A businesswoman accused of poisoning chocolate-covered raspberries and killing two schoolgirls has appeared in court as Colombian authorities seek her extradition from Britain.

Zulma Guzman Castro, 54, was rescued from the River Thames near Battersea Bridge on December 16 last year after being identified in Colombia as the alleged killer of Ines de Bedout, 14, and 13-year-old Emilia Forero.

The teenagers died several days after eating chocolate-coated raspberries allegedly contaminated with the deadly poison thallium in April last year.

Prosecutors allege the children were killed as an act of revenge following a secret relationship between Castro and Ines’s father, Juan de Bedout.

The 21-year-old brother of one of the victims and another teenage girl also ate the raspberries and required hospital treatment.

The case has attracted intense media attention in Castro’s native Colombia, with several South American correspondents attending the opening of the week-long extradition hearing at Westminster Magistrates’ Court.

District Judge John Zani said: ‘Tomorrow both psychiatrists will give evidence, and an officer from the NCA (National Crime Agency) will address the court.’

Castro, represented by Joel Smith KC, is wanted by Bogota on suspicion of murder and attempted murder.

The businesswoman, who appeared on Shark Tank, Colombia’s version of Dragons’ Den, previously ran the car rental company CarB.

An Interpol Red Notice seeking Castro’s arrest was issued in December after she went on the run.

Her presence in Britain was discovered after she was seen drinking Buxton water during an interview with Colombian television channel Focus Noticias.

Police found her in the Thames and she was taken to hospital with non-life-threatening injuries before being transferred to a psychiatric unit.

Officers from the National Crime Agency’s National Extradition Unit arrested her on January 6.

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Prosecutor Rosemary Davidson previously said: ‘Extradition is requested by the Colombian government on charges of murder and attempted murder.

‘It is an accusation case where extradition is sought for the purpose of a criminal prosecution.’

After Emilia’s death last year, her devastated father, Pedro Forero, shared an agonising message on social media.

Speaking shortly before Colombian prosecutors revealed they had identified a suspect in the horrific case, Mr Forero wrote: ‘Fourteen years ago, a life of hopes, joys and dreams began; a life that filled a family, a father and a mother.

‘But it wasn’t just the joy of someone else’s life; it was the beginning of the life of an excellent human being who had dreams, hopes and goals.

‘As a father, it is incomprehensible to think that someone was capable of taking this away.’

The girls were reportedly spending time at a swanky apartment in Bogota, Colombia, with an older brother and another friend after school when they ate the fatal dessert, said to have been laced with the highly dangerous poison.

The colourless, odourless and tasteless substance is commonly used in the manufacturing of electronics, optical lenses, semiconductors, alloys and radiation detection equipment.

Ines and Emilia are reported to have died four days later, according to Colombian media.

In a gut-wrenching message alongside a photo of Emilia as a baby, Forero added: ‘Daughter, you will always be the greatest love I could ever feel as a father. 

‘No girlfriend or wife could ever generate the love I felt when I had you, and I will carry this love with me until the last day of my life.

‘I love you and will love you for the rest of my life. I miss you. I am sorry I could not protect you from this broken world.

‘Despite the pain, I am glad to have had you in my life. I hope to have one last hug from you, even if it is only in my dreams.’

The New York Times’ final round of polling ahead of this year’s midterm elections presents an especially difficult outlook for Republicans, with Democrats competitive across several major battlegrounds.

Polling conducted by the Times and the Siena Research Institute shows Democratic candidates either ahead or running even in a series of closely watched Senate contests.

In Michigan, Democrat Abdul El Sayed holds a double-digit advantage over Republican Mike Rogers, leading 53 percent to 42 percent in the survey.

The poll was completed before Democrat Haley Stevens announced her endorsement of Rogers on Sunday.

Texas is also emerging as a potential Democratic pickup. James Talarico leads Republican Ken Paxton 50 percent to 43 percent in the race for the Lone Star State’s US Senate seat.

In Maine, Democratic challenger Troy Jackson is ahead of Republican incumbent Susan Collins, 51 percent to 45 percent. The result remains within the poll’s margin of error.

Ohio could deliver another surprise for Republicans. Despite President Donald Trump carrying the state three times, the survey gives Democrat Sherrod Brown a 49 percent to 44 percent lead over Republican incumbent John Husted.

The Times also places Iowa’s open Senate seat within Democratic reach, with Josh Turek narrowly leading Republican Ashley Hinson, 48 percent to 47 percent.

Kansas Republican Roger Marshall is another incumbent the survey projects could lose his seat on Election Day.

Marshall trails Democrat Adam Hamilton by five points, with Hamilton leading 49 percent to 44 percent.

Alaska is also listed as a possible Democratic gain. The polling shows former Democratic lawmaker Mary Peltola ahead of Republican Senator Dan S. Sullivan.

Yet the poll’s methodology included a significant caveat that could affect the projections.

The Times noted that Democrats have once again been participating in its Times/Siena surveys at a considerably higher rate than Republicans during this election cycle.

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In the final battleground surveys, registered White Democrats were approximately 30 percent more likely to complete the poll than registered White Republicans, according to the newspaper.

Trump has traveled extensively in an effort to energize Republican voters, staging a series of campaign rallies across the country. He appeared in Kansas and Iowa on Sunday and is scheduled to speak at Washington, DC’s Lincoln Memorial on Monday.

Still, Trump’s advisers have privately acknowledged that the president cannot be held solely responsible if Republicans deliver a disappointing performance on Tuesday night.

“The president can only do so much,” one Trump political adviser told the Daily Mail. “If we do fall short in the midterms, it’s not because of the president’s lack of trying or lack of effort.”

At rally after rally, Trump has asked supporters to treat the election as though his own name were on the ballot. While he is not a candidate, he has argued that his political legacy is at stake—and that he does not want to enter the final two years of his presidency as a lame duck.

But the blame game has already begun with Trump privately faulting super PAC chief James Blair over campaign spending, Reuters reported earlier this month.

Chief of Staff Susie Wiles has also been beset by leaks suggesting she could be replaced after the election – despite the president declaring there is ‘zero’ chance he fires her.

Trump himself has publicly pointed the finger at rebel GOP Senator John Cornyn and Republican strategist Karl Rove should Ken Paxton fall short in the Texas Senate race, Bloomberg reported last week.

At a rally in Michigan at the end of October, Trump also told voters, ‘You will only have yourselves to blame, and I don’t think there’s any coming back from that either,’ if Republicans lose control of Congress.

In Alaska, Trump has also laid the groundwork for calling the election ‘rigged’ due to two men named Dan Sullivan being on the ballot, including the Republican incumbent.

Republicans currently hold 53 seats in the Senate, and Democrats need to pick up at least four of them to control the upper chamber in the next Congress. 

In the US House of Representatives, Democrats need to flip at least three seats.

A senior EU official has warned that Britain would face “difficult” negotiations if it sought to rejoin the bloc, saying member states remain deeply affected by the way the UK left.

Brussels’ foreign affairs chief Kaja Kallas appeared to signal that the EU will take a tough negotiating stance as she met Defence Secretary Wes Streeting in Belgium this morning.

With Andy Burnham due to attend an EU summit later this month, Ms Kallas indicated that he may have to offer significant concessions to a continent still “traumatised” by Brexit.

Mr Burnham is already embroiled in a major dispute over how far Labour intends to go in reversing the consequences of the 2016 referendum, with divisions emerging even within his own Cabinet.

Mr Streeting, regarded as one of the Cabinet’s strongest Remainers, acknowledged at a press conference in Brussels that EU membership was “not an on and off switch” and that rejoining remained some way away.

Ms Kallas, Estonia’s former prime minister, then said: “There are also many people here in the European Union who have been traumatised by Brexit, so these negotiations will be difficult.

“But we are not there yet.”

Her comments came as reports suggested Mr Burnham was prepared to commit £450million of taxpayers’ money each year to subsidise EU students at UK universities as part of a wider agreement.

The Prime Minister is reportedly willing to provide the money in exchange for Brussels allowing British companies to join its “Made in Europe” programme at an EU-UK summit later this month.

The initiative gives European businesses priority for public contracts and subsidies, while the UK wants carmakers and other manufacturers to be included.

Reports at the weekend also indicated that the number of EU students and young adult workers eligible to come to Britain through a youth mobility scheme had risen to almost 80,000 a year.

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However, offering to cover EU students’ tuition fees is likely to trigger a fierce backlash while British students are already protesting over university costs and the burden of student loans.

At the weekend, former Chancellor Rachel Reeves endorsed the Prime Minister’s approach to potentially strengthening ties with the EU, arguing that Brexit had left the UK “poorer, weaker and less secure”.

Her comments came days after her successor in No11, John Healey, took a more Eurosceptic position.

On tuition fees, a source told The Guardian: “We are willing to give the Europeans what they want on fees, but we will need to secure something significant in return.

“The biggest prize we are pursuing at the moment is access to Made in Europe, so there is a deal to be done.”

Mr Burnham is seeking agreements on food and drink, emissions trading and a youth mobility scheme at the November 20 summit in Brussels.

But he has told ministers that the period beyond that would be to ‘explore options’ for the long-term relationship.

Any options on Britain’s future relationship with Brussels will eventually be put to the public, but the Prime Minister last week warned individual ministers it would not be appropriate ‘to advocate for specific options or opine on the likely outcome of the process’.

In a letter to his Cabinet, Mr Burnham said any ‘fundamental change’ to post-Brexit arrangements would be ‘for the public to decide’ and left to the next parliament.

Ms Reeves, who was sacked as chancellor by Mr Burnham when he took office, said: ‘I am proud of the progress we have already made in strengthening our relationship with the European Union.

‘Brexit has made us poorer, weaker and less secure.

‘There is a debate to be had about our future relationship with Europe, and I welcome Andy Burnham’s leadership in facing up to this. No one in the Treasury ever doubted where my instincts were.’

Although Ms Reeves said she believed ‘Britain’s future lies in the European Union,’ she stressed it was ‘incumbent on supporters of our re-entry to make the argument, demonstrate tangible benefits and to get the next steps right’.

A new scientific discovery could challenge a decades-old theory about how life began on Earth.

For life to develop from non-living chemicals, early Earth would have needed a supply of organic molecules, along with the right conditions for those substances to combine.

One leading explanation has been that icy comets brought large quantities of concentrated chemicals to Earth’s surface.

But researchers at the University of Cambridge now say that scenario is highly unlikely.

Their concern is that most comets travel too quickly and strike the atmosphere at such steep angles that they would not survive the impact intact.

Smaller comets would be shattered by the intense shock, while the delicate organic molecules they carried would almost certainly vaporise before reaching the ground.

As a result, comets may have delivered the raw materials for life only through a rare “one-off fluke”, rather than through the regular bombardment of chemicals once proposed.

Lead author Dr Richard Anslow, of Cambridge’s Institute of Astronomy, said: “It’s kind of a romantic idea, but our results suggest it’s highly unlikely.”

Understanding how life emerged requires scientists to determine where the so-called “feedstock” molecules came from and how they were brought together.

Yet researchers have struggled to explain how these basic ingredients could have become concentrated in quantities high enough to support the chemical processes that led to life.

Dr Anslow told the Daily Mail: “Comets emerged as a promising delivery mechanism based on the observation of Solar System comets showing them to be rich in carbon- and nitrogen-bearing chemicals that we think are important for the origins of life.”

He said the giant icy bodies had effectively become a “get out of jail free card” for scientists trying to explain how Earth received the molecules needed to seed life.

The study, published in the journal Scientific Reports, examined hydrogen cyanide, a feedstock chemical containing hydrogen, carbon and nitrogen.

Hydrogen cyanide has attracted particular interest because it is especially abundant in comets from the outer Solar System and may be durable enough to withstand an impact.

However, new computer modelling indicates that comets could not have supplied anything close to the amount of hydrogen cyanide needed to trigger the chain of chemical reactions associated with the origins of life.

In earlier research, Dr Anslow proposed that comets might lose speed by “bouncing” through systems where planets orbit close to one another, potentially delivering organic molecules along the way.

To test whether that process could have occurred in the Solar System, the team combined the latest comet-impact simulations with computer models examining how comets form and evolve.

The models enabled the researchers to calculate how comets would have approached Earth and determine what would happen when they entered the atmosphere and struck the planet.

‘We found that the typically high speeds that comets impact the Earth at lead to the destruction of the majority of these molecules, meaning that it is not straightforward for these to reach the surface intact,’ says Dr Anslow.

Any comet smaller than 330ft (100m) wide would ‘catastrophically fragment in explosive airbursts at high altitude’, while even kilometre-sized comets would be broken apart.

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After being dissolved in a planet’s worth of water, the concentrations of hydrogen cyanide delivered in this way would be orders of magnitude lower than what is needed to start life’s chemical reactions.

That suggests that comets are an unlikely source for the origin of life, meaning that the feedstock chemicals must have come from somewhere else.

Dr Anslow says: ‘There are many promising alternative hypotheses including their delivery by carbon-rich asteroids, or alternatively these molecules could have been synthesised on the young Earth, not requiring any impacts at all.’

Previous studies suggest that the heat generated by rocky asteroids’ passage through the atmosphere could provide the energy needed to forge these basic chemicals.

On the other hand, some researchers propose that Earth’s basic chemical stockpile could have been created in hydrothermal vents deep under the oceans or near the surface.

However, although scientists say they have ruled out comets as the source of life on Earth, the situation is very different elsewhere in the Solar System.

In fact, the researchers identify Mars as a promising place where comets could have given life a helping hand.

Since Mars is smaller than Earth and currently has a much thinner atmosphere, comets would be much more likely to make it to the planet’s surface during the period of the Solar System’s development when comets were far more frequent visitors.

‘Because comets typically strike Mars at lower speeds than Earth, we found that — at face value — more of these molecules survive impact.

‘However, a big caveat is that there are many uncertainties about early Martian environments, meaning that this isn’t to say successful impacts occurred onto Mars!’

In the future, the researchers say that these findings could help telescopes like the James Webb Space Telescope or the proposed Habitable Worlds Observatory look for life.

By looking for planets where ‘bouncing’ comets could have safely reached the planet’s surface, scientists can narrow down the number of places they need to search.

One week after being unveiled as a “greener, safer, world-class destination,” Sadiq Khan’s pedestrianised Oxford Street has become a lawless shortcut for cyclists, critics claim.

Shoppers, employees and even Transport for London (TfL) enforcement officers say they have been left struggling to stop cyclists who speed through the area before issuing them with a £160 fine.

Bicycles, cars, buses and taxis were barred from half a mile of Britain’s best-known shopping street on October 26. The £150million regeneration project is also expected to bring new benches and trees to the route.

Lord Khan, who has not yet confirmed whether he will seek a fourth term as London Mayor in 2028, said the changes would “revitalise Oxford Street” and help remove its tacky image and links to “dross” American candy stores.

However, cyclists continue to undermine the Mayor’s efforts to transform the street, while buses and taxis diverted onto surrounding roads face severe congestion.

Shoppers, residents and campaigners are demanding an urgent review of the scheme after just one week, warning that cyclists appear willing to ignore signs instructing them to dismount.

The issue was highlighted on Friday night when hundreds of cyclists descended on Oxford Street at the invitation of the guerrilla cycling group Critical Mass.

TfL traffic cameras recorded the mass of bicycles travelling along the route, despite the ban. The group reportedly included dockless hire e-bikes operated by companies such as Forest and Lime, even though both had pledged to stop their bikes functioning on the street.

The gathering also attracted London phone snatchers, who allegedly used the crowd as cover. Witnesses said at least one person had their phone stolen while recording the passing cyclists.

Organisers said enforcement officers did not challenge them, while officers have privately acknowledged that they are largely powerless when cyclists refuse to stop.

Social media has also filled with footage of groups of young cyclists riding along Oxford Street apparently without consequence, forcing pedestrians to stop abruptly to avoid being struck.

In one video filmed last week, cyclists pass through the bollards while a hi-vis enforcement officer looks on. A witness can be heard laughing and saying: “He’s given up.”

One enforcement officer told the Standard that cyclists had responded aggressively, claiming a group of teenagers pushed him while directing racial abuse at him. Another officer said about seven in ten cyclists refused requests to dismount.

Although the Metropolitan Police maintained a highly visible presence on the scheme’s opening day, responsibility for dealing with cyclists ultimately rests with Transport for London.

The Met said it was conducting “visible patrols… regularly throughout the area” to provide support. In the meantime, shoppers and residents have urged TfL to take stronger action.

Local resident Michael Bolt told the Standard: “Pedestrians should not have to dodge cyclists or feel intimidated into moving out of their way.

“Nor should enforcement officers be left powerless to tackle dangerous behaviour. But all of this should have been considered beforehand.

‘Without constant vigilance, a properly funded management plan and effective, enforceable restrictions, the scheme risks becoming a free-for-all.’

One shopper, 55-year-old Damon, added: ‘At the end of the day, if you want to control it, you’ll have to fine people if they don’t abide. I don’t want to see anything bad happen.’

While attempts at civil enforcement against anyone riding their own bikes – or TfL’s own Santander Cycles – appear to be fruitless, cyclists using dockless e-bikes like should be blocked from riding them at full speed in Oxford Street.

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Lime, Voi and Forest had pledged to ‘geofence’ the area so the electric motors on their bikes deactivate in the bike-free zone – but some are still making it through.

Lime previously said it was ‘continuing to refine’ its geofencing, while Voi has insisted that its ‘no ride zones are working as intended’.

Professional hire firm Port, whose customers are largely delivery riders dropping off takeaways, is yet to say whether its vehicles are geo-fenced. Its customers pay £50 a week to hire a bike as they work shifts for the likes of Deliveroo and Just Eat.

The Daily Mail has contacted Lime, Voi, Forest and Port for comment. 

The Mayor of London had been warned well in advance that enforcing a ban on cycling would be all-but-impossible.

More than 600 people and groups who responded to TfL’s consultation on the plans said they were concerned about cyclists ignoring the ban.

But transport bosses insisted that alternate routes, and the sheer number of pedestrians, would ‘significant(ly)… deter cyclists from using Oxford Street’. 

That has not happened – and has come at a cost.

Disability campaigner Mik Scarlett said the anti-terror bollards installed to prevent cars from driving into the pedestrianised zone made navigating Oxford Street in his wheelchair difficult.

He branded the bollards ‘inactive discrimination’, telling the Telegraph: ‘It’s almost like we don’t matter because it’s much more important that everyone remains safe. But we can’t get in there.’

And Bahrain ‘Baha’ Mujagata, thought to be London’s youngest black cab driver, says the streets in the immediate vicinity of Oxford Street are now snarled up with traffic.

Mr Mujagata told the Local Democracy Reporting Service: ‘There (is) so much traffic on Regent Street with nowhere else to go. Sitting through traffic that I used to bypass makes life much harder.

‘Regent Street going northbound is very crowded, with a cycle lane on the left and a central reservation. If a bus picks up passengers, you have to stay behind it. If it’s like that at night, I can only imagine what it’s like during the day.’

The driver said he was not against the pedestrianisation of Oxford Street in principle, but that Lord Khan’s effort was not the way forward.

Mr Mujagata added: ‘We will evolve and get used to it, like whenever they change a road or turn. But drivers who knew how it was before will always remember.’

Susan Hall, leader of the City Hall Conservatives group in the London Assembly, accused the Mayor of ‘pushing through’ the Oxford Street plan with little regard for those who had warned of the consequences.

‘I have said all along that my biggest concern is safety,’ she told the Daily Mail.

‘I went to Oxford Street the other day and around it is gridlock traffic, which is what we said would happen. 

‘And while it is easy for able-bodied people to get around, those with disabilities who need to get a bus to where they’re going (on Oxford Street) now can’t.

‘This has been pushed through by Sadiq Khan because, in my view, he won’t stand again and wants a legacy to leave behind.

‘I hope he doesn’t leave the pride of our high streets crime-ridden by the time he leaves in the next 18 months.’ 

The Mayor of London and Transport for London were contacted for comment.