Author: Morgan

“The merely chubby have been winnowed away,” a naturalist intoned. “We are left with a clash of titans.”

After a record-breaking week of public voting, Katmai national park and preserve in Alaska has announced the winner of its “biggest Fat Bear Week yet”.

32 Chunk, frequently described as “the most dominant brown bear on the river”, won the fatness competition despite suffering for most of the season from a broken jaw, which locals suspected came from battling with another male over a female.

Bear 856

The annual bracket-style competition pits different wild bears against each other, based on before-and-after photos of the bears’ weight gain as they prepare for winter, as well as the bears’ personalities and ursine accomplishments.

32 Chunk’s ability to eat huge quantities of salmon and grow fat despite his debilitating injury led him to victory in the public competition, with 96,350 votes compared to Bear 856 – the runner up – who garnered 63,725 votes.

“A fat bear means a successful bear,” Katmai park ranger Ashleigh Monaco said during a Tuesday livestream event. “A fat bear means that bear is more likely to survive hibernation.”

Fatty the bear.

Chunk dethroned 128 Grazer, the female bear who has held Katmai’s fat bear title for the past two years, as the fattest bear on the Brooks River. This year’s competition attracted more than 1.5m public votes – the most so far, naturalist Mike Fitz said during the livestream.

Katmai is known as the home and hunting ground of some of the largest brown bears in the world, where the largest male bears can weigh more than 1,200lbs (544 kg) by fall. The competition features an enviable live camera feed of the bears fishing for salmon, navigating the river and occasionally fighting with each other.

While Fat Bear Week, which was started in 2014, was designed to support greater public awareness of the bears and their ecosystem, the contest has also included levels of on-camera drama that surpass even those of the Real Housewives of Salt Lake City.

Bear 128.

During the summer of 2024, 32 Chunk killed the young cub of reigning fat bear champion 128 Grazer – even though the mama bear fought Chunk in a desperate effort to save the cub. The death was captured on the the live cameras. 128 Grazer went on to beat Chunk in the fat bear competition by more than 40,000 votes.

That same year, the fat bear competition was delayed after one of the contestants was killed by another, less-fat bear, which was also captured on livestream.

Despite his role as the villain of previous years, Chunk, who has “narrowly-set eyes, dark brown fur, and a prominent brow ridge” and “a distinctive scar across his muzzle”, won over the public this year with his story of perseverance.

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He appeared in the park in June with a freshly-broken jaw. Wild bears in Katmai do not receive veterinary care, and Chunk’s injury was expected to be permanent, according to his contest profile, which noted that the injured alpha bear “adjusted his behavior to avoid most direct confrontations with other large male bears”.

Chunk’s broken jaw had left viewers wondering: “Is he even going to be able to fish? Will he even survive?” Naomi Boak, a media and communications executive who has been voting in the Fat Bear Week bracket for the past 11 years, said on the livestream. What happened, instead, was Chunk “gaining girth beyond what anybody could have possibly imagined with that injury”.

Chunk ultimately triumphed over an older male bear, 856, despite the fact that “856’s skinny picture was incredibly skinny,” Boak noted before the results were announced.

Chunk’s weight was estimated at 1,200 pounds by contest organizers. While they do not weigh individual bears during the contest because of safety concerns, Chunk and others have had their density scanned to bolster weight estimates in the past using laser technology called Lidar.

Bear 503.

128 Grazer, though no longer officially the park’s fattest bear, continued her redemption arc this year after the trauma of 2024: her current cub, 128 Jr, won the competition for this year’s fattest bear cub, making them essentially the “royal family” of the park, Monaco, one of the park rangers, said during the Tuesday livestream.

“No matter who wins fat bear week, each bear was fully committed to the effort. They needed to get fat to find success,” Fitz, the naturalist, reminded the livestream audience.

“What a joy this week has been, because – just so many very fat bears,” Boak said.

The Associated Press contributed reporting

Australia could split hosting rights for the Cop31 climate summit under a potential compromise being considered with Turkey, as Anthony Albanese concedes Ankara is determined to stay in the race, even risking both countries’ claims on the 2026 event.

Returning home from the UN general assembly and visits to the UK and the Middle East on Wednesday, Albanese told Guardian Australia he wished host countries were not decided using consensus rules, but pledged to continue diplomatic talks with the government of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

Only one country can hold the Cop presidency, but a range of set-piece meetings take place before and after the leaders’ summit.

Government sources said there was precedent for previous climate summits to be co-hosted or organised across different locations.

Albanese would not be drawn on any possible solution in an interview, but left open the option of supporting Turkey in future international negotiations.

“We’re just engaging through,” Albanese said. “A clear majority of nations want Australia’s bid, but it’s clear also that this is a complex situation and we’ve got to try and resolve it.”

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Turkey’s climate minister, Murat Kurum, this week floated the possibility of “innovative solutions” in which both countries could win. After meeting the climate change and energy minister, Chris Bowen, in New York, he said Australia and Turkey were examining options with the support of the UN climate secretariat.

Australia wants to host the summit in Adelaide, in a joint proposal with Pacific nations. Pacific Island climate ministers will hold talks in Sydney on Thursday and Friday.

“We’ll continue to engage constructively with our Turkish counterparts,” Albanese said. “It’s not just our bid, it is us and the Pacific as well.”

Asked if he was optimistic or uncertain about resolving the impasse, Albanese said he remained unsure, because of the complex rules.

Australia has at least 23 votes among the critical 28-country Western European and Others group, whose turn it is to host the summit. But if consensus cannot be reached, UN rules would send the conference to the German city of Bonn.

“I am certain of Australia’s support but if there’s two countries there, it reverts to Bonn,” Albanese said.

The trip – including an address to the general assembly in New York and his first in-person interaction with the US president, Donald Trump – coincided with major developments in international affairs.

The Pentagon signalled the $368bn Aukus nuclear submarine deal was safe, despite a lengthy review, and Trump unveiled a peace plan for Gaza, with the backing of Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and a growing list of partners.

Albanese will meet Trump at the White House on 20 October. The visit will be more than just a stand-alone meeting, and with three nights planned in Washington DC.

Albanese said Australia, the UK and Canada, as Five Eyes intelligence countries, had contributed vital momentum towards the Trump plan, with coordinated recognition of Palestinian statehood helping firm US resolve. Albanese praised the efforts of the French president, Emmanuel Macron, as vital, including through convening a special conference with Saudi Arabia last week.

“Recognition wasn’t in isolation from the decision of the Arab League to issue a powerful statement in June, which not only called for a ceasefire and advancement of two states, but also the isolation of Hamas and the recognition, clearly and unequivocally, of 7 October as a terrorist act.

“There’s been proposals in writing, with this plan being discussed between leaders. Australia has been part of that.

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“Recognition by three of the Five Eyes was significant.”

Albanese said Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, had a critical role to play, including in maintaining peace if the deal holds. Far-right political allies of Netanyahu have already criticised the plan, while Hamas has a few days to sign on to US demands.

Albanese said he was hopeful “that after a very dark period, there’s a crack of light”.

“It is not a zero-sum game. Security and peace for Israelis and Palestinians is tied together. You can’t have one without the other.”

The opposition leader, Sussan Ley, has accused Albanese of enduring a month of foreign policy failures, starting with planned security agreements with Vanuatu and Papua New Guinea, neither of which were signed. She dismissed Albanese’s statement to the UN on Palestine and criticised his decision to speak at the UK Labour party’s annual conference in Liverpool as partisan.

The Greens and some environmental activists have criticised Labor for the government’s 2035 emissions reduction target of 62% to 70%.

Albanese said he had always been confident about the future of the Aukus agreement, because the plan was in the interest of all three countries. It looks set to survive the review by the US under secretary of defence for policy, Elbridge Colby, a known sceptic.

Buoyed by the success of his 11-day overseas trip, Albanese pledged to bring an Australian approach to his relationship with Trump.

“I just deal with international leaders honestly. Normally, I start off with people at 100% and I think the Australian way is to engage in a straightforward, polite, friendly way.

“I’ve built good relations with leaders all over the world, across the political spectrum. This trip has been an example of that, with the number of bilaterals, with engagement with Pacific leaders, Asean leaders, European leaders, North American as well,” he said.

“We’ve worked hard, but it has been very productive.”

The tech industry is considering abandoning its obligations to combat online misinformation in Australia, claiming that regulation is too “politically charged and contentious”.

The digital platforms lobby group Digi launched the Australian Code of Practice on Disinformation and Misinformation in 2021, with signatories including Facebook (now Meta), Google, Microsoft and Twitter (now X).

Misinformation is false or deceptive information that may not be deliberately spread, while disinformation is information spread deliberately to cause confusion or undermine trust in governments or institutions, according to the Australian Communications and Media Authority

Under the code, companies are required to offer tools for people to report misinformation and disinformation, and to release transparency reports annually in May on their efforts to tackle the scourge.

Digi released a discussion paper on Tuesday questioning whether misinformation should be included in the code going forward. The group said “recent experience” demonstrated “misinformation is a politically charged and contentious issue within the Australian community”.

Digi said misinformation is “subjective, as the concept of misinformation is fundamentally linked to people’s beliefs and value systems”.

The group pointed to 2022 research it conducted arguing there is no consensus in Australia on the meaning of the word “misinformation”, and people’s assessment on whether something amounted to misinformation on issues such as climate change “is sharply divided, according to their allegiance to different political parties”.

Single pieces of information only have limited power to change people’s attitudes, Digi said, adding that studies show people who interact with and share misinformation tend to already agree with the advocated political stance.

Tom Sulston, the head of policy at Digital Rights Watch, said it appeared the industry was giving combatting misinformation a “brush-off” as too difficult to police. But Sulston said misinformation remains a big problem that social media platforms profit from.

“One of the key causes of the spread of misinformation is the way that the social media companies choose to promote it because it is exciting to users, draws a lot of comments, creates engagement and increases their advertising revenue,” he said.

Timothy Graham, an associate professor at Queensland University of Technology, said the term “misinformation” has become politicised, and attempts to legislate or regulate truth in the social media age have generated problems.

“For a given piece of content, the problem is often just establishing what the proposition actually is, which we could then ‘verify’ against the facts,” he said. “People often don’t agree on what is actually being asserted, let alone how to evaluate its truthfulness.”

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Sulston said regulating the algorithms that promote content to people would have a bigger impact on the spread of misinformation.

Signatories to the code including Meta and Google have backed away from previous factchecking programs in Australia after the re-election of Donald Trump in the United States and a push against the practice in favour of community-led notes systems that append context to posts, such as that used on X.

Sunita Bose, Digi’s managing director, said the outcome of the review will be informed by stakeholder submissions and was not something being driven by the platforms’ recent moves.

The Albanese government abandoned plans to legislate a mandatory misinformation and disinformation code last year after widespread opposition to the bill.

Acma’s latest report on the voluntary code in 2024, released in August, found fewer individual pieces of content were actioned for violating misinformation policies. However, the report stated a recent survey had found 74% of Australian adults were concerned about online misinformation.

X was kicked out of the code nearly two years ago, after removing tools to report misinformation and disinformation during the 2023 voice referendum.

Digi is consulting on the code until 3 November.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is suing Zillow and Redfin, accusing the real estate companies of entering what the regulator says is an illegal deal to suppress competition in online rental advertising.

In a lawsuit filed on Tuesday, the FTC alleges that this agreement started in February – when Zillow paid Redfin $100m. In exchange for that and other compensation, the commission said, Redfin agreed to end contracts with advertising partners, stop competing ads for multifamily properties for up to nine years and serve as a syndicator of Zillow listings on its own sites.

Redfin also fired hundreds of employees shortly after the announcement of this plan, Tuesday’s complaint notes, alleging that the company also helped Zillow hire “its pick” of these workers.

“Zillow paid millions of dollars to eliminate Redfin as an independent competitor in an already concentrated advertising market – one that’s critical for renters, property managers, and the health of the overall US housing market,” Daniel Guarnera, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Competition, said in a statement Tuesday.

Guarnera added that Zillow and Redfin’s actions were a violation of federal antitrust laws. The agency said the alleged deal reduces competition in an already concentrated market and is likely to drive up the cost of advertising vacancies in rental buildings with more than 25 units. The deal also reduces the incentive for the companies to compete by making their sites easier for renters to use, the FTC said in the lawsuit filed in Alexandria, Virginia.

Zillow is a giant in the real estate space: it previously disclosed that its platform receives about 227 million unique visitors a month, and received 2.4bn visits between January and March 2025.

In a statement, a Zillow spokesperson maintained that its “listing syndication with Redfin benefits both renters and property managers”, adding that it had “expanded renters’ access to multifamily listings”. The Seattle-based company said the agreement was “pro-competitive and pro-consumer”.

A spokesperson for Redfin, which was acquired by Detroit-based mortgage giant Rocket Companies earlier this year, added that the company “strongly disagrees with the FTC’s allegations” and was confident about prevailing in court. Redfin reiterated the Zillow partnership had given its users access to more rental listings and advertising customers access to more renters – noting that by the end of 2024, the company had determined that its own number of advertising customers “couldn’t justify the cost of maintaining our rentals sales force”.

In its lawsuit, the FTC maintains that the agreement between Redfin and Zillow isn’t the partnership the two companies say it is.

This is not the first time this year that Zillow has faced allegations of anticompetitive behavior. In June, the real estate brokerage company Compass filed a lawsuit against Zillow over its policy to ban private home listings.

In a filing with the US district court for the southern district of New York, Compass claimed that Zillow has implemented an exclusionary policy that says if a home seller and their real estate agent market their property off Zillow for more than one day, that Zillow and its allies, Redfin and eXp Realty, will ban that home from being listed on their search platforms.

“The Zillow ban seeks to ensure that all home listings in this country are steered on to its dominant search platform so Zillow can monetize each home listing and protect its monopoly,” Compass said in the lawsuit.

The FTC, which authorized filing Tuesday’s complaint in a 3-0 vote, is seeking to get the companies to end this deal, in addition to other relief from the court – such as potential divestiture of assets or business reconstruction “to restore the competition”.

Reuters and the Associated Press contributed reporting

A 6.9-magnitude quake has struck off the the central Philippines coast, damaging buildings and roads and knocking out power in parts of the region, as rescuers searched for casualties.

Municipal workers checked a collapsed public building and a gym, both in the north of the island of Cebu, hours after the quake struck at sea off its northern tip at 9:59pm (1359 GMT), said Wilson Ramos, a provincial rescue official.

“There could be people trapped beneath collapsed buildings,” he said, adding that rescue efforts were under way in the town of San Remigio and in Bogo, a city near the centre of the quake with 90,000 residents. He said he did not know how many people were missing.

Recovery efforts were being hampered by the dark as well as aftershocks, he said. The US Geological Service has recorded four quakes of magnitude 5.0 or higher in the area since the first tremor.

The local seismology office warned of a possible “minor sea-level disturbance” and urged residents of the central islands of Leyte, Cebu and Biliran to “stay away from the beach and not to go to the coast”.

A Cebu firefighter, Joey Leeguid, speaking from San Fernando town, said: “We felt the shake here in our station, it was so strong. We saw our locker moving from left to right, we felt slightly dizzy for a while but we are all fine now.”

Martham Pacilan, 25, who lives in the resort town of Bantayan, also near the quake centre, said he was at the town square near a church, which had been damaged.

“I heard a loud booming noise from the direction of the church then I saw rocks falling from the structure. Luckily no one got hurt,” he said. “I was in shock and in panic at the same time but my body couldn’t move, I was just there waiting for the shake to stop.”

The Cebu provincial government reported a commercial building and a school in Bantayan had collapsed, while a number of village roads had sustained damage.

The quake caused power lines to trip, leading to outages across Cebu and nearby central islands, the Phillipines National Grid said, adding it was assessing the extent of the damage.

The Cebu provincial governor, Pamela Baricuatro, urged residents in a live video message on her official Facebook account to “stay calm and move to open areas; keep away from walls or structures that may collapse and stay alert for aftershocks”.

She said the provincial government was assessing the situation and contacting municipal officials.

The US Geological Service had reported a magnitude reading of 7.0, before revising it down, while the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said there was no tsunami threat.

Quakes are a near-daily occurrence in the Philippines, which is situated on the Pacific “ring of fire”, an arc of intense seismic activity stretching from Japan through south-east Asia and across the Pacific basin. Most are too weak to be felt by humans, but strong and destructive ones come at random.

Donald Trump said on Tuesday that his administration had reached a deal with Harvard and that the school would pay $500m to settle the dispute between the federal government and the university.

“Linda is finishing up the final details,” Trump told reporters at an event in the Oval Office, referring to Linda McMahon, the education secretary. “And they’ll be paying about $500m and they’ll be operating trade schools. They’re going to be teaching people how to do AI and lots of other things, engines, lots of things.”

It was unclear whether Harvard was ready to announce a deal or exactly what terms beyond money the US president was talking about. He noted that any deal was not yet confirmed on paper, and Harvard had no immediate comment on his remarks.

The news came after months of accusations by Trump that the university, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, had violated federal civil rights law in its treatment of Jewish and Israeli students, which resulted in Trump cutting federal funding and attempting to ban the school from enrolling international students.

Trump had previously said that his administration “wants nothing less than $500m from Harvard” as a condition for restoring billions of dollars in federal funding after the showdown between the two sides ended up in court.

Earlier this month a federal judge ruled that the administration unlawfully terminated about $2.2bn in grants awarded to Harvard and could no longer cut off research funding.

The decision, by the US district judge Allison Burroughs in Boston, marked a major legal victory for Harvard as it had stood its ground more defiantly than some others in the White House’s multi-front conflict with the country’s oldest and richest university.

The Trump administration has threatened schools, universities and colleges with the withholding of federal funds over issues including pro-Palestinian protests against Israel’s war in Gaza, but also over climate initiatives, transgender policies, and diversity, equity and inclusion practices.

Trump, however, pushed Harvard to agree to a settlement significantly larger than the $200m Columbia agreed to pay in July to resolve federal investigations. Brown University, in Providence, also made a settlement deal, paying out $50m to restore federal research funding that was withdrawn and close investigations into alleged discrimination.

Rights advocates have raised free speech, privacy and academic freedom concerns over the Trump administration’s probes into universities. Trump has said that universities such as Harvard allowed displays of antisemitism during pro-Palestinian protests.

Protesters, including some Jewish groups, say the government wrongly equates criticism of Israel’s assault on Gaza and its occupation of Palestinian territories with antisemitism, and advocacy for Palestinian rights with support for extremism. The government has not announced probes into Islamophobia.

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Harvard taskforces said in late April that the school’s Jewish and Muslim students faced bigotry and abuse during the course of Israel’s war in Gaza.

Harvard’s president, Alan Garber, has previously said that the various federal actions since Trump returned to office in January could strip the school of nearly $1bn annually, forcing it to lay off staff and freeze hiring.

Historically, civil rights investigations conducted by the education department concluded with voluntary compliance agreements and rarely involved financial punishment, so Trump’s funding cuts are a departure from previous practices. Even in cases where penalties were imposed, the amounts were much smaller.

Reuters contributed reporting

The United Nations has adopted a resolution to transform a security mission in gang-dominated Haiti into a larger, fully fledged force with military troops.

The new unit can now have a maximum of 5,500 uniformed personnel, including police officers and soldiers, unlike the current mission, which is just law enforcement. The US ambassador to the UN, Mike Waltz, said the vote by 12 security council members to “transform the Multinational Security Support mission to the new gang suppression force, a mission five-times the size of its predecessor” showed the “international community was sharing the burden”.

Washington co-sponsored the enlargement push with Panama.

Currently just 1,000 police officers, mostly from Kenya, are deployed in Haiti under the MSS to support the overwhelmed Haitian police in their fight against rampant gang violence. But the mission, which was approved in 2023, has had mixed results.

“Every day, innocent lives are snuffed out by bullets, fire and fear,” Laurent Saint-Cyr, who heads the Haitian Transitional Presidential Council, told the UN’s signature diplomatic gathering last week. “Entire neighbourhoods are disappearing, forcing more than a million people into internal exile and reducing to nothing memories, investments and infrastructure.

“This is the face of Haiti today, a country at war, a contemporary Guernica, a human tragedy on America’s doorstep,” he added.

Saint-Cyr had thrown his support behind the US and Panamanian proposal to evolve the MSS into a more resilient force for an initial period of one year. “The council can help restore peace in a nation currently suffocated by merciless gangs,” Panama’s ambassador to the UN Eloy Alfaro de Alba said ahead of the vote.

Kenya’s president, William Ruto, said last week that “with the right personnel, adequate resources, appropriate equipment and necessary logistics, Haiti’s security can be restored”.

The major force boost will be accompanied by the creation of a support office within the UN, suggested several months ago by the secretary general, António Guterres, to provide the required logistical and financial support.

The US deputy secretary of state, Christopher Landau, said last week: “This mandate would empower the force to proactively target gangs and restore security to Haiti while ensuring it has the appropriate tools to succeed the mission’s anticipated objectives.”

China had expressed scepticism about the role of the MSS without political transition in Haiti and abstained during the vote to create it in 2023, as did Russia. Beijing and Moscow abstained again on Tuesday’s vote.

The poorest country in the Americas, Haiti has long suffered at the hands of violent criminal gangs that commit murders, rapes, looting and kidnappings against a backdrop of chronic political instability.

The situation has worsened significantly since early 2024, when gangs drove then-Prime Minister Ariel Henry to resign. The country, which has not held elections since 2016, has since been led by a Transitional Presidential Council.

The Metropolitan police are braced for an undercover documentary showing officers and staff allegedly being supportive of the far-right activist Tommy Robinson, making anti-Muslim comments and using excessive force against suspects in custody.

The allegations, which centre on Charing Cross police station in central London, are contained in a BBC Panorama documentary airing on Wednesday evening.

The allegations have plunged the Met into crisis mode, with commissioner Sir Mark Rowley trying to contain the damage as well as showing he can cut out toxic cultures within Britain’s largest force.

Programme makers are yet to make public full details of what undercover filming reveal but the broad allegations were sent by them to police chiefs a fortnight ago.

That has led to the suspension of nine serving officers and the police watchdog launching a major investigation, with one officer under criminal investigation.

The Guardian understands the programme claims to have material in which an officer makes comments supportive of Robinson. Robinson is a former leader of the English Defence League and the monitoring group Hope Not Hate assesses him to be the “best-known far-right extremist in Britain”.

Allegations also expected to be broadcast include claims of excessive force against suspects being held at the police station, including one youngster, as well as anti-Muslim comments and anti-female comments.

An undercover BBC reporter working as a member of civilian staff recorded the material that led to the allegations.

The looming revelations were discussed on a conference call of police chiefs across England and Wales on Tuesday and Rowley has cancelled some scheduled engagements on Thursday to deal with the expected fallout.

Charing Cross police station is the source of a scandal that contributed to the ousting of then commissioner Cressida Dick in 2022.

An Independent Office for Police Conduct report in 2022 revealed graphic details of officers sharing messages about hitting and raping women, the deaths of black babies and the Holocaust. At the time the officers were based mainly at Charing Cross, with the offending behaviour of 19 individuals taking place from 2016 to 2018.

Rowley, who came to office vowing to clean up the Met, wants to show the his force will be ruthless in dealing with allegations of wrongdoing which occurred on and off duty between August 2024 and January this year.

The IOPC said the latest allegations about Charing Cross had led to 11 individuals being under investigation for potential gross misconduct.

One of those is a police constable who is under criminal investigation on suspicion of perverting the course of justice.

The watchdog said it hadobtained CCTV from the custody area and was looking for detainees subjected to alleged wrongdoing, and in one case, an officer alleged to have been abused.

Amanda Rowe, the IOPC’s director, said: “As a result of our appeal within the Met, we have already had a number of police staff who previously worked at Charing Cross station contact us with information and we are following up each report.”

The Met has disbanded the custody team at Charing Cross, moving them elsewhere in the force and said it had reformed the leadership covering the police station. It said the allegations, if true, amounted to “criminality and misconduct” and would be “disgraceful”.

The position of Rowley, commissioner since 2022 and with two years of his term left to serve, is not thought to be in danger from the revelations. The key political support he depends on is London mayor Sadiq Khan, who is in effect the capital’s police and crime commissioner.

The mayor’s aides said Khan believed that Rowley had acted robustly in dealing with the allegations.

Neither the Met nor the IOPC has the evidence containing the allegations and both hope the BBC will provide them with it after the programme is broadcast.

Children were stopped from playing outside during Covid partly because it looked “like fun” and did not fit with the seriousness of the restrictions, the UK’s inquiry has heard.

Alice Ferguson, the founding director of Playing Out, which campaigns for children’s freedom to play outside, told the inquiry that play was fundamental for children’s health and wellbeing, especially play outside with other children.

Yet during Covid, children were ordered indoors by police if they were caught playing in the street or having a kickabout with a ball and neighbours complained. Some parents were even fined for letting their children play outside.

In one example, two brothers who lived in a high-rise flat in central London came out to build a snowman in January 2021, but were ordered to go back inside by police. Ferguson said the incident had a lasting impact on one of the boys, who remains socially anxious.

The inquiry heard that the treatment of children playing outside may have been linked to messaging by the then prime minister, Boris Johnson, at the very start of restrictions.

On 23 March 2020, when Johnson ordered the nation to stay at home to try to stop the spread of the virus, he granted permission for people to go outside for one form of exercise a day, whether a run, a walk or a cycle.

But children’s exercise “looks different” to adult exercise, the hearing was told. “Play is the main way that children are physically active,” said Ferguson. “They play because they enjoy playing. They don’t need to be told how to do it.

“By not explicitly mentioning children and play in those guidelines and in those rules, the prime minister gave the impression that only really adult forms of exercise were permitted, things like walking, cycling or running.

“So it did create this wider understanding including amongst police, councils, parents and the wider public that children playing out was not a permitted activity. It was something we raised right at the beginning with the government. It did not change throughout the pandemic.”

The inquiry was told that Ferguson had written an article at the time in which she said that “part of the problem was that play does look like fun and that does not fit with the seriousness of the guidelines. But for children play is serious.”

Ferguson was giving evidence on the second day of module 8 of the Covid inquiry, which is looking at the experience and impact of the pandemic on children. The hearing has heard that children’s rights and needs were frequently overlooked in the government’s response to the pandemic.

Ferguson and others giving evidence have called for a dedicated cabinet minister for children to ensure that children’s interests are represented at the highest level of government and the mistakes made during the pandemic are never repeated.

Dr Carol Homden, the chief executive of Coram children’s charity, highlighted the way the restrictions introduced during the pandemic affected some of the most vulnerable children in society, despite best intentions.

Children awaiting adoption lost their opportunity to find a permanent home as matching services were interrupted. Homden said the vast majority of children being adopted were under five, but some had “aged out” during the pandemic, while those in foster care suffered delays in seeing a social worker.

Homden also raised concerns about the experience of unaccompanied asylum seeking children arriving in the UK during the pandemic and having to go into isolation. “Just imagine being one of those young people, not speaking the language, arriving in such circumstances and then having to be alone in a room with no one to support you for 14 days.”

The inquiry was told that large numbers of unaccompanied children accommodated in hotels went missing. “I don’t think we’ve even begun to understand what’s happened to those children. This is not one or two children. This is hundreds who went missing. How could that have occurred and what are we doing to prevent that happening again?”

The inquiry continues on Wednesday and is scheduled to last four weeks.