence to possess electronic devices used in vehicle thefts, but Glantz believes legislation is still failing to keep pace with the criminals.

It is welcome, he says, that the government is now giving vehicle thefts more attention, but he stresses that current police resources will not meaningfully reduce the number of crimes.

Several of the police officers we spoke to privately felt similarly. They said they had confidence in their ability to take down serious, organised vehicle crime networks, provided they had the necessary level of funding and support from decision-makers.

The Home Office says it "will continue to support police" in tackling organised vehicle theft and provides £300,000 a year to help strengthen its response, mainly to the National Vehicle Crime Reduction Partnership.

• If you would like to contact BBC Journalist NJ Convery about this story you can email him directly at [email protected], external

Get in touch

Your Voice: What story do you want BBC News to cover? %!s()

Lamarre-Condon, 31, has been accused of shooting dead Baird and Davies with his police service weapon in Baird’s Paddington home on 19 February 2024.

He has pleaded not guilty to two counts of murder and one charge of aggravated break and enter.

The prosecution on Wednesday read out a statement from Michael Cella who was 20 years old when he spoke with police in 2024. Cella said he matched with Lamarre-Condon on the dating app Hinge in March 2023.

They began seeing each other, with the pair going to Bondi Junction to watch Hunger Games and the Taylor Swift movie in late 2023. They also ate sushi together.

In November 2023, Lamarre-Condon invited the younger man on a weekend trip to a cabin.

But because the proposed trip was too expensive, Cella invited the police officer to go to his family’s hobby farm in Bungonia.

The property had four dams, animals, a fence and a front gate with chains and a padlock, the court heard on Wednesday.

On 6 November, they drove around the area, looked at the animals and stayed overnight, with Lamarre-Condon recording the farm and posting it to his Instagram story with the Taylor Swift song You Belong With Me.

Cella later learned about Baird when he saw Lamarre-Condon’s Instagram posts with him.

“Beau told me they were friends. I sensed there was something more and Beau was not telling me everything,” Cella said in his 2024 statement read to the jury.

Communication between Lamarre-Condon and Cella slowed significantly about mid-November 2023 and the latter soon lost interest.

He received some messages from Lamarre-Condon in January 2024 but ignored them, blocked his contact number and deleted their text message conversation, the court heard.

Days later, he received a call from a number with no called ID and did not answer, followed by a message on the encrypted messaging app Signal from a contact with the name Bob. Cella did not respond.

After the deaths of Baird and Davies, Lamarre-Condon allegedly made an unsuccessful attempt to sink their bodies at the bottom of a dam at Cella Farm, the prosecution has told the jury.

They were later found at the fence line of a monastery about 20km from the property.

Ballistics expert testifies

The defence has not disputed the officer attempted to clean up the scene or dispose of the bodies, claiming he “panicked considerably” after acting in self-defence.

But the events inside Baird’s home are contested.

The defence has argued the couple were accidentally shot in two separate struggles.

The prosecution has told the court that Lamarre-Condon shot Baird twice in the kitchen before shooting Davies through a bedroom door.

A computer-generated video outlining the crown’s version of events was played to the New South Wales supreme court jury earlier on Wednesday.

The 3D recreation of the Paddington terrace on the morning of the shootings allowed the jury to see the path Lamarre-Condon allegedly took through the home. The reconstruction included photos of bullet holes and marks.

The potential trajectory of the bullets was also highlighted.

Before the video was shown, justice Natalie Adams said it was the crown case that Baird was shot at close range but the defence argued he was shot from further away.

The judge warned the kitchen was not shown to scale and that not all the evidence relevant to the angle or distance of the shot to Baird’s head had been adduced.

The NSW police firearms examiner, Lucas Van Der Walt, said he was more certain of the trajectory of the bullet through the bedroom door because it had passed through 35mm thick wood.

Van Der Walt told the court that “stippling” had been found on the door around a bullet hole that the prosecution alleged was covered with putty and a plastic hook.

Stippling is the pattern made by gun shot propellant particles. The closer a target is to a barrel, the smaller the spread pattern would be, Van Der Walt said on Wednesday.

“[It] is going to pepper itself into that softer surface – in this case a painted door,” he told the jury.

The court was shown a video of police taking the door from Baird’s bedroom and shooting it with the same gun and ammunition that was allegedly used by Lamarre-Condon.

The pictures of both the original and test bullet hole were compared and shown to the jury. Van Der Walt said there was a “very similar spread pattern of the propellant particles impacting with the paint and the wood in the door”.

He suggested the muzzle of the firearm was 10 to 20cm away from Davies when it was discharged.

On the side of the door the bullet would have exited, he noted the splintering looked more opaque in the original hole, but he said that was because wood putty had been used to fill the hole.

Defence lawyer John Stratton SC suggested the bullet hole could have been created if there was a body in front of the door, but Van Der Walt said the “clear stippling” would prevent that scenario.

Asked why there was no other bullet marks or bullets found in the room, the expert said it could have hypothetically hit a pillow, jacket or similar item.

“If that bullet continued and penetrated any of these surfaces and that object was removed and discarded, we’ll never find that bullet,” he told the court.

Bullets shot in this way fell to the ground, he said, and given the scene had been cleaned extensively, a casing could have been picked up by cleaners, Van Der Walt told the jury.

The trial before justice Adams continues. %!s()

Timothy Kelly, a district court judge, had on 24 September granted a 14-day reprieve for the news organizations, which six days earlier had been banned by the president in an extraordinary move from entering the White House grounds “as a result of their constant ‘reporting’ FAKE NEWS”.

“Defendants (except for President Trump) and their agents, representatives, and all persons or entities acting in concert with them, shall not execute, implement, or enforce the September 18, 2026, decision to revoke the White House ‘hard pass’ press credentials held by employees of CNN, MS NOW, and POLITICO, thereby maintaining the status quo since the Court’s entry of a temporary restraining order on September 24, 2026,” the judge wrote in granting a preliminary injunction requested by the plaintiffs.

The organizations filed a lawsuit on 21 September seeking to overturn the ban as a violation of their rights under the US constitution. But that temporary restraining order expired on Tuesday, bringing the media companies into court late last week to ask for a preliminary injunction that would lift the ban during the duration of the lawsuit, which could take months.

During arguments at the E Barrett Prettyman Federal Courthouse in Washington, Kelly seemed inclined to lift the ban indefinitely, telling a lawyer for the federal government that his side had “a notice problem” that was “probably the biggest hurdle” they had to overcome.

The Trump White House gave no advance notice to the media companies affected to say that they were at risk of losing their press badges, which the news organizations have said are essential to their ability to cover the administration. While the White House sent letters to the media companies informing them of the ban, they did so post-hoc, after building access had already been cut off, in violation of binding court precedent.

In his ruling on Tuesday, Judge Kelly wrote that the plaintiffs “are likely to succeed not only on their due process claim, but also on their two First Amendment claims”. While access to the White House is not guaranteed, court precedent dictates that once it is provided to journalists, it cannot be taken away for editorial or viewpoint-based reasons.

During arguments for a preliminary injunction on 8 October, media lawyer Theodore J Boutrous told the judge that Trump had offered a “confession” – in a Time magazine interview last week – that he was banning the media companies explicitly because of the content of their reporting, not because of any other considerations, such as national security.

“The case has gotten stronger for the plaintiffs thanks to President Trump,” Boutrous told the judge.

The judge seemed to agree. “President Trump’s own comments suggest that he intended the revocation of Plaintiffs’ hard passes to alter their reporting on him, bolstering the case that his action here is sufficient to deter a reporter of ordinary firmness from reporting in the same way she had before,” he wrote.

Although the White House has largely adhered to the judge’s prior ruling restoring access on a temporary basis, journalists for CNN and Politico have on occasion been prevented from performing “pool duty” – covering the daily activities of the president – because the administration has interpreted the judge’s temporary restraining order to solely require access to the White House complex, not smaller spaces like Air Force One or the Oval Office.

The judge required the media plaintiffs to post a bond of $1.

In a statement, Boutrous said of the judge’s ruling: “When the President issued his ‘ban on the free press,’ he blatantly and explicitly violated due process and the First Amendment. Since then, the President has repeatedly, candidly, and consistently admitted in public that he banned our clients from the White House to punish reporting he doesn’t like and to try to force journalists to cover him in ways he prefers.”

The court, he added, “was right to enjoin the White House from enforcing this ‘unconstitutional ban on the free press’ for the foreseeable future”. %!s()

Bloomberg | Getty Images

BANGKOK — The Philippine central bank is planning for a "Godzilla" El Niño on top of a prolonged oil shock, as the Southeast Asian nation tries to rein in inflation from three-year highs.

Governor Eli Remolona said Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas now sets policy using scenarios that factor in oil prices and the severity of the weather event. "We have the regular, ordinary El Niño, which is bad, and then we have the Godzilla El Niño, which is really, really bad," he said Wednesday on a panel at the IMF and World Bank annual meetings in Bangkok.

The worst of El Niño's impact on prices is still to come, with the effects expected from November through February, he said, adding that maintaining price stability remains the central bank's priority.

"We're holding our breath," he said, "but we have to be prepared for the worst."

The looming weather risk is adding fresh pressure on one of Southeast Asia's most vulnerable economies. Philippine inflation accelerated to 7.2% in September from 6.1% in August, with rice prices up 18%, according to the Philippine Statistics Authority.

The world's biggest rice importer is also exposed to food supply risk. Agriculture Secretary Francisco Tiu Laurel has warned that a fresh drought could squeeze domestic supply. Larger Philippine purchases could add demand to a global market already jolted by El Niño and export curbs. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization has raised its rice price index for six consecutive months to a 20-month high.

The central bank lifted its benchmark rate by 25 basis points to 5% in August to keep a lid on the runaway inflation.

The BSP should deliver another quarter-percentage hike next week to 5.25%, followed by another same-sized hike in December, according to Aris Dacanay, senior ASEAN economist at HSBC Bank, in a note Wednesday. %!s()