We've known for some time about the closeness between the Yorks and Jeffrey Epstein but if genuine these emails give us a new level of insight, about their interactions with the convicted paedophile, what they shared with him and just how much they saw him as a friend and close confidante.

From the emails we can see he was apparently welcomed into the fold and the inner sanctum of their palace life. Offered the chance to come into Buckingham Palace in September 2010, invited to Andrew's birthday party at St James's Palace in February 2010, all after his conviction for soliciting prostitution in 2008 and his release in 2009.

From the discussions about him lending them money and the exchanges about Andrew being set up with women, you can see he was clearly trusted with their innermost secrets.

Epstein files latest: More than three million pages being released

It is the obsequious tone with which they write to him which will inevitably anger the victims. It feels like Andrew and Sarah were dependent on him, whether for money or contacts.

It appears Epstein had made it that way, made himself invaluable to them, which chimes with Sarah Ferguson's claim last year that she had to appear loyal because he was blackmailing her.

Date of the emails is key

But away from what's written in the emails, it's when they were written that is also exposing. Just look at the dates and they appear to challenge Andrew and Sarah's recollections of when they apparently tried to cut ties with Epstein.

In June 2008, Epstein pleaded guilty to those paedophile charges, he was then released in July 2009. Yet all the email correspondence we see in this latest release of files was sent after they would have known the crimes he'd admitted. Just a month after Epstein was released Sarah Ferguson sent the email describing him as the "brother she always wished for".

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Andrew claimed in that Newsnight interview that they were photographed together in Central Park in December 2010 because he was trying to honourably end their relationship, and yet in February 2011, they were exchanging emails which appear to suggest Epstein was helping the Yorks with money.

It is important to say that the documents don't expose any new accusations of wrongdoing, to this day Andrew has vehemently denied all the allegations against him; the Metropolitan Police also said last year they don't intend to look any further at the suggestions he asked his close protection officer to dig dirt on his accuser Virginia Giuffre.

Difficult reading for Royal Family

But that doesn't stop this again being really difficult reading for the rest of the Royal Family, further ramping up the scrutiny around Andrew. It will also no doubt embolden those who have called for Andrew to tell-all, whether it's Epstein's victims or the US congress committee who invited him to speak to them about what he knew and what he saw.

It has to be pointed out that Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and Sarah Ferguson are inevitably at the top of everyone's search list. It means that we are inevitably going to report more on documents related to them, and with other high-profile individuals also linked to Epstein they will no doubt find that unfair.

But as the brother and ex-sister-in-law of the King it is right that we should be able to question and probe how close they were, these documents giving us again that opportunity, and a level of insight we never expected.

Sarah Ferguson has previously said: "I would never have anything to do with Jeffrey Epstein ever again. I abhor paedophilia and any sexual abuse of children. It was a gigantic error of judgment."

Sky News has approached Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and Sarah Ferguson for comment.

The Canadian-American star won an Emmy award for lead actress for her role in Schitt's Creek in 2020.

She died aged 71 on Friday at her home in Los Angeles "following a brief illness", her agency Creative Artists Agency said in a statement.

She is survived by her husband, Bo Welch, and sons Matthew and Luke - her family will hold a private celebration of her life, the statement said.

In an entertainment career spanning more than 50 years, she gave a memorable turn as Kate McCallister, mother of Kevin, played by Macaulay Culkin, in the first two Home Alone films.

Culkin, who starred as the youngster accidentally left at home when his family leaves for a Christmas holiday in the 1990 classic, posted a heartfelt tribute on Instagram, calling her "Mama" and saying he thought they "had time".

The pair reprised their roles in the 1992 sequel, Home Alone 2: Lost In New York.

Michael Keaton, her co-star in the original Beetlejuice film from 1988, said on Instagram O'Hara had been "my pretend wife, my pretend nemesis and my real life, true friend.

"This one hurts. Man am I gonna miss her."

Meryl Streep, who co-starred with O'Hara in the 1986 comedy drama Heartburn, said in a statement that O'Hara "brought love and light to our world, through whipsmart compassion for the collection of eccentrics she portrayed".

O'Hara frequently collaborated with mockumentary pioneer Christopher Guest, becoming a key player in his ensemble and starring in Waiting For Guffman, Best In Show and A Mighty Wind.

Her popularity surged after the success of Schitt's Creek, which dominated the 2021 Emmys following its sixth and final season, bringing O'Hara a new generation of fans.

The show's creators, father and son duo, Dan and Eugene Levy, who co-starred in the series alongside O'Hara, both released statements in tribute.

Dan Levy wrote: "What a gift to have gotten to dance in the warm glow of Catherine O'Hara's brilliance for all those years.

"Having spent over fifty years collaborating with my Dad, Catherine was extended family before she ever played my family. It's hard to imagine a world without her in it. I will cherish every funny memory I was fortunate enough to make with her."

And Eugene Levy wrote: "Words seem inadequate to express the loss I feel today.

"I had the honor of knowing and working with the great Catherine O'Hara for over fifty years. From our beginnings on the Second City stage, to SCTV, to the movies we did with Chris Guest, to our six glorious years on 'Schitt's Creek,' I cherished our working relationship, but most of all our friendship. And I will miss her."

O'Hara enjoyed a late-career renaissance that led to a serious role in HBO's post-apocalypse drama, The Last Of Us, for which she was nominated for an Emmy.

Pedro Pascal, her costar, said on Instagram: "There is less light in my world, this lucky world that had you."

Starring in The Studio as Patty Leigh, O'Hara received both Emmy and Golden Globe nominations.

O'Hara's career was launched at the Second City theatre in Toronto, where she was born, in the 1970s.

It was there that she first worked with Eugene Levy, who would become a lifelong collaborator - and her Schitt's Creek co-star.

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While at Second City, she helped create the sketch comedy show SCTV - in which both she and Levy appeared - and which helped launch the careers of other top Canadian comedians, including Andrea Martin and Martin Short.

I cannot hold a note or even reliably maintain a beat, yet in 30 seconds I can now make an entire pop song, lyrics and all.

Or a soul song. Or a metal track. Whatever comes to mind - you just tell the AI engine what you want and it does the rest. The output might be a little generic, but as far as listeners are concerned it's indistinguishable from the real thing.

Even people far more musically aware than me cannot tell the difference between human and artificial songs. The musical Turing Test has been well and truly passed.

AI music is a perfect example of the power of artificial intelligence to take complicated tasks and automate them to a standard that was unimaginable only a few years ago.

Yet, as ever with technology, removing friction comes with a cost.

I have spent the last few months investigating AI music. What has emerged is a picture of a vast attempted fraud, as technologically-equipped criminals use AI tools to try and take billions of pounds away from real-life musicians.

The fraud takes place in two stages which sound like something from a science-fiction novel, but are now part of everyday life in the hidden world of the internet economy.

First, the fraudsters make huge amounts of AI music. Then, they build bots to stream that music over and over again and thereby make some royalties.

Yes, this is a case of robots listening to robot music. The defence? More robots. Let me explain.

Thanks to the ease with which AI music can be made, production of it is already reaching an industrial scale.

The best figures we have on the number of AI tracks being released come from Deezer, a streaming site which is the French equivalent of Spotify or Apple Music. It estimates that 60,000 fully AI tracks are being uploaded to its site every day, over a third of all production.

To put that into context: in 2015 the entire US music industry made around 57,000 songs.

A decade later, Deezer is set to receive 21 million AI tracks a year - and this is a conservative estimate, because the scale of AI music production is growing by the month.

"It's a way to totally flood the music streaming services," says Romain Hennequin, head of research at Deezer, who has developed an algorithm to detect AI music being uploaded to the platform, picking up tiny features of the music which are inaudible to the human ear.

The tracks themselves are not actually fraudulent, but the behaviour around them is.

Someone will upload an AI track then use an automated system - a bot - to listen to a song again and again in order to make royalties from it.

This isn't a minor aspect of AI music perpetrated by a few bad apples.

According to Thibault Roucou, Deezer's head of royalties, "the vast majority of the listeners of this content is in fact what we call stream manipulation or fraud".

His algorithms, which pick up unnatural activity on the platform in the same way that a bank looks for unusual activity around payments, suggest that as much as 85% of all listens on fully AI music are fraudulent.

This is not just an issue for Deezer, but also for artists, because of the way that payments work on streaming services.

There is no set price for a single stream; instead, artists get paid from a common royalty pool depending on the proportion of streams they get.

This means that if someone generates a huge number of streams, they will take money away from everyone else, by reducing the amount in the common pool.

The sums involved are extremely large. "We detect 8 to 9% of the stream as being fraudulent," says Alexis Lanternier, CEO of Deezer.

"If you implement this 8% to the world of music, it's roughly a few billion dollars, two to three."

'An ongoing battle'

Deezer says it is identifying the bots using their own automated systems in order to prevent the tracks they stream from generating royalties, but the fraudsters are always looking for new ways to get past the defences.

"It's an ongoing battle," says head of royalties Roucou.

"I think we will not lose, but we will not win anyway because they will continue to improve, and we will also. And we hope we will be able… to prevent them from taking too much money from other artists."

When I spoke to human artists about the situation, they were shocked.

"As artists, we get such a small fraction of the money that we actually deserve to get because of the streaming system. And for that to just be getting cut shorter and shorter and shorter through robots… it makes my blood boil," says folk musician Lila Tristram.

"The music industry needs to get their hands around this a little bit, otherwise it could rapidly get quite out of control," says Aidan Grant, founder of music production agency Different Sauce.

But what can be done? The genie of AI music is out of the bottle now, so currently the debate is on the best way to alert consumers and musicians.

Deezer have decided to label fully AI tracks as AI, but right now they are the only streaming site to take this approach.

Spotify, the world's biggest streaming service, has opted against it, for fear it might stigmatise musicians who used AI, a potential problem for a future in which every track is made using some kind of artificial assistance.

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Neither YouTube nor Apple Music label AI tracks. YouTube said it asks creators to mark AI as AI if it looked realistic. Apple didn't respond to a request for comment.

Where Spotify has joined Deezer is in trying to block the flood of AI music and fraudulent streams.

Last year, it removed 75 million spam tracks, many of which will have been AI. For context, Spotify's whole catalogue stands at 100 million.

The one silver lining for musicians? Although some AI tracks have gathered a lot of hype and generated millions of streams, so far there is no great appetite for it outside the occasional one-off viral hit - and of course the fraudsters.

It seems that music still needs to be played and promoted by someone with genuine personal appeal for it to find a meaningful audience. The human connection matters… for the moment anyway.

That has been the entire tenor of his three-day visit to China as the former human rights lawyer-turned prime minister seeks tor reset Britain's relationship with China.

Ask him about Donald Trump's warning that it's "very dangerous" for the UK to seek closer ties with China, and Starmer swerves.

Ask him about the plight of the pro-democracy campaigner Jimmy Lai, imprisoned in Hong Kong, and he says the issues has been raised, but he doesn't want to go into it.

Ask him whether he agrees with Mark Carney critique that the middle powers need to work together to counter the rise of great powers - the US and China, he distances.

He is, if you like, making pragmatic choices to find favour with the big beast nations - be it on Jimmy Lai, or the building of a super embassy for China, or allowing Trump to troll him on a variety of subjects according to his fancy. Starmer keeps his head down and ploughs on.

His supporters say this pragmatism delivers results, be it a better trade deal with the US, or the prospect of great investment and trade with the world's second-biggest economy China.

His detractors argue that the UK is supine and the prime minister is leaving his country to the mercy of much bigger powers.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney sees a third way.

"Great powers can afford, for now, to go it alone. They have the market size, the military capacity and the leverage to dictate terms. Middle powers do not. The middle powers must act together, because if we're not at the table, we're on the menu," he told the annual Davos summit earlier this month.

As Trump comes for Carney - his recent visit to China and narrow trade deals prompted Trump to threaten 100% tariffs - Starmer ducks for cover.

When I asked him in Shanghai whether he agreed with Carney's critique of the shifting global order, well he does not.

"I've talked to Mark Carney a lot, but we're living in a very volatile world.

"My compass is always the national interest of the United Kingdom, and I'm very clear that that means that we maintain and build on our close relationship with the US; that we build a stronger and closer relationship with Europe, but that we also are confident and engaging outwardly and that means with China."

"I take the view that it's in the UK's national interest to maintain our relationship with the US.

"It's close on defence, security, intelligence, actually on trade and prosperity as well.

"On Europe, I want to do more on defence and security and one trade. But on the outgoing world, I mean China as well. We need to be outward, engaging. And that's been the stance of the government since the beginning."

As Starmer tows a line, Trump is rattled by the behaviour of allies.

"I think its very dangerous for them to do that," he said when asked about the UK seeking closer ties with China.

But he reserved most of his ire for Canada: "It's even more dangerous, I think, for Canada to get into business with China. Canada is not doing well. They're doing very poorly, and you can't look at China as the answer."

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But the UK is looking to China as part of the answer as it deepens trade ties, and the three-day tour was an exercise in trying to put differences aside as Starmer seeks a reset that the UK needs more than Beijing.

Starmer comes away from China with sanctions on six parliamentarians, barred from visiting China for speaking out on human rights issues, lifted. There is a tariff cut on whiskey imports from 10% to 5%, and the deal in principle for visa-free travel for up to 30 days - a big win for business.

It is, the No 10 delegation says, "not a one-and-done trip", but the beginning of a deeper reset.

The prime minister told me that he hoped President Xi would visit in the UK in 2027 when it hosts the G20. It will be the first time in over 10 years that the Chinese leader has set foot on British soil.

But the reasons for freezing relations remain.

For all the warm handshakes and words, there are deep differences and areas of discomfort between Britain's democracy and China's autocracy.

Rifts between the two nations were in part caused in response to China's crackdown in Hong Kong.

The imprisonment of British pro-democracy campaigner Jimmy Lai remains a contentious issue. Keir Starmer says he raised the matter with President Xi.

When I asked if he specifically raised Lai's name, he said yes. But as for Lai's release, the PM said he wouldn't get into the deals.

"I am absolutely clear about, the raising, the manner in which we raised it and the importance of raising it. What you can't do is sit back at home with your head in the sand saying, I'm not going to talk to you…if you're just sitting outside the room, refuse to engage, you can't even have the conversation."

But there are plenty of opponents back home who disagree with the engagement.

Nusrat Ghani, one of the five MPs sanctioned in 2021, posted on X: "MPs agreed that the Chinese Communist Party was orchestrating a genocide against the Uyghur people. The sanctions were meant to intimidate us MPs and prevent us from doing our jobs without fear or favour. Bartering our MP sanctions doesn't change those facts nor help others in the UK targeted by CCP and sanctioned by them."

Kemi Badenoch, the Conservative leader, has also been highly critical, concerned about national security, the crackdown on political freedoms in Hong Kong and Chinese "undermining" of the UK economy - be it through cheap Chinese goods that undermine British manufacturing, overreliance on Chinese technology or Chinese influence in critical infrastructure.

So when the UK hailed a $15bn (£12bn) investment in AstraZeneca on the trip over, having paused a £200m investment at a Cambridge research site last September which was due to create 1,000 jobs, shadow business secretary Andrew Griffith was blunt in his assessment.

"AstraZeneca's a great British company but under this government it's investing everywhere in the world other than its UK home. When we are losing investment to communist China, alarm bells should be ringing in No 10 Downing Street."

Others ask what has he actually come back with? He has not secured the scale of trade deals struck by PM Carney, and I am told by one person in the UK delegation that after Britain's snub of President Xi, it will take some time to rebuild ties.

But for Starmer, the prize is deepening economic ties, more investment and trade.

For a British prime minister struggling to grow this economy, drumming up more business with the world's second largest economy - even if you don't much like its political system, or choice of allies such as Russia - can be chalked up as a win.

You can perhaps swallow some of that if you can agree, as Starmer did on Thursday, to launch a "feasibility study" on a bilateral services pact.

The UK had a £10bn surplus in services with China in the year to last June. It is a market ripe for growth.

For this former human rights lawyer turned self-avowed pragmatist, drumming up business will both take priority over obvious differences around human rights, espionage and China's continued support of Russia during the years of war in Ukraine.

Carney argues that middle powers need to push back the superpowers, but Starmer seems happy to try to comply. It matters less to him if he is at the mercy of the US or China, if it means he can help deliver back home.

The Chinese will next month welcome in the year of the horse in 2026, a creature which in their zodiac represents action, speed and breakthrough.

Starmer is going to need all of that in spades if he is to usher in a year that will cut the cost of living back home.

He will leave Shanghai with the hope that this visit might help - but it's going to require a lot more work, not just with Beijing, but with his other superpower too.

The space agency's Artemis II mission will take the crew further than humans ‍have ever ventured in space before.

The mission is planned for as soon as 6 February, but take-off depends on some pretty important factors.

Here is everything you need to know.

What is the Artemis programme?

Artemis is NASA's lunar exploration programme.

It aims to return humans to the moon for the first time since the last lunar landing in December 1972, which was the last mission of the Apollo programme.

The Artemis missions are part of NASA's long-term plans to build a space station - called Lunar Gateway - where astronauts will be able to live and work and prepare for missions to Mars.

Artemis I launched in November 2022. It involved sending an empty Orion crew capsule to circle the moon to ultimately test NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket.

The programme is the pinnacle of renewed interest in the moon (after funding waned in the 1970s).

It is also America’s best effort to beat the likes of China in the space race to return to the moon.

The rocket and spacecraft

The SLS that will take the crew around the moon was unveiled by NASA on 17 January.

The enormous rocket took a painstaking 11.5 hours to travel four miles from the hangar to the launch pad at the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida.

The rocket is taller than Big Ben - standing at 98m - and is in two main sections.

The core stage, which includes the fuel tanks, contains two million litres of hydrogen and 750 million litres of oxygen, frozen so that the gases become liquid.

When mixed and ignited, the chemical reaction produces vast amounts of steam that is forced out of the engine nozzles at 10,000mph.

Clamped to the core stage are two boosters. Just one of these produces the same thrust as 14 jumbo jets and together they produce 75% of the power in the first two minutes of flight.

Once the rocket reaches orbit, the boosters will fall away, leaving the upper stage containing the Orion crew capsule - which has everything the crew need to eat, sleep and exercise - to continue.

NASA says the SLS is the only rocket capable of sending astronauts, cargo and the Orion capsule directly to the moon in a single flight, but a mission like that doesn't come cheap.

The SLS rocket programme has cost $23.8bn since its inception in 2011, according to data from the Planetary Society. The Orion space capsule has cost $20.4bn over 10 years since the programme started.

Coupled with the cost of ground infrastructure, NASA has spent a total of $49.9bn on the programme between 2006 and their first test launch in 2022.

The price tag per-launch is roughly $4bn, according to Space.com.

What will happen during the mission?

During the 10-day mission, the crew on Artemis II will test life support, navigation and communication systems to confirm everything operates as it should in deep space.

Many of these tests will be completed while the capsule is still in the Earth’s orbit, so that the astronauts are closer to home in the event of anything going wrong.

The capsule will then enter Earth’s high orbit where the crew will manually pilot Orion before control is handed back to controllers at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.

The astronauts will then spend four days circling the moon, travelling approximately 4,600 miles beyond its far side before returning to Earth and splashing down in the Pacific Ocean.

How successful the mission is will be critical in bringing NASA one step closer to landing astronauts on the moon, the goal of Artemis III.

This third stage is currently aimed to launch in mid-2027.

Who will be on board?

Artemis II's crew consists of three American astronauts and a Canadian.

Scroll across and click on the squares to find out more about each astronaut.

On 23 January the crew entered quarantine - also known as the health stabilisation programme - which ensures they do not pick up any illness before take-off.

The astronauts typically start quarantine 14 days before a scheduled launch, but are able to come out again if it is cancelled - which could still happen in this case.

What could delay the launch?

Weighing on the 6 February launch date is the outcome of a key wet dress rehearsal, which happens four days prior and simulates the launch countdown to catch any snags or issues before flight.

Artemis launch director Charlie Blackwell-Thompson told reporters in January that the wet dress is the "driver" of the launch schedule, adding: "You're going to need a little bit of time to look at the data."

Crucial flaws during a test flight three years ago have already put Artemis II behind schedule.

The test flight in 2022, without humans on board, identified significant problems with the Orion crew capsule's life support system and heat shield, which required design modifications to fix.

The weather could also be the critical factor between a launch or a delay.

NASA has a detailed weather criterion to consider factors including the temperature, wind, precipitation, lightning, clouds and solar activity, to check whether a launch is safe or not.

If there is any rain, the launch will likely not go ahead.

When else could it launch?

Artemis II has three launch windows through to April, timed carefully with orbital mechanics to allow for a complex path around the moon and back.

If the 6 February is called off, the mission could take place on the following dates:

• 7, 8,10,11 February
• 6,7,8,9,11 March
• 1,3,4,5,6,30 April