A former sports teammate of the New Zealand man accused of murdering British backpacker Grace Millane on Tuesday described him as being “creepy towards girls”.

Jesse Kempson was a "weird guy", according to the softball teammate, who said he warned women off spending time with the suspect.

“He was a different sort of character,” said the man, who spoke to the MailOnline on condition his name was not published.

“He was creepy towards girls. His life revolved around girls, taking to girls.”

Mr Kempson, 26, is currently in custody after appearing in court on Monday.

It also emerged on Tuesday that another woman was due to go out on a date with Mr Kempson on the night of Ms Millane’s death.

Ms Millane, from Essex, was last seen at about 9.40pm on December 1 in the company of a man at the CityLife hotel in Auckland, not far from the hostel she was staying at, which is located on the road Mr Kempson lived on.

The woman said she was in contact with Mr Kempson for six months through a dating app and had been scheduled to meet him for the first time on December 1, but had to postpone.

The defendant was listed on a charge sheet as residing at the hotel.

The 30-year-old woman, who said she did not want to be named, told New Zealand media she had been due to meet Mr Kempson on Tuesday this week and wondered why he had not been in touch to confirm a location.

"I’m quite upset," the woman told the Stuff website, saying she had been informed by police on Monday what had happened. "Obviously angels were watching over me."

She said he had seemed like a "decent guy".

"At the time it was just legitimately all normal. The only weird thing I thought about him was that he asked me for feet photos and of me with my high heels on."

It emerged on Monday that Mr Kempson left a comment underneath one of Ms Millane’s Facebook pictures calling her: "Beautiful very radiant" (sic) just 11 minutes before she was last seen.

A former flatmate of Mr Kempson has said she and her friends told him to leave their apartment after two weeks because they felt uncomfortable about him.

The man was very active on dating apps and they started to question what he was doing for work, the woman, who wishes to remain anonymous, told RNZ.

"So we just kinda started to have a few questions after only a couple of days," she said. "We finally built up the courage because it was a bit scary, just us three girls asking him to leave when we felt a little bit uncomfortable with him. But he said that his mother had died and that he was going back to Sydney.

The Telegraph has also learned of how Mr Kempson spent around eight weeks living in a Wellington boarding house in 2011.

Its then owner claims the alleged killer left without ever paying rent, after saying he was playing for the national softball team who had yet to pay him.

“Basically he charmed me. We had conversations and whatnot and he seemed like a pretty lovely guy," he said. "I didn’t jump on him – he was a young guy, I was trying to cut him some slack."

He told the Telegraph that he eventually asked to speak with Mr Kempson’s manager, to get some confirmation of the promised funds’ existence.

He claims that he gave him a fake number, “scribbled down to get me out of his room”. The landlord said he managed to track down a phone number for the Black Sox, who he claimed “had never heard of the guy”.

Police investigating the murder of Ms Millane are looking for a shovel believed to be connected to the inquiry.

Detective Inspector Scott Beard addressed speculation about the case and said the University of Lincoln graduate’s body was found "intact" and said officers were looking for a long-handle shovel.

He said: "At this point we don’t know where this item is".

David Millane, Grace’s father, has flown to New Zealand and visited the place where the body was found.

He took part in a traditional Maori blessing ceremony alongside Ms Millane’s uncle and members of the New Zealand police force.

Conservationists in Indonesia are celebrating after the world’s only known albino orangutan was released into the jungle in Borneo, after being found starving and dehydrated in an Indonesian village.

Alba, as her keepers named her – Spanish for dawn – was rescued in April 2017.

The Borneo Orangutan Survival nurtured her back to health, feeding her and restoring her strength. She tripled in weight over the course of the 20 months she was in their care.

The foundation originally planned to create a 12 acre "forest island" for Alba, rather than release her into truly natural habitat, because of health issues related to her albinism. Veterinarians worried that she would be impaired by her poor sight and hearing, and struggle with the possibility of skin cancer.

But the government’s natural resources conservation agency and other agencies decided it was appropriate to release Alba into the wild because of her strong physical condition and intrinsically wild behaviour.

She will be electronically tracked and regularly monitored by a medical team.

"Alba has no inferiority complex as we imagined before. She is very confident compared to other orangutans," said Agus Fathoni, a vet.

On Tuesday Alba, approximately five years old, was given final medical tests and anesthetized for the journey to the remote jungle reserve.

Workers shouted "Alba’s going home" as her cage was lifted onto a truck at the Nyaru Menteng Rehabilitation Center, in Central Kalimantan province, on Borneo.

And on Wednesday, after a 24-hour journey by vehicle, boat and foot, she was released into the Bukit Baka Bukit Raya national park.

Alba climbed away from her human helpers, scaling the trees, foraging for food and beginning to build a nest.

Conservationists said the major challenge now was protecting her from poachers.

"I think the real threat actually comes from humans,” said Mr Fathoni.

“What we’re worried about is poaching where this very special condition makes her a target."

Patrols of Alba’s new home by national park and conservation agency staff will aim to deter poachers, though they admit the number of personnel is limited.

"We don’t have enough to cover all the area of the national park but we’re confident of covering all the patrol lines that we have set," said Wirasadi Nursubhi, a national park official.

Orangutans, reddish-brown primates known for their gentle temperament and intelligence, are critically endangered and only found in the wild on the Indonesian island of Sumatra and on Borneo, which is divided among Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature, which declared Borneo’s orangutans critically endangered in 2016, says their numbers have dropped by nearly two-thirds since the early 1970s as plantation agriculture destroyed and fragmented their forest habitat.

The Sumatran orangutan is a separate species and has been critically endangered since 2008.

"It’s true this is a big gamble,” said Jamartin Sihite, chief executive of the orangutan foundation, after releasing her from the cage.

“But we hope that with our collaboration we will win the big bet we have made today." 

Donald Trump, the US president, has said he would intervene in the case of arrested Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou if it would help secure a trade deal with Beijing. 

“If I think it’s good for the country, if I think it’s good for what will be certainly the largest trade deal ever made – which is a very important thing – what’s good for national security – I would certainly intervene if I thought it was necessary,” he said in an interview on Tuesday with Reuters.

Ms Meng, 46, the chief financial officer of the Chinese telecoms giant and daughter of its founder, was granted a £6m bail deal, also on Tuesday, by a Canadian court while she awaits an extradition hearing to the US following her arrest on December 1 at Vancouver airport. 

She has been accused of conspiracy to defraud banks after the company allegedly violated sanctions against Iran. The charges have been denied. 

China on Sunday summoned the US ambassador to Beijing to lodge its “strong protests”, calling the case “extremely egregious.”

Her contentious arrest comes amid an increasingly bitter trade dispute between Washington and Beijing, and the growing row over the case destabilised stock markets further last week. 

Ms Meng’s detention has also soured Beijing’s relations with Canada, with China warning Ottawa of “grave consequences” if she was not immediately released. 

China’s arrest on Monday of Michael Kovrig, a former Canadian diplomat, immediately prompted speculation of a retaliatory move by Beijing. 

The detention of Mr Kovrig, a China expert currently working for the International Crisis Group as its North East Asia adviser, was being taken “very seriously” said Justin Trudeau, the Canadian prime minister. 

China’s foreign ministry on Wednesday said it had no information about his case, but then claimed that the ICG, where Mr Kovrig is a Hong-Kong-based analyst, was not registered in China and that its activities in the country were illegal. 

“I do not have information to provide you here,” spokesman Lu Kang said when asked about Mr Kovrig.

“If there is such a thing, please do not worry, it is assured that China’s relevant departments will definitely handle it according to law.”

Because Mr Kovrig’s organisation is not registered as a nongovernmental organisation in China, “once its staff become engaged in activities in China, it has already violated the law,” Mr Lu said, in comments reported by the Associated Press. 

He also repeated China’s demand for the immediate release of Ms Meng, whose company has strong connections to the country’s government and military. 

“Our request is very clear, that is, the Canadian side should immediately release the detained Ms. Meng Wanzhou and to protect her legitimate rights and interests,” he said.

Mr Kovrig was previously a diplomat in China and elsewhere. His current employer said he was taken into custody by the Beijing Bureau of Chinese State Security, which handles intelligence and counterintelligence matters, during one of his regular visits to China’s capital. 

Rob Malley, president of the Brussels-based group, said Canadian consular officers had not been given access to Mr Kovrig, who he believed had travelled to Beijing on personal matters. 

His sudden detention sent chills through the foreign charity, research and journalist communities, many of whom rose to his defence on social media. 

“Those who track human-rights cases in China worry that people around the world are becoming numb to their concerns,” wrote journalist Joanna Chiu, who declared herself to be a friend of Mr Kovrig, in the Vancouver Star. “Please, pay attention to what is happening with Michael’s case.”

In her opinion piece, Guy Saint-Jacques, a former Canadian ambassador to China, said he believed the case was “part of China’s efforts to put pressure on Canada on the Huawei case.”

Others pointed to similarities with the arrest of Canadians Julia and Kevin Garrett in 2014, in a move widely seen as a reprisal for Canada’s apprehension of Chinese citizen Su Bin, who was later sentenced by the US to nearly four years in prison for his role in the hacking of technical data for military aircraft. 

Meanwhile, what appeared to be a screenshot of a bailed Ms Meng, who may now reside in one of her luxury Vancouver properties, thanking Huawei and her country, generated praise on Chinese social media. 

In a statement on Sina Weibo, China’s answer to Twitter, Huawei stressed it had complied with all international laws and sanctions.  

“We look forward to a timely and fair closure of this incident from the American and Canadian governments… We believe the Canadian and American legal systems will draw a fair conclusion.”

Additional reporting: Paula Jin

A group of Italian mayors has rebelled against Matteo Salvini, the country’s hardline interior minister, by refusing to implement stringent new laws on the treatment of asylum seekers.

The mayors of Palermo, Naples, Florence and Parma said that a controversial security law, passed by the populist coalition in November, violates the basic rights of migrants and refugees.

The law prevents migrants from seeking residency permits while they are waiting for their asylum applications to be considered, meaning that they cannot access services such as health care, housing and schools for their children.

The mayors are threatening to block the implementation of the law in their cities, in a major challenge to the populist coalition, which came to power in June.

The clash comes after Italy’s president, Sergio Mattarella, called for an end to the rancour prevalent in Italian politics and warned against the dangers of whipping up xenophobia, in a New Year’s Eve address that was watched on television by 10 million Italians.

Leoluca Orlando, the centre-Left mayor of Palermo, said the security decree was “inhumane”.

That earned him a rebuke from Mr Salvini, whose policy of closing ports to migrant rescue boats has proved popular among a large section of the Italian electorate.

“With all the problems there are in Palermo, the mayor gets it into his head to stage civil disobedience on immigrants," said Mr Salvini, who is also deputy prime minister and leader of The League, the hard-Right party that governs in alliance with the Five Star Movement.

“Mayors on the Left should be thinking about their citizens who are in economic difficulty, not illegal migrants.”

He accused the mayors, some of them members of the opposition Democratic Party, of trying to overturn a law that had been passed by parliament.

“The security decree, a law of good sense and civilisation, was approved by the government and parliament, and signed by the president of the republic," he said.

He threatened to choke off government funding to cities that refused to impose the new law and said the mayors could face legal proceedings.

Mr Orlando denied that he and other mayors were engaging in “civil disobedience”.

They simply wanted to ensure that “constitutional rights that are guaranteed for all those who live in our country.”

Dario Nardella, the mayor of Florence, said the security law made a mockery of humanitarian rights, while Luigi de Magistris, the mayor of Naples, said the city would continue to grant residency to asylum seekers.

Left-leaning mayors have clashed with Mr Salvini before, notably last summer when he ordered the closure of Italian ports to NGO ships that rescued migrants and refugees in the Mediterranean.

The mayors of several port cities, including Messina, Reggio Calabria, Naples and Palermo, tried to defy the order, saying they would gladly welcome rescued migrants.

The initiative would have required the collaboration of the Italian coast guard, which is under the jurisdiction of the government, and so came to nothing.

On Thursday, Mr de Magistris revived the idea and said Naples would be willing to accept a rescue ship run by a German NGO, Sea Watch.

The ship has been in limbo in the Mediterranean for 13 days with 32 rescued migrants on board, after several countries denied it access to their ports.

Amid bad weather and rough seas, many of the migrants on board are suffering from severe seasickness and dehydration.

Over the last five years, more than 600,000 migrants and refugees have reached Italy by boat from the coast of North Africa, the vast majority of them setting out from Libya.

The pace of arrivals has slowed dramatically since the coalition closed Italian ports to rescue boats.

Last year, 23,000 migrants reached Italy – around a fifth of the number who arrived in 2017 when nearly 120,000 crossed from Libya.

Virgin Galactic has successfully sent its test pilots into space, marking a major milestone in the race for commercial space travel and sparking emotional scenes among those back down on Earth.

Sir Richard Branson, watching with his son Sam, admitted he shed more than a few tears as the space craft flew to 51.4 miles, or 271,268 feet.

Although the exact height of where space begins is debated, Nasa say it begins 50 miles above ground, and an official from the Federal Aviation Agency was on hand to welcome the two test pilots back to Earth, and invite them to Washington DC to receive their astronaut wings.

The flight marks the first time that man has reached space from US soil since the end of…