Rat nests and dead rodents have been discovered on Gene Hackman’s property, after the actor’s wife Betsy Arakawa died of hantavirus – which can be caught from such animals.

The partially mummified remains of Hackman, 95, and Arakawa, 65, were found on 26 February, in separate rooms of their Sante Fe home, along with one of their dogs.

Amid the ongoing investigation, authorities have released a report detailing some of Arakawa’s last emails and internet searches, revealing she was investigating information on flu-like symptoms before she died.

A separate report by the local health department included an environmental assessment that found evidence of the presence of rats throughout many of the buildings on the late actor’s estate.

Arakawa died after developing hantavirus pulmonary syndrome (HPS) around 11 February, a pathologist said.

This is a disease that can be caught from exposure to rodents and includes flu-like symptoms, headaches, dizziness and severe respiratory distress, according to investigators.

The presence of rodents was found in several outbuildings across the property and a live rodent, a dead rodent and nests were found in three other garages.

Live traps were also said to have been found on the property.

There has so far been no confirmation about any potential link between the rodents and the hantavirus disease that claimed Arakawa’s life.

Last internet searches and emails

Arakawa had open bookmarks on her computer which showed she was actively researching medical conditions linked to COVID and flu-like symptoms.

She also mentioned in an email to her masseuse that Hackman had woken up on 11 February with flu-like symptoms so she would reschedule her appointment for the next day “out of an abundance of caution”.

Authorities are expected to release more information soon, including redacted police body camera footage.

The materials were released as the result of a recent court order after the Hackman estate and family sought to keep the records sealed, citing the family’s right to privacy.

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Couple found dead

The two-time Oscar winner was in the advanced stages of Alzheimer’s when he died of heart disease.

It was likely he was alone for around a week with the body of his wife after she had died first.

Dr Heather Jarrell, chief medical examiner for New Mexico, told reporters Arakawa was believed to have died around 11 February.

What is HPS?

HPS, commonly known as hantavirus disease, is a respiratory disease caused by hantaviruses – which are carried by several types of rodents.

It is a rare condition in the US, with most cases concentrated in the western states of New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado and Utah.

The New Mexico Department of Health said hantaviruses are spread by the saliva, droppings and urine of infected rodents, which in North America is most likely to be the eastern deer mouse (Peromyscus maniculatus).

The virus is often transmitted through the air when people sweep out sheds or clean closets where mice have been living, or by eating food contaminated with mouse droppings.

It is not transmissible from person to person, Dr Jarrell said.

The likelihood of death is between 38-50% and there is no cure, treatment or vaccine, but patients have a better chance of survival with an early diagnosis.

Social media influencer Dylan Mulvaney has told Sky News discussion about transgender rights should not be political.

Mulvaney, who documented her own transition in a viral TikTok series, was speaking ahead of a Supreme Court judgment in London on Wednesday about how women are defined in law.

The 28-year-old US social media personality told Sky’s Barbara Serra on The World: “I’ve seen my family completely accept me and love me. And I think that that’s why I haven’t given up on any person or any group of people.”

She also called for “transness” to no longer be a political topic – “because it shouldn’t be”.

“We’re just humans trying our best,” she said.

On Donald Trump’s first day back in office, he signed an executive order directing the US government to recognise only two, biologically distinct sexes – male and female.

And he directed the state department to change its policies to only issue passports that “accurately reflect the holder’s sex”.

The administration has argued the policy does not constitute unlawful sex discrimination, does not prevent transgender people from traveling abroad, and is vital to addressing the concerns the order raised that indeterminate definitions of sex undermine “longstanding, cherished legal rights and values”.

Asked about Mr Trump’s policies, Mulvaney said: “It’s a sad thing to see someone trying to take away the rights of humans that are just trying to live their lives. Again, we’re not monsters. We’re people that have woken up and stepped into our authentic selves. For me, that’s a very camp, fun, feminine human being who also happens to be a woman.

“And I think what I’m now excited [for] is to step into this next chapter of my life and realise that there are so many other trans people who should be speaking on those things. And I’m finding my way in right now, which is through theatre.”

What’s the background to the court case?

The landmark Supreme Court case, where five judges at the UK’s top court heard arguments last November, is the culmination of a challenge brought by For Women Scotland (FWS) over whether trans women can be regarded as female for the purposes of the 2010 Equality Act.

Wednesday’s ruling may have a big influence over how sex-based rights are applied through the act across Scotland, England and Wales, including implications for the running of single-sex spaces.

Campaigners from FWS say sex-based protections should only apply to people who are born female.

They are challenging the Scottish government, which says they should also include trans people with a gender recognition certificate (GRC).

The FWS action is seeking to overturn a decision by the Scottish courts in 2023 which found treating someone with a GRC as a woman under the Equality Act was lawful.

What have the two sides said?

Ruth Crawford KC, for the Scottish government, told the court last November that a person with a GRC, which she said was a document legally recognising a change of sex and gender, was entitled to the “protection” afforded to their acquired gender as set out in the 2010 Equality Act.

But Aidan O’Neill KC, representing FWS, said “sex just means sex, as that word and the words woman and man are understood and used in ordinary, everyday language, used every day in everyday situations by ordinary people”.

Mr O’Neill called for the court to take account of “the facts of biological reality rather than the fantasies of legal fiction”.

The case is the latest in a series of legal challenges brought by FWS over the definition of “woman” in the Gender Representation on Public Boards (Scotland) Act 2018, which mandates 50% female representation on public boards.

Beer brand ad controversy

In 2023, US sales of Bud Light fell and profits dropped following a boycott of the beer brand after it made a promotional deal with Mulvaney.

Many conservatives, including former US presidential candidate Ron DeSantis, stopped buying Bud Light after Mulvaney posted an ad for the brand on her social media account and shared an image of a personalised can.

Mulvaney told Barbara Serra that for “writing my book I really wanted to make good of a really dark situation that was happening when I took an unexpected beer brand ad”.

“And I think that while that was such a dark period of time in my life, and I think a lot of trans people’s lives, I really wanted to show that if you keep going, there is a light at the end of the tunnel, and I’m feeling happy and healthy in my life right now,” she said.

Mulvaney is starring in a new musical in London, called We Aren’t Kids Anymore, starting later this month.

Seven years after allegations against him first emerged online, Harvey Weinstein is back in court.

When the accusations surfaced in late 2017, the American actress Alyssa Milano tweeted: “If all the women who have been sexually harassed or assaulted wrote ‘Me too’ as a status, we might give people a sense of the magnitude of the problem.”

This gave birth to what we now know as the #MeToo movement and a flood of women – famous and not – sharing stories of gender-based violence and harassment.

Weinstein was jailed in 2020 and has been held at New York’s notorious Rikers Island prison complex ever since.

Today, jury selection begins for the case against the 73-year-old, where the original charges of rape and sexual assault will be heard again.

Here we look at why there’s a retrial – and why he will likely remain behind bars – and what has happened to #MeToo.

Why is there a retrial?

Weinstein is back in court because his first two convictions were overturned last April and are now being retried.

In 2020 he was sentenced to 23 years in prison after being found guilty of sexually assaulting ex-production assistant Mimi Haley in 2006 and raping former actor Jessica Mann in 2013.

But in April 2024, New York’s highest court overturned both convictions due to concerns the judge had made improper rulings, including allowing a woman to testify who was not part of the case.

At a preliminary hearing in January this year, the former Hollywood mogul, who has cancer and heart issues, asked for an earlier date on account of his poor health, however, that was denied.

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When the retrial was decided upon last year, Judge Farber also ruled that a separate charge concerning a third woman should be added to the case.

In September 2024, the unnamed woman filed allegations that Weinstein forced oral sex on her at a hotel in Manhattan in 2006.

Defence lawyers tried to get the charge thrown out, claiming prosecutors were only trying to bolster their case, but Judge Farber decided to incorporate it into the current retrial.

Weinstein denies all the allegations against him and claims any sexual contact was consensual.

Why won’t he be released?

Even if the retrial ends in not guilty verdicts on all three counts, Weinstein will remain behind bars at Rikers Island.

This is because he was sentenced for a second time in February 2023 after being convicted of raping an actor in a Los Angeles hotel room in 2013.

He was also found guilty of forcible oral copulation and sexual penetration by a foreign object in relation to the same woman, named only in court as Jane Doe 1.

The judge ruled that the 16-year sentence should be served after the 23-year one imposed in New York.

Weinstein’s lawyers are appealing this sentence – but for now, the 16 years behind bars still stand.

Has #MeToo made a difference – and what’s changed?

“MeToo was another way of women testifying about sexual violence and harassment,” Dr Jane Meyrick, associate professor in health psychology at the University of West England (UWE), tells Sky News.

“It exposed the frustration around reporting cases and showed the legal system was not built to give women justice – because they just gave up on it and started saying it online instead.

“That was hugely symbolic – because most societies are built around the silencing of sexual violence and harassment.”

After #MeToo went viral in 2017, the statute of limitation on sexual assault cases was extended in several US states, giving victims more time to come forward, and there has been some reform of non-disclosure agreements (NDAs), which were regularly used by Weinstein.

This has resulted in more women speaking out and an increased awareness of gender-based violence, particularly among women, who are less inclined to tolerate any form of harassment, according to Professor Alison Phipps, a sociologist specialising in gender at Newcastle University.

“There’s been an increase in capacity to handle reports in some organisations and institutions – and we’ve seen a lot of high-profile men brought down,” she says.

“But the #MeToo movement has focused on individual men and individual cases – rather than the culture that allows the behaviour to continue.

“It’s been about naming and shaming and ‘getting rid’ of these bad men – by firing them from their jobs or creating new crimes to be able to send more of them to prison – not dealing with the problem at its root.”

Dr Meyrick, who wrote the book #MeToo For Women And Men: Understanding Power Through Sexual Harassment, gives the example of the workplace and the stereotype of “bumping the perp”, or perpetrator.

“HR departments are still not designed to protect workers – they’re built to suppress and make things go away.” As a result, she says, men are often “quietly moved on” with “no real accountability”.

The same is true in schools, Prof Phipps adds, where she believes concerns around the popularity among young boys of self-proclaimed misogynist and influencer Andrew Tate are being dealt with too “punitively”.

“The message is ‘we don’t talk about Andrew Tate here’ and ‘you shouldn’t be engaging with him’,” she says. “But what we should be doing is asking boys and young men: ‘why do you like him?’, ‘what’s going on here?’ – that deeper conversation is missing,” she says.

Have high-profile celebrity cases helped?

Both experts agree they will have inevitably empowered some women to come forward.

But they stress they are often “nothing like” most other cases of sexual violence or harassment, which makes drawing comparisons “dangerous”.

Referencing the Weinstein case in the US and Gisele Pelicot‘s in France, Dr Meyrick says: “They took multiple people over a very long period of time to reach any conviction – a lot of people’s experiences are nothing like that.”

Prof Phipps adds: “They can create an idea that it’s only ‘real’ rape if it’s committed by a serial sex offender – and not every person who perpetrates sexual harm is a serial offender.”

Part of her research has focused on ‘lad culture’ in the UK and associated sexual violence at universities.

She says: “A lot of that kind of violence happens in social spaces, where there are drugs and alcohol and young people thrown together who don’t know where the boundaries are.

“That doesn’t absolve them of any responsibility – but comparing those ‘lads’ to Harvey Weinstein seems inappropriate.”

Dr Meyrick says most victims she has spoken to through her research “wouldn’t go down the legal route” – and prosecution and conviction rates are still extremely low.

“Most don’t try for justice. They just want to be believed and heard – that’s what’s important and restorative,” she says.

But specialist services that can support victims in that way are underfunded – and not enough is being done to change attitudes through sex education and employment policy, she warns.

“Until we liberate men from the masculine roles they’re offered by society – where objectification of women is normalised as banter – they will remain healthy sons of the patriarchy.

“We need transformative, compassionate education for young men – and young women. That’s where the gap still is.”