Romanian orphanage film-maker shot dead in US

A documentary film-maker whose work rescuing children from squalid Romanian orphanages in the early 1990s inspired Virgin tycoon Sir Richard Branson to take up the cause, has been shot dead after a dispute with a neighbour over foliage.

The San Diego county sheriff’s department said Michael Vilkin, 61, had been arrested on suspicion of the murder of John Upton, 56, of Encinitas, California.