The Olympic opening ceremony presents the host country with the opportunity to wow the world with a uniquely spectacular show.

The opening of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games was just that – the organisers ditched the traditional ceremony, and became the first Games to hold the opening event within a city as a whole rather than in a stadium.

Thousands of athletes and performers paraded along the River Seine on a wet evening, before the night sky and the Eiffel Tower were lit up in dramatic technicolour, creating a hugely ambitious, one-of-a-kind spectacle.

Below are some of the most eye-catching photos from the night.

After a three-month journey from Greece to Paris, the Olympic torch was handed to former French footballer Zinedine Zidane, before being passed on to tennis stars Rafa Nadal and Serena Williams.

In an epic climax, French judo great Teddy Riner and sprinter Marie-Jose Perec used the Olympic torch to ignite a cauldron powering an enormous hot air balloon.

The giant, glowing balloon then flew over the city of Paris to signal the start of the greatest show on Earth.

The opening ceremony began with a stunning display of coloured smoke resembling the French flag rising over the Pont d’Austerlitz.

Fans and spectators were in keen attendance, and – for the most part – were undeterred by the wet weather.

French President Emmanuel Macron was watching alongside President of the International Olympic Committee Thomas Bach.

UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer was also spotted watching the ceremony, seemingly well-prepared for the rain.

Various celebrities attended the evening, including American singer Ariana Grande with her British Wicked co-star Cynthia Erivo.

As expected there was a heightened security presence, with tens of thousands of police deployed across the city.

Throughout the event, a mystery masked torchbearer was running and parkour-ing their way through the city on riverside rooftops.

Fleets of team boats, with countries from all around the world, sailed down the Seine, flying their flags with pride.

British diver Tom Daley and rower Helen Glover bore the flag for Team GB.

The event was interspersed with elaborate performances of all kinds, from Lady Gaga, cabaret performers, ballet dancers, acrobats to a finale from Celine Dion, a distant figure on stage halfway up the Eiffel Tower.

Tears welled in Tasha Porttin’s eyes as she reminisced on the sheer beauty of the place she’s called home for 10 years.

Jasper’s mountain peaks and the picture-perfect pine trees that frame its vivid baby-blue lakes make it a popular tourist destination attracting millions each year. The natural beauty and small businesses, like the pharmacy she started, make the quaint alpine town in Canada’s Alberta province a jewel of the nation.

It’s a “place that has the biggest heart of any community I’ve met”, she said through tears. “It grabs people and never lets go.”

Those memories have now been replaced by an evolving nightmare. An out-of-control blaze has levelled about 33% of the buildings in the Canadian Rockies resort town, and fire crews are still working to douse the flames that have already burned 89,000 acres (36,000 hectares).

Rain tamped down the fire on Thursday night, and no new blazes have started in the last day, officials said in an update on Friday. But winds were expected to pick up and hot, dry weather is forecast to return by Monday.

Out of a total of 1,113 structures in the town of Jasper, 358 have been destroyed, according to town officials, who added that it may be weeks before residents can return home.

But “all critical infrastructure in Jasper was successfully protected” – including schools, a hospital, and a water treatment plant.

Jasper Mayor Richard Ireland said his own home may have been destroyed by the fire. “Where the fire did the most damage, that’s where my home is”.

“How I will react remains to be seen.”

The mayor said despite preparation and years of training, the nature of the fire “humbled the humans on the ground”.

He added that “nature prevailed” with 100m (328 ft) high walls of flames that were metres wide.

Ms Porttin rushed to flee the area in a camping trailer that her husband bought less than a month ago. She has been monitoring the fire, waiting with concern as buildings nearby crumble.

“I have seen images of it standing,” she said of her business. “Unfortunately, the buildings next to it are not. That’s pretty much all I know.”

“It’s just surreal to think our downtown is not the way we left it.”

Canadians and elected officials have described a deep sense of grief and a devastating cultural loss as the area continues burning.

Sitting just north of the more popular Banff National Park, Jasper National Park is the largest in Canada’s Rocky Mountains.

The Unesco World Heritage Site is home to elk, grizzly bear, moose and bison.

The adjacent town of Jasper has a population of around 5,000, but has around a dozen hotels to accommodate the roughly 2.5 million people who pass through to visit the park.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called the area a “special and cherished place” for many Canadians.

Karyn Decore, whose family has owned the historic Maligne Lodge over 60 years, has been receiving condolences from around the country since learning it was destroyed as the fire swept through town.

In an interview on Friday, she said she has always loved sharing the Canadian “icon” with international visitors, calling it “one of the most famous national parks in the world”.

“People understand the beauty, and the power, and the magic of Jasper National Park,” she says, recalling her lifetime of wildlife viewing, mountain biking, fishing and skiing in Jasper.

Ms Porttin said she loves watching visitors fall in love with Jasper. Most who end up moving to the town have a similar-sounding origin story.

“Most people say I came for a summer, and I stayed the rest of my life,” she says. “It grabs people and never lets go.”

Town residents, she says, enjoy meeting people from around the world as they come and “fall in love with the place that we love”.

Ms Porttin said she rushed to leave as the blaze closed in. She said the recently bought camping trailer was already stocked with some necessary supplies.

“Without that,” she said, “I don’t know what we would have done.”

Along with her four-year-old, she had only 30 minutes to pack on Monday.

Her husband was away, so a friend who owned a truck came over, and hooked up the trailer so they could all flee.

The two families spent two nights camped out together before her husband was able to join them.

“As much as you think you’re prepared, you’re never prepared to leave,” she said.

The destruction is expected to have a steep economic cost, as tourists stay away during the height of travel season.

Ms Decore says her now-destroyed hotel is normally 100% occupied from May to October every year. Now, all of the tourists and staff have evacuated the area, and they don’t know when they may return.

Park officials estimated that a power outage in the town last year, which lasted two weeks, deprived local businesses of some $10m in revenue.

It remains to be seen how long it will take to restore the resort, as well as the pristine ecology that helps make the majestic park a pride of Canada.

Meanwhile, there are currently 51 wildfires burning “out of control” around the Alberta province, forcing some 17,000 Albertans to flee.

Justin Timberlake’s lawyer has said the popstar was “not intoxicated” when he was arrested by police officers last month for driving under the influence.

The 43-year-old pop star was detained in New York for running a stop sign and failing to stay on the right side of the road.

His first court hearing took place on Friday, where his lawyer Edward Burke said police made “a very significant number of errors” in the case.

“The most important fact to know about this case is that Justin was not intoxicated and should not have been arrested for DWI,” he added.

Speaking outside Sag Harbor Village Justice Court, Mr Burke said Timberlake “respects law enforcement” and cooperated with the police officers at all times.

“But the fact remains, he was not intoxicated and they made an error in arresting him for it. We are confident that this charge will be dismissed.”

Timberlake was not present at the hearing as the date clashed with the start of his Everything I Thought It Was world tour, kicking-off at the Tauron Arena in Krakow.

He will be re-arraigned virtually in court next month.

The arrest occurred in Sag Harbor in the Hamptons, a popular summer destination for celebrities on Long Island.

When officers stopped him, Timberlake’s eyes were “bloodshot and glassy” and a “strong odour of an alcoholic beverage was emanating from his breath”, according to a charging document.

His speech was slowed and he performed poorly on the officers’ sobriety tests, the document said.

He also refused a breathalyser test, it added.

“I had one martini and I followed my friends home,” Timberlake allegedly told the officer who stopped him, according to the BBC’s US partner CBS News.

Timberlake has previously spoken openly about seeking help for excessive drinking.

In New York, penalties for charges related to driving while intoxicated include up to a year in jail, a $1,000 (£786) fine and the suspension of a driver’s licence for at least six months.

French rail company SNCF has warned that disruption from Friday’s sabotage against the country’s train network could last until the end of the weekend and affect hundreds of thousands more passengers.

Coordinated arson attacks on three lines of the high-speed TGV network on Friday caused chaos for travellers, hours before the opening ceremony for the Paris Olympics. A fourth attack was thwarted by rail workers.

Prime Minister Gabriel Attal described the attacks as “acts of sabotage”.

About a quarter of international Eurostar trains were also cancelled, with UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer among those affected.

In a statement issued on Friday evening, SNCF said traffic “would improve” on affected lines on Saturday thanks to the work of thousands of rail workers.

It said:

• On the eastern line, trains would run normally from 06:00 (05:00 BST) on Saturday
• On the northern line, 80% of trains would be running, with delays of 1-2 hours
• On the south-western line, 60% of trains would be running, with delays of 1-2 hours

The company added that customers whose trains are delayed or cancelled will be contacted by email or text message.

Eurostar said it expected about a fifth of services over the weekend would be cancelled, while all trains would face delays of around 1.5 hours. Eurostar services use the northern high-speed line.

SNCF said surveillance of the rail network had been strengthened “on land and in the air,” using 1,000 workers and 50 drones.

Junior Transport Minister Patrice Vergriete said around 250,000 people had been affected on Friday, while up to 800,000 could face delays and cancellations by Monday.

He added that disrupting holiday travel, rather than Friday’s Olympic opening ceremony, was the most likely aim of the saboteurs.

“There is not necessarily a link” with the Olympics, he said in an interview.

The last weekend of July is traditionally a busy day for holiday travel.

No group has yet claimed that it was behind the attacks. A source linked to the investigation told the AFP news agency that the operation was “well prepared” and organised by “a single structure”.

Mr Attal said security forces were searching for those responsible.

At around 04:00 on Friday, saboteurs cut and set on fire specialised fibre optic cables essential for the safe functioning of the rail network, government officials said.

One site was at Courtalain, 150km (93 miles) south-west of Paris. A picture posted online purportedly showed burnt-out cables in a shallow gulley with its protective SNCF paving stones discarded.

The SNCF spoke of a “massive, large-scale attack aimed at paralysing” its services, not just at Courtalain but at Pagny-sur-Moselle, a village outside the eastern city of Metz and Croisilles, not far from the northern city of Arras.

Another attempted attack in Vergigny, south-east of Paris, was foiled by SNCF workers who were carrying out maintenance on site in the early hours of Friday.

Prosecutors have opened an investigation into attacks on “the fundamental interests of the nation”.

Donald Trump’s vice-presidential candidate JD Vance has defended resurfaced comments in which he called Democratic politicians a “bunch of childless cat ladies with miserable lives”.

His remarks, made in 2021, have been roundly criticised this week, with Hollywood actress Jennifer Aniston among those to have hit out at the 39-year-old Republican.

“Obviously it was a sarcastic comment. People are focusing so much on the sarcasm and not on the substance of what I actually said,” Mr Vance told the conservative media personality Megyn Kelly on Friday.

“The substance of what I said, Megyn – I’m sorry, it’s true,” he added.

Mr Vance, who has three children, said he was not criticising people who do not have children in the interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, which he gave while running for the Senate.

“This is about criticising the Democratic Party for becoming anti-family and anti-children,” he told The Megyn Kelly Show.

“The simple point that I made is that having children, becoming a father, becoming a mother, I really do think it changes your perspective in a pretty profound way,” he said.

“I’m making an argument that our entire society has become sceptical and even hateful towards the idea of having kids.”

In the original interview, he questioned why some leading politicians did not have children. One of those he named was Kamala Harris, the presumptive Democratic nominee for November’s election, who is stepmother to her husband Doug Emhoff’s two children.

“The entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children,” he said at the time. “How does it make any sense we’ve turned our country over to people who don’t really have a direct stake in it?”

The Senator from Ohio said the country was being run “by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable too”.

On Friday, Mr Vance said: “I wish her step-children and Kamala Harris and her whole family the very best. The point is not that she’s lesser. The point is that her party has pursued a set of policies that are profoundly anti-child.”

Mr Vance made similar remarks against Democrats in a 2021 speech at the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, in which he also said his criticism was not directed at those who could not have children for biological or medical reasons.

Jennifer Aniston, who has spoken publicly about her struggles while trying to have children through in-vitro fertilisation (IVF), was among those who criticised his comments.

“I truly can’t believe that this is coming from a potential VP of the United States,” she said on Thursday.

Pete Buttigieg, who was another Democratic politician named by Mr Vance in the original interview, also addressed the comments earlier this week, speaking about adopting twins with his husband, Chasten.

“The really sad thing is he said that after Chasten and I had been through a fairly heart-breaking setback in our adoption journey,” Mr Buttigieg told CNN’s The Source programme.

Speaking to Fox News, Trump co-campaign chairman Chris LaCivita rejected any suggestion that Trump might regret his choice of running mate.

“JD was the best pick,” Mr LaCivita said. “The president loves him. We love him.”

At a moment of unprecedented turbulence in modern American political history, Kamala Harris is having a remarkably smooth ride. It may not last long.

Tony Fabrizio, Donald Trump’s campaign pollster, calls it a “Harris Honeymoon” – where a combination of good press and positive energy have combined to give the Democrat a surge of momentum.

The thing about honeymoons, of course, is that they come to an end. The realities of married life, or in this case the relationship between Ms Harris and the American voting public, has a way of reasserting itself.

For now, the champagne corks are flying for team Harris and Democrats may be experiencing an unfamiliar emotion – hope. But Republicans, after initially being caught somewhat flatfooted by Mr Biden’s historic announcement, are redirecting their fire at the new presumptive nominee.

Here’s a look at three areas on which their recent attacks have focused – and some ways Democrats may try to deflect them.

The travails of Ms Harris’ unsuccessful campaign for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination are well documented. They include a lack of clear messaging, a campaign rife with internal discord and a candidate who was prone to awkward interviews and gaffes.

Something else happened during the then-senator’s ill-fated presidential bid, however. She – like many of the candidates in that race – tacked sharply to the left, to be more in line with Democratic primary voters.

“There was a lot of pressure on those guys from the activist base,” said Matt Bennett, the executive vice-president for public affairs at Third Way, a centrist Democratic think tank. “When you’re competing in a primary, your political priorities are very different than the sprint to the finish in a general election.”

Over the course of 2019 – in debates and interviews – Ms Harris endorsed scrapping private health insurance for a government-run system. She praised policing reform, including redirecting law-enforcement budgets to other priorities. She endorsed decriminalising undocumented entry into the US and entertained abolishing Ice, the immigration and customs enforcement agency. She backed the sweeping Green New Deal environmental legislation and supported a ban on fracking and off-shore drilling.

Now those positions could come back to haunt her.

David McCormick, a Republican candidate for Senate in Pennsylvania, was quick to produce a television advertisement hitting on Ms Harris’ 2019 positions and tying them to his opponent, Democratic Senator Bob Casey.

And Trump has released a video titled “MEET SAN FRANCISCO RADICAL KAMALA HARRIS” that includes many of the policies she backed during that time.

Conservative commentator Matt Walsh called it a “blueprint” for how to attack the vice-president.

“She can argue, correctly, that good leaders change their position on policy and they don’t change her principles,” Mr Bennett, the Democratic strategist, said. “None of her principles have changed.”

If she doesn’t do that convincingly, she could lose support from independent and undecided voters that will determine the outcome of the election in key swing states.

Polls show the Biden campaign had been floundering for months. His immigration policies were unpopular. Even though inflation has eased and the economy is growing, voters still blamed him for higher prices. His ongoing support for Israel in the Gaza War was sapping his support among young voters.

Ms Harris, in her role as vice-president, will at least be somewhat tied to the entirety of the current administration’s record – for better or for worse.

Republicans are already trying to hang the immigration issue around her neck, labelling her as the administration’s “border czar” – an inaccurate but damaging characterisation that was also used by the media. They cite her past statements on immigration and a claim, during an interview in 2022, that the “border is secure”.

“Kamala Harris is currently only known as a failed and unpopular vice-president who knifed her boss in the back to secure a nomination she couldn’t earn, but voters are about to learn, it gets worse,” Taylor Budowich, who runs the political action committee affiliated with the Trump campaign, said in a statement touting $32m in upcoming television advertisements targeting the vice-president.

According to Mr Bennett, Ms Harris won’t be able to fully distance herself from the Biden record, but she might be able to put it in new light for voters, even in the face of Republican attacks.

“What she can do is make this about the future in ways that were going to be very difficult for an 81-year-old guy to do,” he says. “She can argue that Trump wants only to look backward.”

In the first public rally of her presidential campaign, Ms Harris unveiled a particularly pointed line of attack against the former president. Noting that she had served as a courtroom prosecutor and as California’s attorney general, she said she had faced off against “perpetrators of all kinds”.

“So hear me when I say I know Donald Trump’s type,” she concluded.

Craig Varoga, a Democratic campaign consultant and adjunct instructor at American University, calls the vice-president’s law-enforcement background her “superpower” – one that she was not fully able to use on the Democratic campaign trail in 2019, when policing reform was a top issue.

But Trump’s campaign is already showing signs on how they might respond. His campaign manager, Chris LaCivita, made his bones in the Republican Party by taking on another Democratic candidate’s supposed superpower and turning it against him.

Back in 2004, Democratic nominee John Kerry was touting his record as a decorated Vietnam War veteran as proof that he would be an effective commander-in-chief during the Iraq War. Mr LaCivita spearheaded a series of attack adverts questioning Mr Kerry’s patriotism and heroism, featuring sailors who served with Kerry on a Navy swift boat patrolling the rivers and shorelines in Vietnam.

It gave rise to the term “Swift-boating” – which means to disarm a candidate by attacking their perceived strength.

And it looks like Trump’s campaign is gearing up for attacks on the vice-president’s prosecutorial record.

On one hand, they are hitting her for being too tough – particularly on black men for drug crimes – in an attempt to undermine support from her base. On the other, they are citing instances where Ms Harris either chose not to prosecute or allowed the parole of individuals who went on to commit new crimes.

Mr Varoga concedes that Democrats botched their response to the Swift-boat attacks in 2004, but he says they’ve learned their lesson and Ms Harris will be ready for the onslaught.

“If LaCivita thinks he’s going to fool the entire Democratic establishment again, he can live with that delusion and also lose,” he said.

In his memo, Mr Fabrizio said that Ms Harris “can’t change who she is or what she’s done”. He promised that voters will soon view her as Mr Biden’s “partner and co-pilot” and learn about her “dangerously liberal record”.

The upcoming advertising onslaught, along with Trump’s public statements and rally attacks, will be the tip of this Republican spear.

Meanwhile, Ms Harris and her campaign will work to offer their own definition of who the candidate is and what she stands for.

One particularly effective way to do this, according to Mr Varoga, is with her selection of a vice-presidential running mate.

“It’s the first real decision that a candidate for president makes that’s out there for the public to see,” he said. “That will go a long way toward people understanding what kind of future she’s going to pursue.”

If she opts for a more moderate partner, it could make voters more inclined to believe that she will govern from the centre, rather than as the leftist candidate Republicans make her out to be.

In the weeks ahead, the fight to define Ms Harris – through her word, through her votes and through her past campaigns – will go a long way towards determining how the public views her when they head to the ballot box in November.

It will shape whether the honeymoon ends in heartbreak for Democrats or a union that lasts for the next four years.

• SIMPLE GUIDE: Everything you need to know about the vote
• ANALYSIS: Has Harris got what it takes to beat Trump?
• SWING STATES: Where the election could be won and lost
• EXPLAINER: RFK Jr and others running for president
• VOTERS: US workers in debt to buy groceries

A German man who has been sentenced to death in Belarus for terrorism has been shown in a heavily choreographed interview on state-controlled television, apparently confessing to planting explosives near a railway line.

There is no direct evidence of that in the 16-minute video for which Rico Krieger was filmed, handcuffed, through the metal bars of an oddly pristine and empty cell.

He says he was acting on instruction from Ukraine, though no proof is given.

Krieger is then shown in tears appealing to the German government for help “before it’s too late”.

He is believed to be the first Western citizen ever given the death penalty in Belarus, which is carried out by firing squad.

The emotional and crudely produced video on state TV appears to be part of a campaign of increasing pressure in talks with the German authorities, which some believe may focus on a possible prisoner exchange.

State media say Rico Krieger has not appealed against the verdict, which is extremely rare for someone sentenced to death.

“I’m very surprised,” said Andrei Paluda, a Belarusian campaigner against the death penalty. “I don’t know the circumstances, I can only surmise. But maybe he’s been promised that consultations are ongoing and there might be some kind of swap.”

The unprecedented nature of the case has prompted speculation about links to efforts by Russia, a close ally of Belarus, to free an FSB hitman imprisoned in Germany for the 2019 murder in Berlin of a Chechen-Georgian who fought against Russia.

The deputy spokeswoman for the German foreign ministry declined to comment on such rumours. She also pointed to a history in Belarus of filming staged interviews with prisoners, including opposition activists forced to make confessions to secure their release.

The ministry told the BBC that it was working “intensively” with the Belarusian authorities on behalf of “the person concerned” in this case, but gave no more details citing privacy reasons.

It condemned the death penalty as a “cruel and inhumane form of punishment”.

Last week in Minsk, a foreign ministry spokesman confirmed that a German citizen had been convicted of “terrorism” and “mercenary activity”.

Anatoly Glaz said “a number of options” had been proposed to Berlin, adding that “consultations” were under way.

A profile for Rico Krieger on the LinkedIn platform includes an application for a job in the USA posted last year.

There, he described himself as a 29-year-old Red Cross paramedic from Berlin who had previously worked in security for the US embassy.

He mentioned plans to emigrate to the US and said he had applied for a passport.

A US State Department spokesperson has confirmed to the BBC that Krieger worked for Pond Security, a firm offering security services to US facilities in Germany, between 2015 and 2016. The company itself declined to comment, citing “diplomatic efforts” and privacy.

The German Red Cross also confirmed that Rico Krieger had worked “in the past” for “a district association” of the organisation. A spokesman mentioned his “great concern”, but added that the Red Cross had been told not to comment.

In this story, there are precious few incontrovertible facts.

Officials in Belarus either don’t reply, or reply that they will say nothing – not even to confirm the precise charges.

That may be at least partly due to the political sensitivities. It’s also standard practice in cases involving the death penalty, highly secretive in this authoritarian state.

“I will give you no information,” Vladimir Gorbach, the lawyer who represented Krieger in court, told me by phone. Then he added: “Watch Belarusian official TV. It’s all written there.”

Rico Krieger’s trial appears to have concluded in June. But state-controlled media were silent about this case for weeks. Independent journalists are mostly in exile now, or in prison.

But now it seems information has been fed to faithful state reporters and the order to make a noise has been given.

On Monday, state TV journalist Ludmilla Gladkaya wrote that Krieger had been found guilty on six counts, including an act of terrorism and intentional damage to communication lines.

Citing court documents which the BBC has not been able to obtain, she claimed he had applied to join the Kalinovsky Regiment, founded by Belarusians to fight in Ukraine and designated a “terrorist group” in Belarus.

The journalist claims Krieger was following instructions from the regiment – as well as from Ukraine’s SBU security service – as some kind of initiation process, including in planting the explosives.

The SBU won’t comment, while the Kalinovsky regiment told me only: “He is not our fighter.”

When Belarusian state TV presented its own case – labelling its film the “confession” of a “German terrorist” – it didn’t prove any link to the regiment either.

It showed no communication with the Kalinovsky Regiment.

Instead it displayed screenshots from encrypted email messages which it said were Krieger seeking to sign up with other foreign units in Ukraine. One is supposedly to the II International Legion but a spokesperson there tells me the address is false.

“Perhaps it was created specially for fishing [sic] or something,” they wrote, calling it an act of “fraudulence”.

There are multiple other oddities about this case.

We’ve never heard of foreign volunteers in Ukraine being required to perform “tests” as part of their recruitment, let alone something so risky as set a bomb in Belarus.

There are precious few Western tourists in the country these days. Rico Krieger was never going to blend into the background.

In the propaganda film, he claims he was motivated by the high pay offered to fight in Ukraine. But he then says the monthly salary is around €2,000 (£1,680), less than he was being paid in Germany.

Whilst Krieger writes in good English on LinkedIn, messages attributed to him in the film are barely literate. One reads: “I can’t find the address that me Was given”.

And at one point, the film displays a photo of Krieger from his LinkedIn account. But it’s been doctored, with a Ukrainian flag added to the background for extra impact.

Ludmilla Gladkaya’s article tallies with Krieger’s “confession” for the state TV cameras: that he photographed military sites and railway lines for a handler in Ukraine and was then directed to a rucksack hidden in long grass.

He was told to take it to a railway station in Azyaryshcha, east of Minsk, and leave it by the rails. Later that night there was an explosion – but no casualties.

The following day Krieger was arrested.

The journalist quotes his statements on arrest, refers to data from his phone and witnesses including a taxi driver. But no independent information has emerged about any evidence.

There are certainly CCTV images of Krieger arriving at Minsk airport last October. They show the German smiling at passport control, apparently relaxed. He’s travelling alone and only has hand luggage.

But no surveillance footage of him planting explosives, or acting suspiciously, has been released.

There are just shots of Krieger entering Minsk’s main railway station, and then standing on the platform of an unidentified regional train station, in broad daylight.

The timing of this case seems significant.

The “noise” erupted just after the US journalist Evan Gershkovich was found guilty of espionage in Russia, a charge his friends and employers denounce emphatically as false. He’s been sentenced to 16 years.

Vladimir Putin has hinted in the past that he would consider exchanging Gershkovich – and possibly others – for Vadim Krasikov, the FSB assassin imprisoned in Germany. But months on, no deal has yet been done.

So could Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko be riding to his rescue – with a German bargaining chip?

The propaganda film is definitely heavy on threat. It has a doom-laden voiceover and threatening scenes acted out by men in balaclavas and with truncheons.

At the centre of it all is a man begging for his life.

In tears, Rico Krieger says he has made the “worst mistake” ever and now feels “absolutely abandoned” by his government. His words seem scripted, though the emotion is raw.

“His only chance now is to ask for a pardon – and for the president to change the death penalty to life in prison,” activist Andrei Paluda said.

“We know of cases when political mechanisms, not legal ones, have come into play. Perhaps that can work here, too.”

Panama has accused the Venezuelan government of blocking a flight carrying former Latin American leaders who were due to observe presidential elections on Sunday.

Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino said on social media that Venezuela had denied the plane permission to take off as long as the former leaders were aboard. The Venezuelan government has rejected the allegations.

Among those on the plane were the ex-presidents of Mexico, Panama, Costa Rica and Bolivia – all critics of the current Venezuelan government who said they were hoping for an opposition victory.

Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, who is seeking a third consecutive term, has said he will win “by hook or by crook”.

“The aircraft was denied permission to take off from Tocumen as long as they remain on board,” Mr Mulino wrote on X, referring to Panama City’s airport.

Vicente Fox, Mexico’s former president, posted a video on social media from the airport, in which he said: “Nicolas Maduro has caused all Copa flights heading to Caracas and Venezuela to be suspended.”

“A bad sign for Sunday,” he said separately, in a radio interview. “We were removed from the plane with blackmail and pressure from Venezuela.”

Others on board included Miguel Ángel Rodríguez of Costa Rica, Jorge Quiroga of Bolivia and Marta Lucía Ramírez, former vice-president of Colombia.

Panamanian Foreign Minister Javier Martínez-Acha said that Venezuela had “blocked the airspace of its country to Copa Airlines” for “several hours” – a claim denied by Venezuelan authorities.

Last year, Mr Maduro agreed to allow international observers to be present in this election, resulting in a temporary easing of US sanctions.

However last week, Venezuela issued a decree restricting travel across the country’s border from Friday, a move it said was intended to protect the election.

But there have been a string of similar crackdowns, prompting concern that Venezuela is blocking access to international observers.

The chair of the National Electoral Council, government ally Elvis Amoroso, uninvited EU officials who had been due to watch the vote.

And Colombian officials, Spanish MPs and Chilean senators all reported being denied entry at Caracas Airport.

Spanish People’s Party president Alberto Núñez Feijóo said the Venezuelan government “does not want the international community to have eyes and ears in Venezuela this weekend”.

Mr Maduro’s PSUV party has ruled for 25 years, but opposition activists hope to unseat the president on Sunday.

The main opposition parties have united behind one candidate, Edmundo González.

Most opinion polls suggest he has an overwhelming lead over Mr Maduro but he fears the vote will not be free and fair and that the government may not concede defeat.

Louis van Schoor, a convicted mass murderer in South Africa known as the “Apartheid Killer”, has died.

The 72-year-old had been in hospital with an infection in his leg. His daughter told the BBC he died on Thursday afternoon “due to complications from sepsis”.

Van Schoor’s death came less than a week after a BBC investigation into his past, which exposed horrific new details about a series of killings he carried out in the late 1980s during the final years of white-minority rule.

The sister of one of his victims has told the BBC she hopes the police will re-open the cases for investigation despite his death.

At a time when the racist apartheid system imposed a strict hierarchy that privileged white South Africans, Van Schoor was operating as a private security guard in the coastal city of East London.

Between 1986 and 1989, he shot and killed at least 39 people. All of his victims were black and the youngest was just 12 years.

• Mass killer who ‘hunted’ black people says police encouraged him

In 1991, Van Schoor was arrested and later convicted on seven charges of murder, but he was released on parole after serving just 12 years in jail.

At least 32 of his killings are still classified as “justifiable homicides” by the police.

In his lifetime, Van Schoor claimed that all his victims were criminals who he caught “red-handed”.

He relied on apartheid-era laws that gave people the right to use lethal force against intruders to maintain his innocence.

But the BBC’s report raised serious questions about these so-called “justifiable” shootings.

It included extensive interviews with Van Schoor in which he described his activities as “exciting” and “hunting”, and where he made a series of allegations about the involvement of the police in his activities in the 1980s.

The BBC also reviewed long-forgotten archival documents, including witness statements by multiple survivors of Van Schoor’s shootings, who gave graphic accounts of him gunning them down after they had surrendered.

“He picked me up and propped me up against a table and then he shot me again,” said one survivor, who was 14 years old at the time.

There is no statute of limitations for murder in South Africa and many relatives of victims still have hopes of launching criminal or civil lawsuits in pursuit of justice.

Marlene Mvumbi, whose brother Edward was killed by Van Schoor in 1986, was shocked to hear of his sudden death.

“He got off easy!” she said. “I hope they still re-open these cases. The families deserve justice. We got nothing and the pain is still the same.”

The Apartheid Killer, watch on iPlayer (UK only)

Outside the UK, watch on the BBC Africa YouTube channel.

In 2021, Van Schoor had both his legs partially amputated following circulatory complications.

His hospitalisation a month ago, in the same East London hospital where many of his victims were taken, was due to an infection in the remains of one of his limbs.

Sepsis develops when the body’s immune system overreacts to an infection and starts attacking its own tissues and organs.

Van Schoor’s family said his condition deteriorated rapidly once sepsis set in, despite the best efforts of hospital staff.

In his final interview with the BBC, Van Schoor denied that he was a “serial killer”, but also said he had “no remorse” and “no guilt” for his past actions.

Isa Jacobson, a journalist and filmmaker who has spent 20 years investigating his case, says it is essential that killers from the apartheid era continue to be scrutinised – before it is too late.

“I think that we only know a small percentage of the killings that occurred in this country,” she said.

“People that hold the truth in their minds are dying… The longer we wait, the harder it will be to have that truth revealed.”

World of Secrets, Season 3: The Apartheid Killer: A new six-episode season from the BBC’s global investigations podcast. A BBC World Service investigation.

Listen now on BBC Sounds. If you are outside of the UK click here.

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Benjamin Netanyahu has said he will send a delegation to Rome for talks aimed at ending Israel’s war with Hamas, but took aim at comments by Kamala Harris that she would “not be silent” about the “tragedy” in Gaza.

The Israeli prime minister’s comments came on Friday during a visit to Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, a day after he discussed ceasefire efforts with US President Joe Biden and Ms Harris, the vice-president, in Washington.

The Biden administration said Israel and the US were closing “gaps” on the issue. Ms Harris, the presumptive Democrat presidential candidate, however, said that she would “not be silent” on the “tragedy” and the “suffering” of Gazan civilians as she called for all parties to reach an agreement.

“It is time for this war to end and end in a way where Israel is secure, all the hostages are released, the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza ends, and the Palestinian people can exercise their right to freedom, dignity and self-determination,” Ms Harris said.

After his meeting with Trump, Mr Netanyahu said that Israel would send negotiators “probably at the beginning of the week” to talks in Rome.

He said that there was “some movement” on ceasefire efforts “because of the military pressure we exerted”.

However, he said that “I think to the extent that Hamas understands that there’s no daylight between Israel and the United States, that it expedites the deal,” he said. “And I hope that those [Harris’s] comments don’t change that.”

Hamas invaded southern Israel on 7 October last year, killing more than 1,200 people, mostly Israelis, and taking 251 people hostage. Many remain in Gaza.

The Hamas-run health ministry says that more than 39,000 people have been killed in Israel’s military response in Gaza.

The chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Court has requested arrest warrants for Mr Netanyahu and several Hamas leaders for alleged war crimes. All reject the allegations.

The Rome talks are the latest in a series of initiatives to end the war. The US is sending the head of the CIA, Bill Burns, to meet representatives from Qatar, Egypt and Israel. The talks are scheduled to begin on Sunday.

They will discuss a deal to end hostilities and return hostages still held in Gaza.

Trump said on Friday that he would commit to seeking peace if re-elected, and attacked Ms Harris’s comments the day before as “disrespectful” to Israel.

He said that his own relationship with Mr Netanyahu was “always good. No president has done what I’ve done for Israel and we’ve always had a very good relationship.”

Trump’s administration upended several longstanding US policies on the Middle East and Israel.

It announced plans to move the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, a decision that enraged Palestinians and their allies, who said it endangered the long-held goal of making occupied East Jerusalem the capital of a future Palestinian state.

The administration also withdrew from an international deal with Iran aimed at halting its nuclear weapons programme – a move backed by Israel but criticised by European states.

It developed the “Abraham accords”, which sought to normalise relations between Israel and its Arab neighbours.

And it offered a “Trump peace plan” that would have unified Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and given it sovereignty over many parts of the occupied West Bank. The proposal was immediately rejected by the Palestinian Authority.

Olympic organisers have issued a “deep apology” after South Korea’s athletes were mistakenly introduced as North Korea at the opening ceremony in Paris.

As the excited, flag-waving team floated down the River Seine, both French and English announcers introduced them as the “Democratic People’s Republic of Korea” – the official name of North Korea.

The same name was then used – correctly – when North Korea’s delegation sailed past.

The two Koreas have been divided since the end of World War Two, with tensions between the states further escalating recently.

The subtitle which ran across the bottom of the television broadcast showed the correct title, however.

The South Korean sports ministry said it planned to lodge a “strong complaint with France on a government level” over the embarrassing gaffe.

In a statement, the ministry expressed “regret over the announcement … where the South Korean delegation was introduced as the North Korean team.”

The statement added that the second vice sports minister, Jang Mi-ran, a 2008 Olympic weightlifting champion, had demanded a meeting with Olympics Committee President Thomas Bach.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) issued an apology on its official Korean-language X account, saying: “We would like to offer a deep apology over the mistake that occurred in the introduction of the South Korean delegation during the opening ceremony.”

South Korea, formally known as the Republic of Korea, has 143 athletes in its Olympic team this year, competing across 21 sports.

North Korea has sent 16 athletes. This is the first time it has competed in the games since Rio 2016.

Three student protest leaders who helped co-ordinate the recent rallies in Bangladesh have been forcibly removed from hospital by police officers, the BBC understands.

Nahid Islam, Asif Mahmud and Abu Baker Majumder were taken from Gonoshasthaya Hospital in the capital, Dhaka, hospital staff said on Friday.

Staff members said the officers, who were dressed in plainclothes, had forced their discharge despite the misgivings of medics at the hospital.

The three men were being treated for injuries that they said were caused by torture and beatings they received in earlier police custody.

“They took them from us,” Gonoshasthaya hospital supervisor Anwara Begum Lucky told the AFP news agency.

“The men were from the Detective Branch.”

She added that she had not wanted to let the students go, but police had pressured the hospital chief to discharge them.

Mr Islam’s elder sister Fatema Tasnim told AFP from the hospital that six plainclothes detectives had taken all three men.

Nahid Islam told reporters last week he feared for his life.

He was kidnapped from a friend’s house last week, interrogated and subjected to physical and mental torture by people claiming to be detectives.

He says he fainted and when he regained consciousness, walked home and sought hospital treatment for blood clots on both shoulders and his left leg.

In response to his allegations, Information Minister Mohammad Ali Arafat told the BBC the incident would be investigated but that he suspected “sabotage” – that someone was trying to discredit the police.

Police have arrested more than 4,000 people since the unrest broke out last week.

All three students are members of Students Against Discrimination, the group responsible for co-ordinating this month’s street rallies against civil service hiring rules.

The trio’s student group had suspended a further wave of protests at the start of this week, due to the bloodshed.

At least 150 people have been killed as a result of nationwide clashes between police and university students, with security forces accused of using excessive force.

Protesters had been calling for quotas on government jobs to be scrapped.

Bangladesh had reserved about 30% of its high-paying government jobs for relatives of those who fought in the country’s war for independence from Pakistan in 1971.

Bangladesh’s top court has now rolled back most of these quotas and ruled that 93% of roles would now be filled on merit – meeting a key demand of protesters.

At the beginning of the protests the government imposed an unprecedented communications blackout, shutting down the internet and restricting phone services.

Earlier this week, Bangladesh’s leader Sheikh Hasina was accused of crying “crocodile tears” after she was photographed weeping at a train station that was destroyed during anti-government protests.

She has disregarded criticism that her security forces deploy excess force to quell the unrest, and instead blamed her political opponents for the wave of violence.

Some student leaders have vowed to continue protesting to demand justice for protesters killed and detained in recent days.

They are also seeking the resignation of government ministers and an apology from Ms Hasina.

Celine Dion has returned to the stage for the first time since revealing a serious health condition, delivering a typical powerhouse performance at the Paris Olympics opening ceremony.

The Canadian superstar had been rumoured to be singing a duet with Lady Gaga, but instead went solo on the Eiffel Tower to bring the four-hour event to a stirring climax.

It was Dion’s first live performance for four years, and came a year and a half after she revealed a diagnosis of Stiff Person Syndrome (SPS).

SPS is a rare neurological disorder that causes muscles to spasm and can be debilitating. It also affected her distinctive forceful voice.

The 56 year old, known as the “queen of power ballads”, has been having therapy to “rebuild” her voice, as she told the BBC in June, and help her sing again.

On Friday, her delivery of Edith Piaf’s classic L’Hymne à l’Amour gave encouraging signs that the treatment is working.

She was accompanied by a pianist on the first level of the Eiffel Tower, beneath giant illuminated Olympic rings.

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Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said that she “is a Canadian icon, an incredible talent, and she overcame a lot to be there tonight”.

He added: “Celine, it’s great to see you singing again”.

Italian singer Laura Pausini wrote: “My hands were shaking and my eyes were crying as I listened and saw my beloved Celine Dion.”

Her appearance had been hotly anticipated, with crowds of fans waiting outside her hotel in the city in recent days.

Dion has a big following in France. Her 1995 album D’eux is the best-selling French-language album of all time.

Friday’s appearance was the second time that Dion, known for hits including My Heart Will Go On and It’s It’s All Coming Back to Me Now, had participated in an Olympic opening ceremony, after Atlanta 1996.

And her comeback performance came six months after a surprise appearance to present an award at the Grammys.

She has also teased a new residency in Las Vegas. “We have been working so hard to put this show together – because I’m back,” she told the BBC in June.

She already holds the record for the most successful residency of all time on the Las Vegas strip.

Last month, she discussed her struggles with SPS in a film called I Am: Celine Dion, which Amazon Prime Video said on Thursday had become its most successful documentary ever.

For France’s Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin – the man with the task of securing the Paris Olympics – the sabotage attacks on the high-speed rail network will have come as a blow.

He has vowed the attackers will all be quickly arrested, but so far he has not indicated who might be to blame.

Sports Minister Amélie Oudéa-Castéra promised that the culprits were not going to spoil the party, but they struck the TGV network hours before the opening ceremony – causing chaos for travellers and exposing the vulnerability of a symbol of France’s technical prowess.

Caretaker Prime Minister Gabriel Attal has advised caution in drawing conclusions, but said those behind the attack clearly had a good understanding of what would cause most damage.

Suspicion fell immediately on ultra-left radicals, from security sources briefing French media, but there has been no claim of responsibility from any source.

So far all we know is that the methods used to set fire to critical optical fibres and other cables in ducts along the rail network in the early hours of Friday were reminiscent of previous attacks by the extreme left.

When cable ducts were set alight beside railway lines near Hamburg in Germany last September, an anonymous claim appeared on a left-wing website condemning “capitalist infrastructure”.

That is inconclusive, of course, because the broad nature of the French attacks suggests a degree of co-ordination across four distinct regions that would not normally be associated with the extreme left.

But whoever did target the rail lines stretching out of Paris in the early hours of 26 July, it was clear they had the Games in their sights.

The big TGV arteries to the north, east and west were all choked off and the high-speed line to the south-east would have been brought to a halt too, but for an alert crew of engineers who by chance spotted a team of saboteurs in “vans”.

Regional forces are collecting evidence under the overall command of the national police, the national gendarmerie as well as the anti-terrorist SDAT. Their biggest hope may be in tracking down the failed saboteurs who fled the scene near Vergigny, apparently leaving their intact incendiary devices behind.

There have been attacks on French railways before, including one in January 2023 east of Paris.

Another incident has only just emerged back in early May 2024, on the high-speed line to the south, just outside Aix-en Provence.

It is that attack that bears most similarity to Friday’s sabotage, because it reportedly took place on the day the Olympic flame arrived by ship in the southern port of Marseille. So far no arrests appear to have been made.

Even though it was a botched attempt, reportedly involving makeshift petrol-bombs, France’s security services will be looking at potential links to that attack.

Earlier this year, the interior minister warned of an extremely high “external” threat, potentially of the type of jihadist attack that was inflicted on the Crocus City Hall in Moscow in March.

France has fallen victim in recent years to a wave of deadly jihadist attacks, but none resemble the acts of sabotage inflicted on the rail network. Friday’s incidents caused misery for hundreds of thousands of travellers, but no bloodshed.

Suspicion will inevitably fall on Russia too, a country in the grip of a full-scale invasion of its neighbour Ukraine, and one that has engaged in a high-profile campaign of disinformation against France.

Pro-Kremlin social media accounts have shared a video smearing the Paris Games, ridiculing the quality of water in the River Seine and attacking President Emmanuel Macron and Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo.

Mr Macron is loathed in Moscow because of his outspoken support for Ukraine.

Although Russia has always denied interference, French officials suspect the hand of Moscow in a series of recent incidents aimed at destabilising the French capital. From red hands daubed on the Holocaust Memorial to graffiti on buildings suggesting their balconies might collapse.

Only this week, a Russian was arrested in Paris on suspicion of planning to organise acts of “destabilisation, interference and spying”. The Kremlin says media reports on the man have been “quite curious” but says it has not been directly told about the arrest.

But none of that necessarily implicates Russia in Friday’s co-ordinated attack on what caretaker Prime Minister Gabriel Attal calls “nerve centres” on France’s high-speed railway network.

Because whoever was behind the sabotage knew exactly where to cause maximum disruption. Russia might not have that kind of reach in rural France.

The head of state-owned rail company SNCF, Jean-Pierre Farandou, said the saboteurs had focused on intersections that would have caused the most serious impact.

The arson attack at Courtalain cut off two high-speed lines on the Atlantic artery, one that headed west towards Brittany and another towards Bordeaux in the south-west. The eastern attack knocked out high-speed lines to Metz in one direction and Strasbourg in another.

One French security expert, Romain de Calbiac, told the BBC’s Newshour programme that the attack was remarkably well-planned.

“The French security forces and the entire intelligence community here is very concerned that they might have received internal help from people working or people partnering with the railway network in France,” he said.

“Another option would be that this information came not from inside sources, but potentially from foreign states with a knowledge of how the French network works.”

Earlier this year, SNCF highlighted an increase in the trend for attacks on the rail network and said it was constantly on the look-out for acts of sabotage, “particularly in the run-up to the Olympic and Paralympic Games”.

Although the company said it had detected all the attacks on its systems, it was only able to prevent one from causing significant damage, and that was a stroke of luck.

“Today should have been a party,” said Jean-Pierre Farandou. “All that is ruined.”

“It’s so confusing sometimes to be a girl,” sings Charli XCX on her latest album, Brat.

The vulnerable lyrics, existential questions and honest exploration of the complexity and contradictions of womanhood has turned Brat into much more than a collection of music.

For millennials and Gen Z, it reflects a highly relatable way of life.

Brat is, in the words of Charli XCX, a girl who “has a breakdown, but kind of like parties through it”, who is honest, blunt, “a little bit volatile”. In recent weeks, brat has become a mainstream phenomenon.

In the same week that my grandmother told me one of her friends was “giving brat”, Charli tweeted “Kamala IS brat” and the US Democratic presidential nominee rebranded her X profile.

Charli isn’t the only pop girl ditching the bland approach.

The likes of Chappell Roan and Sabrina Carpenter aren’t your typical perfectly polished and carefully manicured pop stars: they’re messy and candid artists that wear their heart on their sleeve. Both have been dominating the charts this summer.

They all stand out because they share a certain perspective on life. They appear honest and authentic, with opinions and life experience.

There are only so many times you can bop to songs with slick beats and meaningless mantras about girl power. Eventually you crave something more, and that’s what this new wave of pop girl is offering.

In Brat, Charli candidly explores what it’s like transitioning into your thirties. In her truth-telling hit Von Dutch she doesn’t care if people gossip about her, while her high-energy anthems 360 and 365 are wild, carefree and tell us that we can still have big nights out (phew!).

At the same time, she offers a personal and introspective reflection on topics such as Motherhood: “I think about it all the time / That I might run out of time / Would it give my life a new purpose?”

The existential questions resonate with most millennial women. Should I be having children? When is the right time? Will it change my life? What if I have other aspirations?

Josee Malon, a 23-year-old social executive from Kent, says she admires Charli because she gives fans “such an insightful look into her creative mindset and her personality and you don’t get this with all musicians”.

“Beyoncé, for example, is private and mysterious, some people think that’s part of her allure and appeal, but for me that works against her. Why would I want to be influenced by someone who gives me zero energy?

“Charli XCX gives 110% energy, she lets you into her life and feels like a friend.”

It’s not just women who are a fan of these pop girls. Spencer Caminsky, a 26-year-old political campaign manager, has followed Charli since 2016 and loves Brat because “it’s so much more raw and direct”.

“It’s all the great things about her past works and now expands upon the more vulnerable aspects of her life that she’s never spoken about – you really feel her emotion and regret.”

Meanwhile, 26-year-old queer pop icon Chappell Roan has built a strong Gen Z following.

Although not the first queer female pop artist, her drag queen outfits, sexually empowered lyrics and scorching-hot melodies make her one of the most mainstream.

Chappell’s music focuses heavily on her queer identity – Pink Pony Club was inspired by her first visit to a gay club, while Good Luck, Babe is about a fling with a girl who insists she’s not really gay.

Jonah Graham, 25, says he’s a fan of Chappell’s “unashamedly queer” music because she “lets people know there is a place for them to come together through big emotions, an irreverent sense of humour and boundless joy”.

But even without having the same experiences that Chappell sings of, the themes of rejection, freedom, acceptance and self-discovery are universal.

Kamala Harris has also leaned into Roan in a bid to appeal to young voters, posting a meme on TikTok quoting Roan’s lyrics: “What we really need is a femininomenon!”

While Ms Harris isn’t part of the demographic that Chappell and Charli resonate most with, and almost certainly isn’t “someone who has a pack of cigs, a Bic lighter and a strappy white top with no bra”, according to Charli’s brat definition, that isn’t the point.

Lucy Ford, a culture critic, told the BBC that “Kamala is brat in the sense that she’s a dominating cultural force right now and there’s been a separation from the album and the cultural hold it has as a vibe”.

Fun and cheeky pop music is something Sabrina Carpenter has become a master in – the 25-year-old has taken Taylor Swift’s confessional style and added a healthy dose of humour.

Her x-rated ad-lib Nonsense outros never fail to cause a stir. “BBC said I should keep it PG / BBC I wish I had it in me/There’s a double meaning if you dig deep,”she sang at Radio 1’s Big Weekend.

“Sabrina is being unabashedly horny in her music,” Ford explains. “It feels like an embrace of fun and silliness and not taking things too seriously.”

In other songs, she flips the typical romantic pop song on its head. This time he’s obsessed with her, and “looks so cute wrapped round my finger”.

Her self-indulgence – and being unapologetic about loving attention – is totally brat. Why should we pretend that knowing someone has a crush on you isn’t a little exciting?

But why is that this summer in particular, fans are craving complex, messy music?

Content writer Olivia Cox has recently gotten into all three artists and says what makes them stand out is that they each, in their own way, “embrace silliness”.

“It feels like pop music has been taking itself too seriously,” she says.

Rachel Humphreys, a 29-year-old Digital PR Manager from Pontefract says the artists are a “cultural reset” and offer an element of escapism.

The music is a “welcome distraction from the daily pressures of adult-ing”.

Ford says one of the factors at play for why this phenomenon is occurring now, is that it’s a “response to very sentimental, ‘celebrities, they’re just like us’ sentiments in music of the past few years, where artists bear their souls to meet their fans at eye level”.

All of these reasons point to why the dated feminist slogans – like those in Katy Perry’s latest single Woman’s World – don’t resonate with millennials or Gen Z.

Perry’s satirical music video, showing women dancing around a construction site in tiny outfits, using urinals and brandishing sex toys, seems inauthentic compared with music by these Gen Z artists.

But the smart, forthright pop songs we’re listening to now are not as new as we might think.

Mercury Prize nominee CMAT told the BBC “there’s nothing sudden” about this phenomenon.

“Women have always been crafting stories in this funny, tragi-comic way, but the people who wanted to hear it were other women – who, up until recently, were not considered a very [desirable] market.”

She said her own music was criticised a few years ago and labelled “novelty music” because it was humorous.

“There was never a conversation before about it being highbrow or something we should take seriously – because nobody takes women seriously,” she added.

The likes of Madonna and Lady Gaga laid the groundwork for this music, but the modern trend starts with the likes of Lorde, who punctured the absurd positivity of 2010s pop lyrics on Team – “I’m kind of over getting told to put my hands up in the air” and Billie Eilish.

One of her first songs was written from the point of view of a psychopath with a car trunk full of dead bodies.

Her music has carried on being wonderfully weird – every track on her new album Hit Me Hard And Soft plays with that duality.

Dynamics shift, ideas are unresolved and nothing ever settles.

That’s a feeling that many people will have felt a little over the past couple of years.

To achieve longevity, today’s brats will need to intuit when the sands of pop, and of wider culture, will shift again – and get there before everyone else.

“She’s going to rot in jail. No one is going to get her out.”

That was what prison guards told the family of Emirlendris Benítez. She disappeared in Venezuela in August 2018 after she and her partner – a taxi driver – were arrested while giving somebody a lift to the city centre.

She was arbitrarily accused of organising a plot to kill the president and, without a fair trial, given a 30-year prison sentence.

When she was taken to prison, she was pregnant. Guards beat her stomach despite her protestations, and she had a miscarriage.

Her family tell us she has faced torture in prison, including having her nails removed with a hammer.

The human rights group Foro Penal says there were 15,700 politically motivated arbitrary arrests in Venezuela between 2014 and 2023 and hundreds of people remain behind bars.

It is one of many ways the government has cracked down on dissent.

The BBC asked the government and prosecutor for a comment or interview and have received no response.

President Nicolás Maduro has been in power since taking over from his mentor Hugo Chávez in 2013 and is seeking re-election on Sunday.

Photos of him line the streets, and on the last day of campaigning in Caracas hundreds of buses were paid for to transport people from around the country to his final rally where free food parcels were handed out as an incentive to attend.

Venus, a woman at the rally, says Mr Maduro’s PSUV party has given her many “benefits”.

“We are here to support Nicolas Maduro to the end,” she says.

Iván, another supporter, says “to those who oppose us, those who say there is no democracy, that there is a dictatorship here… this revolution will continue to shine”.

Even some supporters of Mr Maduro, though, have fallen victim to the crackdown on dissent.

A family member of Emirlendris, Ana (not her real name), spoke to us on condition of anonymity.

Her family voted for Nicolás Maduro, and Hugo Chávez before him, but say now “everything changed because we realised how justice works in Venezuela”.

“The government is desperate because it knows it has lost. Many people have opened their eyes and are realising the reality we live in in Venezuela. In the name of Almighty God, I hope that a new president wins for a better Venezuela.”

The last election was widely seen as neither free nor fair, many countries refused to recognise Mr Maduro as president, and the US imposed further sanctions on Venezuela.

For the first time in years, the opposition feel they have huge momentum and a lead in the polls – making it harder for the governing party to claim victory.

But the government has deployed a range of tactics with the armed forces, electoral and judicial authorities which it controls to pre-emptively suppress the opposition. They include detaining critics, uninviting EU election observers, and preventing millions of Venezuelans overseas from registering to vote.

Alcides Bracho is a teacher who was detained on 4 July 2022 after going to a protest calling for better salaries.

“We are talking 800 days without an increase, and it is a salary of $3.50 per month,” he recalls.

But after the protest, he was arrested and accused of “terrorism”.

“They came to the house, approximately 22 people with long rifles. Guns that looked like those in action movies or boys’ video games. Without a search warrant.”

He was forced to stand naked for 72 hours while he was held in detention, with no access to food, water or a toilet after being sentenced to 16 years in prison for “conspiracy” and “criminal association”.

“I thought I was going to die.”

“If you want to start a business in Venezuela, let it be a prison. They charge you for everything. The state does not give you food,” he said of the lack of even the most basic things in jail.

He was eventually released in a prisoner exchange with the US last December in which 19 political prisoners were freed in exchange for Alex Saab, an accused money launderer with close links to President Maduro who was indicted in the US.

Despite what happened to him, Mr Bracho wants to keep fighting.

“If we all keep quiet, if no-one does it, there is no fighting.”

“There is an upswing in repression. We are very worried. It’s not like I can start my life again, I don’t have a safe space.”

The opposition leader, María Corina Machado, was banned from running in Sunday’s election, dozens of her team have been detained, and even food stalls that served her have been shut down.

Most television and radio stations are state-run, with many other digital media outlets being blocked.

Bus TV is a campaign of volunteers who read out “real news” on buses around the country.

Andrés Brancovic is one of the volunteers. He thinks “censorship” could affect the election.

“Twitter is one of the most used apps in Venezuela right now, because people can post what they want and see what is happening. But people who just have national TV in their houses – they don’t see what is happening with the opposition.”

“All the news is in favour of the regime,” he says.

Despite having the world’s largest known oil reserves, Venezuela is desperately poor. More than half the population of Venezuela lives in poverty, and nearly eight million people have fled the country – contributing to a migration crisis on the US border.

Jhonatan Marcano lives with his family of five in one small room.

He goes out fishing every day in a rubber tyre, often in dangerous tides, to feed his family.

He cannot afford a boat, nor fuel for one. He relies on the tide to bring him back to land every day.

“I always voted for the people who are in charge. Chávez inspired confidence in me.”

Now, though, he is undecided: “Help doesn’t come, what you need most does not come to you. I’m so disappointed in the party.”

President Maduro blames US sanctions for the country’s woes, but critics also put it down to corruption and economic mismanagement.

There are reasons the West wants to improve relations with Venezuela – the oil and natural resources the country has, the fact Iran, China and Russia rely on Venezuela as an ally in the West, and because they do not want the US migration crisis to worsen.

But it is unlikely sanctions will be lifted and the government recognised if the vote is seen as unfair again.

A selection of striking news photographs taken around the world this week.

Meselesh Gosaye, a mother of six, was in her hilltop home in southern Ethiopia’s Gofa district caring for her children when she heard the landslide that left many trapped in the mud.

“There were sounds of people screaming and we rushed down the hill,” she said struggling to contain her tears as she remembered what happened on Sunday.

The locality of Kencho Satcha Gozdi, where Ms Meselech lives, has a number of small villages scattered across the hilly landscape which are at risk of floods and landslides.

The string of settlements are characterised by mud-walled, tin-roofed houses, some on or near the top of the lush slopes. Other villages – including the one buried by the landslide – are clustered at the foot of the hills.

Heavy rains had preceded Sunday’s disaster making the area’s narrow and slippery footpaths dangerous.

But Ms Meselech, her husband and some of her children did not hesitate to race towards the site of the accident.

“When we reached there, we saw the earth [had swallowed] the houses,” she told the BBC.

They joined a throng of villagers who similarly had arrived upon hearing the news and instinctively started digging through the dirt and mud, many of them just with their hands, hoping to rescue those buried underneath.

In the following hours many others came. But they had limited success – a few people were pulled out alive, many more remained trapped.

“It was a sad day,” Ms Meselech said.

Seeing that a lot more manpower and effort were required, officials from the locality began mobilising help.

The next day, at an emergency meeting, they told every able-bodied adult, and older children, to get any farming tools – such as shovels, axes and hoes – they could get their hands on and work in unison.

The site was inaccessible to vehicles with more heavy-duty lifting equipment.

Ms Meselech’s husband and her two eldest sons – aged 15 and 12 – immediately joined the search-and-rescue efforts. Meanwhile she returned home from the meeting to breastfeed her toddler and cook for her other children.

Then she went back downhill to offer help. But what awaited her was a different – and more tragic – scene. There had been a second landslide burying most of those involved in the rescue mission.

Unable to control her emotions, she hastened to the land that engulfed her husband and her children. But someone stopped her reminding her it was still dangerous.

“They said I still had kids at home and I had to survive for them.”

In the following hours, news of the double tragedy was heard across the villages and towns close by.

Hundreds came to help.

Families were scrambling looking for their missing loved ones. Some – including the head of the locality who was mobilising residents after the first landslide – were quickly confirmed dead.

At one point Ms Meselech “saw diggers pulling someone’s body out. I thought it was my husband. I started helping,” she said.

“I thought he was alive. But he had died. He was still holding on to the axe he had when he went to help [those buried in the first landslide].

“His face was unrecognisable. To be sure, I checked his chest pocket because I knew he kept his ID card there. It was him. I screamed.”

When her husband’s body – along with other recovered corpses – was being moved to somewhere safe Ms Meselech could not go along as her two sons were still missing.

“I was torn between going and remaining behind.”

Later the body of her 12-year-old son was recovered. Her 15-year-old had not been found at the time she spoke to the BBC on Thursday.

“How I [suffered] giving birth to my children, raising them, educating them. It’s so sad for me,” she said as grief overwhelmed her.

But Ms Meselech is not alone in her grief. Death has knocked on the doors of many of the families here.

Some 257 people are confirmed to have died in the two landslides. An estimate by the UN says that number could reach 500 as more mud is dug up in the coming days.

Serawit Yohannes, who has his father and half-brother still missing, told the BBC that because most people have loved ones missing or confirmed dead “not even relatives are helping us dig” as they themselves have “two or three family members they have to look for”.

According to the UN, 15,000 people will have to be relocated from these hills to avoid future disasters. That will require a lot of effort and money.

But closure for Ms Meselech will only leave when her son is found.

It will take a long time before the community starts to heal.

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It was early in the day, but already hot. As she wiped sweat from her brow, Chieko Kiriake searched for some shade. As she did so, there was a blinding light – it was like nothing the 15-year-old had ever experienced. It was 08:15 on 6 August 1945.

“It felt like the sun had fallen – and I grew dizzy,” she recalls.

The United States had just dropped an atomic bomb on Chieko’s home city of Hiroshima – the first time a nuclear weapon had ever been used in warfare. While Germany had surrendered in Europe, allied forces fighting in World War Two were still at war with Japan.

Chieko was a student, but like many older pupils, had been sent out to work in the factories during the war. She staggered to her school, carrying an injured friend on her back. Many of the students had been badly burnt. She rubbed old oil, found in the home economics classroom, onto their wounds.

“That was the only treatment we could give them. They died one after the next,” says Chieko.

“Us older students who survived were instructed by our teachers to dig a hole in the playground and I cremated [my classmates] with my own hands. I felt so awful for them.”

Chieko is now 94 years old. It is almost 80 years since the atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and time is running out for the surviving victims – known as hibakusha in Japan – to tell their stories.

Many have lived with health problems, lost loved ones and been discriminated against because of the atomic attack. Now, they are sharing their experiences for a BBC Two film, documenting the past so it can act as a warning for the future.

After the sorrow, new life started to return to her city, says Chieko.

“People said the grass wouldn’t grow for 75 years,” she says, “but by the spring of the next year, the sparrows returned.”

In her lifetime, Chieko says she has been close to death many times but has come to believe she has been kept alive by the power of something great.

The majority of hibakusha alive today were children at the time of the bombings. As the hibakusha – which translates literally as “bomb-affected-people” – have grown older, global conflicts have intensified. To them, the risk of a nuclear escalation feels more real than ever.

“My body trembles and tears overflow,” says 86-year-old Michiko Kodama when she thinks about conflicts around the world today – such as the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the Israel-Gaza war.

“We must not allow the hell of the atomic bombing to be recreated. I feel a sense of crisis.”

Michiko is a vocal campaigner for nuclear disarmament and says she speaks out so the voices of those who have died can be heard – and the testimonies passed on to the next generations.

“I think it is important to hear first-hand accounts of hibakusha who experienced the direct bombing,” she says.

Michiko had been at school – aged seven – when the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima.

“Through the windows of my classroom, there was an intense light speeding towards us. It was yellow, orange, silver.”

She describes how the windows shattered and splintered across the classroom – the debris spraying everywhere “impaling the walls, desk, chairs”.

“The ceiling came crashing down. So I hid my body under the desk.”

After the blast, Michiko looked around the devastated room. In every direction she could see hands and legs trapped.

“I crawled from the classroom to the corridor and my friends were saying, ‘Help me’.”

When her father came to collect her, he carried her home on his back.

Black rain, “like mud”, fell from the sky, says Michiko. It was a mixture of radioactive material and residue from the explosion.

She has never been able to forget the journey home.

“It was a scene from hell,” says Michiko. “The people who were escaping towards us, most of their clothes had completely burned away and their flesh was melting.”

She recalls seeing one girl – all alone – about the same age as her. She was badly burnt.

“But her eyes were wide open,” says Michiko. “That girl’s eyes, they pierce me still. I can’t forget her. Even though 78 years have passed, she is seared into my mind and soul.”

Michiko wouldn’t be alive today if her family had remained in their old home. It was only 350m (0.21 miles) from the spot where the bomb exploded. About 20 days before, her family had moved house, just a few kilometres away – but that saved her life.

Estimates put the number of lost lives in Hiroshima, by the end of 1945, at about 140,000.

In Nagasaki, which was bombed by the US three days later, at least 74,000 were killed.

Sueichi Kido lived just 2km (1.24 miles) from the epicentre of the Nagasaki blast. Aged five at the time, he suffered burns to part of his face. His mother, who received more serious injuries, had protected him from the full impact of the blast.

“We hibakusha have never given up on our mission of preventing the creation of any more hibakusha,” says Sueichi, who is now 83 and recently travelled to New York to give a speech at the United Nations to warn of the dangers of nuclear weapons.

When he woke up after fainting from the impact of the blast, the first thing he remembers seeing was a red oil can. For years he thought it was that oil can that had caused the explosion and surrounding devastation.

His parents didn’t correct him, choosing to shield him from the fact it had been a nuclear attack – but whenever he mentioned it, they would cry.

Not all injuries were instantly visible. In the weeks and months after the blast, many people in both cities began to show symptoms of radiation poisoning – and there were increased levels of leukaemia and cancer.

For years, survivors have faced discrimination in society, particularly when it came to finding a partner.

“‘We do not want hibakusha blood to enter our family line,’ I was told,” says Michiko.

But later, she did marry and had two children.

She lost her mother, father and brothers to cancer. Her daughter died from the disease in 2011.

“I feel lonely, angry and scared, and I wonder if it may be my turn next,” she says.

Another bomb survivor, Kiyomi Iguro, was 19 when the bomb struck Nagasaki. She describes marrying into a distant relative’s family and having a miscarriage – which her mother-in-law attributed to the atomic bomb.

“‘Your future is scary.’ That’s what she told me.”

Kiyomi says she was instructed not to tell her neighbours that she had experienced the atomic bomb.

Since being interviewed for the documentary, Kiyomi has sadly died.

But, until she was 98, she would visit the Peace Park in Nagasaki and ring the bell at 11:02 – the time the bomb hit the city – to wish for peace.

Sueichi went on to teach Japanese history at university. Knowing he was a hibakusha cast a shadow on his identity, he says. But then he realised he was not a normal human being and felt a duty to speak out to save humankind.

“A sense that I was a special person was born in me,” says Sueichi.

It is something the hibakusha all feel that they share – an enduring determination to ensure the past never becomes the present.

Lhakpa Sherpa has a startling life story – to the outside world she holds the record for climbing Mount Everest a staggering 10 times, the most of any woman.

But behind the scenes, her personal life has been dangerous and fearful.

While conquering the world’s highest mountain, she says she was enduring domestic abuse from her husband – including during their 2004 descent from Everest.

Now based in America, she has raised three children, supporting them by working in a grocery store and as a cleaner.

Her life – on and off the mountain – has been made into a Netflix documentary, Mountain Queen: The Summits of Lhakpa Sherpa, directed by Lucy Walker.

Sherpa is proud of the film.

Eyes blazing, she tells the BBC: “I want to show people women can do it.”

What is perhaps surprising about her record-breaking climbs is that she does so with little training.

Climbing Everest can be fatal – there have been more than 300 deaths in the region since records of mountain climbing there began a century ago.

So it’s vital to be in peak condition.

In the film, we see Sherpa keep fit by walking in the Connecticut mountains. But she also carries on with her normal working life, out of necessity.

“You’re an exceptional athlete,” Walker tells Sherpa during our interview. “Very tall. Very strong.

“People underestimate it. It’s an unbelievable accomplishment that you can climb Everest from doing your day job.”

Sherpa responds: “I’m not good with being educated, but I’m very good with the mountains.”

Born in 1973 to yak farmers in the Nepalese Himalayas, she was one of 11 children.

Crucially, she was raised in an area where education for girls wasn’t a priority – she carried her brother to school for hours through the hills, but wasn’t allowed inside.

Things are now improving in Nepal – women’s literacy rocketed from 10% in 1981 to 70% by 2021.

But Sherpa’s lack of education left lasting consequences – she’s still unable to read.

Things people take for granted, like using a TV remote control, are difficult for her.

Her son Nima, born in the late 90s, and daughters Sunny, 22, and Shiny, 17, help bridge the gaps.

With no schooling, by the time she was 15, Sherpa was working as a porter on mountain expeditions – often as the only girl.

Through her climbing work she was able to avoid a traditional arranged marriage.

But life got difficult when she became pregnant after a brief relationship in Kathmandu.

An unmarried mother, she was too ashamed to return home.

Still climbing when she could, she met and fell for Romanian-US mountaineer and home-renovation contractor, George Dijmărescu.

He’d escaped Romania, under dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu, by swimming across the Danube river.

Dijmărescu had already forged a new life in the US when he and Sherpa married in 2002, settling in Connecticut, where they went on to have Sunny and Shiny.

But the couple’s relationship fractured when Dijmărescu became violent, Sherpa says.

In 2004, this became apparent when they ascended Everest with a New England climbing group.

After reaching the summit they encountered bad weather.

Dijmărescu’s behaviour “took a turn almost immediately”, according to journalist Michael Kodas, who reported on the climb for a local paper.

Recalling it in the documentary, he says things around Dijmărescu got “hostile”.

Sherpa, who was in a tent with him, says on camera: “He look like thunder, look like bullet… George was yelling and he punch me.”

We then see multiple photographs taken by Kodas, of her lying unconscious afterwards.

The journalist says he witnessed Dijmărescu say “get this garbage out of here”, as he dragged his wife from the tent.

In the film, Sherpa describes being unconscious as an out-of-body experience.

“People’s voices turned to lots of birds. I saw my whole life. I fly near my mom’s house. I saw through everything… I felt ashamed of myself. I want to go die.”

Then she remembered her children, and says: “I’m not ready to die.”

Kodas included the violent incident in his 2008 book, High Crimes: The Fate of Everest in the Age of Greed.

Walker later persuaded him to release his film footage to her, including the raw tapes, calling it a “huge act of trust”.

“It’s such a difficult subject and people don’t sort of want to get involved, because it’s controversial… but I didn’t take no for an answer,” she tells the BBC.

Despite their relationship being damaged, they stayed together for several more years.

But she says she was admitted to hospital when Dijmărescu assaulted her again in 2012.

This was a turning point.

With the help of a social worker, Sherpa moved with the girls to a women’s refuge, where she started to rebuild her life.

The couple divorced in 2015, and in 2016 a court awarded Sherpa “sole legal custody of the girls”.

A report at the time, in OutsideOnline, said Dijmărescu received a six-month suspended sentence and a year of probation, after a conviction for breach of the peace.

He was found not guilty of second-degree assault because court documents stated she did not have a visible head injury.

Dijmărescu died in 2020 of cancer, but the trauma he left behind is tangible.

Sherpa found it really hard discussing their relationship for the documentary.

“I wish all the turmoil keep secret, I don’t want in my life it’s everybody know[ing],” she says.

But her son advised her to make the film with Walker, after researching her previous work.

The director says to Sherpa: “When you tell your story, you skipped bits, saying, ‘We’re not talking about these years’.

“And slowly, slowly, we go to the difficult things.

“It is very traumatic for you. You get very upset, you don’t sleep. It’s very intense.

“But actually, if you can share it, people love you more. Because when you let people know you have difficult times, other people, I think, connect much more now.”

Sunny and Shiny echo this.

They appear in the film, and found it “a bit overwhelming to watch at first, because of how vulnerable we were to have our whole life put on display”.

They agreed to take part because “the struggle we have been through as a family, and how we have used it to strengthen not weaken us, is such a crucial part of our mother’s story”.

Not surprisingly, Sherpa says life was tough after the trauma of her marriage.

“Oh my God, yeah, crying. I carry so much in my life. I work hard, I courage hard,” she says.

“Sometimes I say, ‘Why am I alive, why am I not dead, so many danger. Almost I’ve been in heaven, and come back. So difficult. But somehow I did it…

“Hurt woman is very tough. Does not give up easily. And I keep doing.”

Climbing is not only her passion – it’s also a healing process.

“My darkness I leave behind [on the mountain],” she says.

We see her begin her record-breaking 10th Everest ascent in 2022.

Whispering goodbye to Shiny, sleeping in a nearby tent in base camp, the climb begins at night, by torchlight.

This means her descent from the summit can take place in daylight.

It’s clear her daughters are proud of their mum.

Sherpa says she is creating a “better life” for her children in the US, including giving them an education.

“I really want changing my life, my daughters – I work hard,” she says.

She wants to earn her living with her own guiding company, and to find more sponsorship.

“I know the mountains, I wish I can share my expertise and experience with other people,” she says.

Sunny and Shiny add: “Women have started climbing big peaks and following our mom’s footsteps.”

Ismael ‘El Mayo’ Zambada is one of most notorious names in drug war history, synonymous with the fearsome power and corrosive influence of the most important drug cartel in the world.

The last of an original generation of drug cartel leaders, he created the Sinaloa Cartel alongside Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzman from the remnants of the Guadalajara Cartel after it collapsed in 1989.

But unlike his infamous partner who was twice jailed and escaped, El Mayo was able to evade capture for some 35 years. Until now.

US authorities arrested him in El Paso, Texas on Thursday. He has already pleaded not guilty to multiple charges in federal court in Texas.

He was lured to the US as part of an elaborate sting operation, masterminded by the son of his former partner, El Chapo. Joaquin Guzman Lopez, one of the heirs to El Chapo’s operation, was arrested alongside Zambada having led him to believe he was travelling to northern Mexico to look at prospective properties for clandestine airstrips.

“Are you worried of being captured?” Zambada was asked in 2010 by the late Mexican journalist, Julio Scherer García, who had travelled deep into the mountains for an unprecedented interview with the drug lord.

“The idea of being jailed gives me panic,” he answered. “I’m not sure I have what it takes to kill myself. I’d like to think I do and that I’d take my own life.”

When it came to it, however, either he didn’t have the means or the opportunity.

For someone who exercised such caution over so many years, it seems extraordinary that Zambada was duped aged 76. Perhaps it was always going to take something unique to see him in custody.

“It doesn’t surprise me that Zambada didn’t go willingly,” says Mike Vigil, a former DEA agent. “He is in his 70s, in poor health and already said that prison was his greatest fear.”

The arrests – and possible plea deal between the sons of El Chapo, known as Los Chapitos, and the US Government – begs the question of who will take control of the Sinaloa Cartel.

After El Chapo Guzman was arrested and extradited to the US in 2016, a round of bloodletting began as rival factions wrestled for control of territory as well as fought opposing drug gangs who sensed weakness.

Even more shocking, and violent, was the response of the Sinaloa Cartel’s foot soldiers when their leader, Ovidio Guzman Lopez, was arrested in October 2019.

After he was detained, hundreds of gunmen descended on the city of Culiacan and opened fire on civilian, police and military targets with .50 calibre weapons and rocket launchers. Eventually, the authorities handed Ovidio Guzman back to his men to bring the fighting to an end.

He was later re-arrested, extradited and is currently awaiting trial in a US prison.

Mike Vigil thinks a similar explosion of violence, which became known as the Culiacanazo, might be avoided this time around:

“The Sinaloa Cartel has a very strong bench of possible leaders who could take over including El Chapo’s brother,” he says.

In fact, Mr Vigil argues, the “Kingpin strategy” – that is focusing on bringing down individual cartel leaders – is rarely successful.

“Under the administration of (then-Mexican President Felipe) Calderon, it only tended to create internal conflict within the cartels which then led to a bloodbath.”

If that happens this time, suggests former DEA agent Mike Vigil, “the only winner would be their rivals, the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG)”.

That said, moments of flux and possible power vacuums such as this one are deeply unpredictable. The Mexican authorities have already sent additional forces to the state of Sinaloa ahead of any flare-up of violence.

The other obvious question over Zambada’s arrest is: why now?

The operation was planned for months. However, some reports say there was also an opportunistic element to it. When the various elements behind the ruse appeared to be coming together, despite some scepticism among the US authorities, they ultimately decided they had nothing lose by trying it.

The bigger reason behind the timing, though, was revealed by the words of the US Attorney General Merrick Garland in a video message confirming the arrests:

“Fentanyl is the deadliest threat our country has ever faced”, he said promising that the US justice department “will not rest until every single cartel leader, member and associate responsible for poisoning our communities is held accountable.”

Fentanyl overdoses are now the leading cause of death for Americans between the ages of 18 and 45. It is a staggering statistic and one that has perhaps focussed minds in the Biden administration, especially in an election year.

Both Los Chapitos and El Mayo have made billions through fentanyl, which is easy to produce and transport without the need for large coca plantations in the Andes as with the manufacture of cocaine.

Experts say that shutting down the smuggling of fentanyl altogether is virtually impossible. It is simply too profitable to the cartels and too riven into the modern landscape of Mexico’s drug war.

However, US law enforcement wants to hurt the cartels that are producing it, diminish their influence and, wherever possible, dismantle their leadership.

The capture of El Mayo Zambada – even if aging, in poor health and captured in a double-cross – was always going to remain a key part of that strategy.

Disgraced Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein has been moved to a New York prison hospital with multiple ailments including Covid and double pneumonia.

Juda Engelmayer, Weinstein’s publicist, said that the 72-year-old had recently tested positive for the virus. He added that his client already has diabetes, high blood pressure, spinal stenosis, and fluid on his heart and lungs.

Weinstein was jailed for 23 years in New York in 2020 for the rape and sexual assault of a former assistant and an actress. The city’s appeals court threw out the conviction in April, finding Weinstein did not get a fair trial.

But the film mogul remains in prison in New York while he awaits a retrial later this year. He was also sentenced to 16 years in prison in a separate rape trial in California, which he is appealing against.

New York City Correction Department records showed on Thursday that Weinstein was at the Bellevue Hospital Prison Ward, where he has been multiple times since his conviction.

CBS News, the BBC’s US partner, said that he underwent a heart procedure at Bellevue to open a blocked artery shortly after his conviction.

He was again taken to the hospital in April. Arthur Aidala, his lawyer, said at the time that Weinstein was “used to drinking champagne and eating caviar and now he’s at the commissary paying for potato chips and M&Ms”.

“Mentally, he’s fine. He’s sharp as a tack. But physically, he’s been breaking down for years.”

The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office has recently said it intends to charge Weinstein for “additional violent sexual assaults” over those he was tried for, after more women agreed to give evidence.

The conviction of the Miramax co-founder was a milestone for the #MeToo movement, in which women accused hundreds of men in entertainment, media, politics and other fields of sexual misconduct.

A jury found he had sexually assaulted former production assistant Miriam Haley in 2006 and raped aspiring actress Jessica Mann in 2013.

Thomas Matthew Crooks walked into Donald Trump’s election rally in Pennsylvania, unopposed with a gun, explosives and a rangefinder to measure distance to his target.

The aftermath of the 13 July shooting reveals a detailed plan hatched in the days before – and a series of security failings that allowed its execution.

Three congressional hearings were held this week with the head of the FBI, the Secret Service’s director and Pennsylvania’s state police chief.

Here is what those hearings have added to what is known about the attempt on Trump’s life, what went wrong, and important unanswered questions.

It is becoming clear that Crooks’ attack was not the result of a last-minute meltdown: He had method, and purpose.

The FBI has said that 6 July appeared to be the inception date: Crooks registered to attend Trump’s rally, and researched the assassination of President John F Kennedy, googling: “How far away was Oswald from Kennedy?”

“That’s a search that’s obviously significant in terms of his state of mind,” Christopher Wray, the FBI’s director, told the House Judiciary committee on Wednesday. He added that searches by Crooks then became “focused” on Trump.

He was working alone – the FBI say they do not think he received any help.

There was also reconnaissance. Mr Wray said Crooks was flying a drone about 200 yards (183m) from the stage two hours before Trump’s rally.

Its camera ran for about 11 minutes, Mr Wray said, and the footage would have shown “a rear-view mirror of the scene” behind Crooks’ eventual firing position.

Mr Wray said that Crooks had bought an AR-15-style rifle from his father, legally, although he did not say when. The gun had a collapsible stock, making it easier to conceal.

State police officers reported him using a rangefinder, a marksman aid that measures distance to a target, as the rally got under way.

Crooks had also obtained explosives: two “crude” devices fitted with receivers were found in Crooks’ car after the attack, Mr Wray said, and a transmitter was found on his body.

A bloodied receipt was also found on Crooks for a 5ft ladder, Mr Wray said – suggesting a recent buy. No ladder was found at the site, however, and Mr Wray said Crooks had used “mechanical equipment” to get to his perch – but did not elaborate.

And so Crooks turned up on the day with a concealable rifle, knowledge of previous assassinations, a rangefinder, two bombs, and detailed information on the layout of the area.

It should be impossible for a man to walk into a presidential rally with so much gear, let alone carry it up to an undefended roof with a direct line of sight to the stage. But this is exactly what happened in Butler.

Statements to the House Homeland Security committee by Pennsylvania’s police commissioner, Christopher Paris, convey a series of lapses from law enforcement.

The venue had two layers of security – an outer area patrolled by state police and an inner perimeter manned by Secret Service agents, including an anti-sniper team on a roof behind the stage.

An operations centre was staffed by members of the various agencies present. But on the day, communication was haphazard and areas of responsibility unclear.

Mr Paris told his hearing that state police were responsible for the area around the AGR International warehouse, the building from which Crooks fired that was around 400ft (122m) from the stage with a clear line of sight.

He revealed his men had raised its risk in the days before the rally and were told by the Secret Service that it was a state police matter as it was in the outer area.

As a consequence, a local SWAT-style Emergency Services Unit (ESU) team was stationed inside the building complex, Mr Paris added.

The New York Times reported that the team was in fact two men who stayed inside because of the hot weather. The plan had been approved by the Secret Service, the newspaper’s source said.

Kimberly Cheatle, director of the Secret Service until she stepped down this week, told lawmakers she could not account for why no one was stationed on the roof.

Mr Paris said the first sighting of Crooks came from a state police ESU unit.

Unlike others in the crowd, Crooks was walking around and did not try to enter the venue, he said. “Crooks never made it through the secure perimeter.”

He was not challenged. Mr Paris said he was one of three people flagged as “suspicious” at this point in the event.

About 25 minutes before the rally began, however, Mr Paris said that the ESU team spotted him again – this time using his rangefinder, though no gun was reported.

This is perhaps the point where security broke down irrevocably.

A photograph of Crooks was sent by a member of the ESU team to a state trooper in the joint operations room. Mr Paris said that a Secret Service liaison asked the trooper to send the photo to another number.

At this point, it seems that agents charged with protecting Trump did not consider Crooks dangerous enough to act – no weapon had been spotted.

During her fractious hearing before the House Oversight committee on Monday, Ms Cheatle acknowledged her agents were told about Crooks at least twice before the shooting began.

She said that agents only became aware of the gravity of the threat “seconds before the gunfire started”.

Mr Paris said several local police, including the ESU team, then began searching for Crooks. It appears he was lost again, despite his growing threat.

Witnesses told the BBC that by this point they had seen a man with a gun crawling along a roof. All of this was happening with Trump already on stage.

Mr Paris said that Crooks was eventually seen on the roof by local traffic police and his ESU team. One traffic officer boosted up to the roof by a colleague was forced to fall back after being confronted by Crooks, Mr Paris told the hearing.

That confrontation, the commissioner said, happened “a matter of seconds” before the shooting.

Agents surrounded Trump immediately after the first shots, and he was off the stage within two minutes. By this point Crooks had been shot dead by a sniper.

A video recorded on the roof about an hour after the attack shows snipers and Secret Service agents trying to understand who saw what and when, adding to the sense of confusion among law enforcement.

Eight bullet casings were found near his body. He had killed one crowd member and injured two others.

Amid speculation over whether Trump was actually hit by a bullet, the FBI confirmed two weeks afterwards that the Republican was indeed wounded by a round from the suspect’s weapon.

The agency said in a statement: “What struck former President Trump in the ear was a bullet, whether whole or fragmented into smaller pieces, fired from the deceased subject’s rifle.”

Trump was on stage for around 10 minutes between the moment Crooks was spotted on the roof with a gun and the moment he fired his first shot.

There is almost no public account of the Secret Service’s actions and decisions during the rally. Ms Cheatle declined to answer most of the questions put to her in Congress – down to how many agents were protecting Trump.

We do know, via Ms Cheatle, that agents dismissed the alerts about him because he was not seen with a weapon.

She could not provide her hearing a detailed timeline, as requested, saying she “did not have specifics”.

She quit as director of the Secret Service a day after her hearing, under pressure from both sides of the House, and it seems we won’t get answers any time soon.

More than a week on, we still do not know of any specific ideology or belief that drove Crooks to do what he did.

Mr Wray of the FBI told his hearing that a motive was one of the “central questions” of his bureau’s investigations.

However, he said that interviews with Crooks’ associates and searches of his home and online history did not give a “clear picture”.

Analysis of the gunman’s phone showed that he had “done a lot of searches” for news articles – but there was no pattern, Mr Wray added.

Investigators were still decrypting messages on the phone, he said.

We know he donated $15 to a Democratic Party platform shortly after the Capitol riot of 2021, then months later registered as a Republican.

No “manifesto” has been found.

What he planned to do with his explosives, meanwhile, remains unclear – Mr Wray said that while his bombs were viable, their receivers were off and Crooks would not have been able to detonate them remotely.

The National Wax Museum in Dublin is “committed” to creating a new wax figure of Irish singer Sinéad O’Connor after significant public backlash.

It comes after the museum unveiled a waxwork of the late singer and activist to coincide with the first anniversary of her death.

O’Connor was found dead at the age of 56 in her south London home last July.

The figure was first unveiled on Thursday as a tribute to the singer, but the museum has now said it will be removed in order to create “a more accurate representation”.

Among those who criticised the original figure was O’Connor’s brother, John.

He said he was shocked when he first saw the waxwork online and said it was “inappropriate”.

“It looked nothing like her and I thought it was hideous,” he told Irish broadcaster RTÉ’s Liveline radio programme on Friday.

He added that the figure looked “between a mannequin and something out of the Thunderbirds”.

A statement from the museum said: “In response to the public’s feedback regarding the wax figure, we acknowledge that the current representation did not meet our high standards or the expectations of Sinéad’s devoted fans.

“We have listened closely to the reactions and agree that the figure does not fully capture Sinéad’s unique presence and essence as we intended.”

The museum said O’Connor’s impact on music is “immeasurable” and its goal was to honour the late singer in the “most fitting and respectful manner”.

“With this in mind, we are committed to creating a new wax figure that better reflect’s Sinéad O’Connor’s true spirit and iconic image,” it added.

“Our team of skilled artists will begin this project immediately, ensuring that every detail is meticulously crafted to celebrate her legacy appropriately.”

It said the museum looks forward to unveiling a new figure that “truly honours” O’Connor and her “extraordinary impact”.

Sinéad Marie Bernadette O’Connor was born on 8 December 1966 in the affluent Glenageary suburb of Dublin.

Her debut album in 1987, The Lion and the Cobra, was a storming success, earning O’Connor a Grammy nomination for best female rock vocal performance.

But it was her 1990 Prince cover single Nothing Compares 2 U which saw her catapult to worldwide fame.

O’Connor was outspoken on subjects including religion, women’s rights and racism.

In 1992, she tore up a photo of Pope John Paul II while performing on US television programme Saturday Night Live in protest against child sexual abuse in the Catholic Church.

In 2018, she converted to Islam, changing her name to Shuhada Sadaqat.

However she continued to perform under her birth name.

On 26 July 2023, the musician was found unresponsive at her home in Herne Hill, south London and was later pronounced dead.

A coroner ruled that she died of natural causes.

Boneless chicken wings do not have to be bone-free, Ohio’s top court ruled, ending a lawsuit filed by a man who fell ill after swallowing a piece of bone from his order.

Michael Berkheimer sued Wings on Brookwood in 2016, saying the restaurant failed to warn him that the boneless wings could in fact contain bones, a piece of which became lodged in his throat and caused an infection.

The court on Thursday ruled that “boneless wing” refers to “cooking style” and is not to be taken literally.

The 4-3 ruling was peppered with dissent, with one judge calling the majority opinion “utter jabberwocky”.

But a majority of the judges considered being cautious of bones in a boneless wing to be common sense.

Writing for the majority, Justice Joseph T Deters said: “A diner reading ‘boneless wings’ on a menu would no more believe that the restaurant was warranting the absence of bones in the items than believe that the items were made from chicken wings, just as a person eating ‘chicken fingers’ would know that he had not been served fingers.”

The chicken wing controversy began in 2016, when Michael Berkheimer was dining with his wife and friends at a restaurant in Hamilton, Ohio.

He ordered what has been described as his “usual” – boneless wings with parmesan garlic sauce – when he noticed a piece go down uncomfortably.

Three days later, he began to feel feverish and went to the emergency room. Doctors discovered a long, thin bone that caused a tear in his oesophagus and a subsequent infection.

Mr Berkheimer later sued the restaurant, accusing them of failing to warn him that the “boneless wings” might contain bones.

In the lawsuit, he also accused the supplier and the farm that produced the chicken of negligence.

Lower courts had dismissed Mr Berkheimer’s suit, which then landed in the state’s supreme court.

A majority of the justices considered it common knowledge that chickens have bones, and sided with the lower courts against him.

“The food item’s label on the menu described a cooking style; it was not a guarantee,” Justice Deters wrote.

However, the dissenting justices felt like the decision should have sat with a jury and not with the court’s justices.

Justice Michael P Donnelly wrote in dissent: “The question must be asked: Does anyone really believe that the parents in this country who feed their young children boneless wings or chicken tenders or chicken nuggets or chicken fingers expect bones to be in the chicken? Of course they don’t.

“When they read the word ‘boneless,’ they think that it means ‘without bones,’ as do all sensible people.”

A rare fire tornado has ripped through bushland in northern California, as the state’s largest wildfire this year explodes in size.

The Park fire, which was started on Wednesday, has burned more than 239,000 acres of land north-east of Chico, and was 0% contained on Friday night, the state’s fire agency Cal Fire said.

A 42-year-old man was arrested on Thursday on suspicion of setting the blaze by rolling a burning car into a gully near Alligator Hole in Butte County.

Footage obtained by BBC News shows the “firenado” – a swirling vortex of flames and ash formed in intense heat and high winds – twisting through bushland.

California Governor Gavin Newsom on Friday declared a state of emergency in Butte and Tehama counties because of the Park fire.

“We are using every available tool to protect lives and property as our fire and emergency response teams work around the clock to combat these challenging fires,” he said in a statement.

The blaze has forced mandatory evacuations in Butte, where California’s deadliest blaze, the Camp Fire, killed more than 80 people in 2018.

The 400-strong population of Cohasset has already been moved as the fire burns largely out of control.

Cal Fire said that 134 structures had been destroyed, while 4,200 were under threat.

The Park fire has grown since it sparked on Wednesday from about 1,400 acres, spreading by Thursday into California’s Central Valley.

Officials arrested Ronnie Dean Stout, 42, and accused him of “calmly leaving the area by blending in with the other citizens who were in the area and fleeing the rapidly evolving fire” that he had set. He is being held in jail without bail as authorities determine what charges he will face.

A woman who answered the door of the mobile home listed as his home address in Chico told the San Francisco Chronicle that prosecutors “are trying to make him the scapegoat”.

“They’re saying he did it intentionally, but he didn’t. The car caught on fire,” the unidentified woman said, before refusing to answer further questions.

The National Weather Service issued a red flag warning for northern Sacramento Valley, and warned high winds and low humidity on Friday could combine to “cause new fire starts and ongoing wildfires to… grow rapidly and dangerously in size and intensity”.

The LA Times reported that the fire was threatening to engulf the Ishi Wilderness and Lassen foothills – areas untouched by fire in almost a century and therefore filled with a large amount of fuel for the blaze.

The biggest current wildfire in the US, however, is across the border in Oregon. The Durkee fire has burned at least 288,000 acres, and was 20% contained by Friday evening.

Sparked by lightning on 17 July, it has scorched ranch land and killed cattle by the hundreds. It is threatening several towns.

Canada is also battling large wildfires, one of which has destroyed up to half of the historic town of Jasper in Alberta, and large areas of the Jasper National Park. Rain on Friday aided the hundreds of firefighters called in to fight the blaze.

• Canadians mourn as Jasper, jewel of the Rockies, burns

The Olympic opening ceremony presents the host country with the opportunity to wow the world with a uniquely spectacular show.

The opening of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games was just that – the organisers ditched the traditional ceremony, and became the first Games to hold the opening event within a city as a whole rather than in a stadium.

Thousands of athletes and performers paraded along the River Seine on a wet evening, before the night sky and the Eiffel Tower were lit up in dramatic technicolour, creating a hugely ambitious, one-of-a-kind spectacle.

Below are some of the most eye-catching photos from the night.

After a three-month journey from Greece to Paris, the Olympic torch was handed to former French footballer Zinedine Zidane, before being passed on to tennis stars Rafa Nadal and Serena Williams.

In an epic climax, French judo great Teddy Riner and sprinter Marie-Jose Perec used the Olympic torch to ignite a cauldron powering an enormous hot air balloon.

The giant, glowing balloon then flew over the city of Paris to signal the start of the greatest show on Earth.

The opening ceremony began with a stunning display of coloured smoke resembling the French flag rising over the Pont d’Austerlitz.

Fans and spectators were in keen attendance, and – for the most part – were undeterred by the wet weather.

French President Emmanuel Macron was watching alongside President of the International Olympic Committee Thomas Bach.

UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer was also spotted watching the ceremony, seemingly well-prepared for the rain.

Various celebrities attended the evening, including American singer Ariana Grande with her British Wicked co-star Cynthia Erivo.

As expected there was a heightened security presence, with tens of thousands of police deployed across the city.

Throughout the event, a mystery masked torchbearer was running and parkour-ing their way through the city on riverside rooftops.

Fleets of team boats, with countries from all around the world, sailed down the Seine, flying their flags with pride.

British diver Tom Daley and rower Helen Glover bore the flag for Team GB.

The event was interspersed with elaborate performances of all kinds, from Lady Gaga, cabaret performers, ballet dancers, acrobats to a finale from Celine Dion, a distant figure on stage halfway up the Eiffel Tower.

At a moment of unprecedented turbulence in modern American political history, Kamala Harris is having a remarkably smooth ride. It may not last long.

Tony Fabrizio, Donald Trump’s campaign pollster, calls it a “Harris Honeymoon” – where a combination of good press and positive energy have combined to give the Democrat a surge of momentum.

The thing about honeymoons, of course, is that they come to an end. The realities of married life, or in this case the relationship between Ms Harris and the American voting public, has a way of reasserting itself.

For now, the champagne corks are flying for team Harris and Democrats may be experiencing an unfamiliar emotion – hope. But Republicans, after initially being caught somewhat flatfooted by Mr Biden’s historic announcement, are redirecting their fire at the new presumptive nominee.

Here’s a look at three areas on which their recent attacks have focused – and some ways Democrats may try to deflect them.

The travails of Ms Harris’ unsuccessful campaign for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination are well documented. They include a lack of clear messaging, a campaign rife with internal discord and a candidate who was prone to awkward interviews and gaffes.

Something else happened during the then-senator’s ill-fated presidential bid, however. She – like many of the candidates in that race – tacked sharply to the left, to be more in line with Democratic primary voters.

“There was a lot of pressure on those guys from the activist base,” said Matt Bennett, the executive vice-president for public affairs at Third Way, a centrist Democratic think tank. “When you’re competing in a primary, your political priorities are very different than the sprint to the finish in a general election.”

Over the course of 2019 – in debates and interviews – Ms Harris endorsed scrapping private health insurance for a government-run system. She praised policing reform, including redirecting law-enforcement budgets to other priorities. She endorsed decriminalising undocumented entry into the US and entertained abolishing Ice, the immigration and customs enforcement agency. She backed the sweeping Green New Deal environmental legislation and supported a ban on fracking and off-shore drilling.

Now those positions could come back to haunt her.

David McCormick, a Republican candidate for Senate in Pennsylvania, was quick to produce a television advertisement hitting on Ms Harris’ 2019 positions and tying them to his opponent, Democratic Senator Bob Casey.

And Trump has released a video titled “MEET SAN FRANCISCO RADICAL KAMALA HARRIS” that includes many of the policies she backed during that time.

Conservative commentator Matt Walsh called it a “blueprint” for how to attack the vice-president.

“She can argue, correctly, that good leaders change their position on policy and they don’t change her principles,” Mr Bennett, the Democratic strategist, said. “None of her principles have changed.”

If she doesn’t do that convincingly, she could lose support from independent and undecided voters that will determine the outcome of the election in key swing states.

Polls show the Biden campaign had been floundering for months. His immigration policies were unpopular. Even though inflation has eased and the economy is growing, voters still blamed him for higher prices. His ongoing support for Israel in the Gaza War was sapping his support among young voters.

Ms Harris, in her role as vice-president, will at least be somewhat tied to the entirety of the current administration’s record – for better or for worse.

Republicans are already trying to hang the immigration issue around her neck, labelling her as the administration’s “border czar” – an inaccurate but damaging characterisation that was also used by the media. They cite her past statements on immigration and a claim, during an interview in 2022, that the “border is secure”.

“Kamala Harris is currently only known as a failed and unpopular vice-president who knifed her boss in the back to secure a nomination she couldn’t earn, but voters are about to learn, it gets worse,” Taylor Budowich, who runs the political action committee affiliated with the Trump campaign, said in a statement touting $32m in upcoming television advertisements targeting the vice-president.

According to Mr Bennett, Ms Harris won’t be able to fully distance herself from the Biden record, but she might be able to put it in new light for voters, even in the face of Republican attacks.

“What she can do is make this about the future in ways that were going to be very difficult for an 81-year-old guy to do,” he says. “She can argue that Trump wants only to look backward.”

In the first public rally of her presidential campaign, Ms Harris unveiled a particularly pointed line of attack against the former president. Noting that she had served as a courtroom prosecutor and as California’s attorney general, she said she had faced off against “perpetrators of all kinds”.

“So hear me when I say I know Donald Trump’s type,” she concluded.

Craig Varoga, a Democratic campaign consultant and adjunct instructor at American University, calls the vice-president’s law-enforcement background her “superpower” – one that she was not fully able to use on the Democratic campaign trail in 2019, when policing reform was a top issue.

But Trump’s campaign is already showing signs on how they might respond. His campaign manager, Chris LaCivita, made his bones in the Republican Party by taking on another Democratic candidate’s supposed superpower and turning it against him.

Back in 2004, Democratic nominee John Kerry was touting his record as a decorated Vietnam War veteran as proof that he would be an effective commander-in-chief during the Iraq War. Mr LaCivita spearheaded a series of attack adverts questioning Mr Kerry’s patriotism and heroism, featuring sailors who served with Kerry on a Navy swift boat patrolling the rivers and shorelines in Vietnam.

It gave rise to the term “Swift-boating” – which means to disarm a candidate by attacking their perceived strength.

And it looks like Trump’s campaign is gearing up for attacks on the vice-president’s prosecutorial record.

On one hand, they are hitting her for being too tough – particularly on black men for drug crimes – in an attempt to undermine support from her base. On the other, they are citing instances where Ms Harris either chose not to prosecute or allowed the parole of individuals who went on to commit new crimes.

Mr Varoga concedes that Democrats botched their response to the Swift-boat attacks in 2004, but he says they’ve learned their lesson and Ms Harris will be ready for the onslaught.

“If LaCivita thinks he’s going to fool the entire Democratic establishment again, he can live with that delusion and also lose,” he said.

In his memo, Mr Fabrizio said that Ms Harris “can’t change who she is or what she’s done”. He promised that voters will soon view her as Mr Biden’s “partner and co-pilot” and learn about her “dangerously liberal record”.

The upcoming advertising onslaught, along with Trump’s public statements and rally attacks, will be the tip of this Republican spear.

Meanwhile, Ms Harris and her campaign will work to offer their own definition of who the candidate is and what she stands for.

One particularly effective way to do this, according to Mr Varoga, is with her selection of a vice-presidential running mate.

“It’s the first real decision that a candidate for president makes that’s out there for the public to see,” he said. “That will go a long way toward people understanding what kind of future she’s going to pursue.”

If she opts for a more moderate partner, it could make voters more inclined to believe that she will govern from the centre, rather than as the leftist candidate Republicans make her out to be.

In the weeks ahead, the fight to define Ms Harris – through her word, through her votes and through her past campaigns – will go a long way towards determining how the public views her when they head to the ballot box in November.

It will shape whether the honeymoon ends in heartbreak for Democrats or a union that lasts for the next four years.

• SIMPLE GUIDE: Everything you need to know about the vote
• ANALYSIS: Has Harris got what it takes to beat Trump?
• SWING STATES: Where the election could be won and lost
• EXPLAINER: RFK Jr and others running for president
• VOTERS: US workers in debt to buy groceries

Celine Dion has returned to the stage for the first time since revealing a serious health condition, delivering a typical powerhouse performance at the Paris Olympics opening ceremony.

The Canadian superstar had been rumoured to be singing a duet with Lady Gaga, but instead went solo on the Eiffel Tower to bring the four-hour event to a stirring climax.

It was Dion’s first live performance for four years, and came a year and a half after she revealed a diagnosis of Stiff Person Syndrome (SPS).

SPS is a rare neurological disorder that causes muscles to spasm and can be debilitating. It also affected her distinctive forceful voice.

The 56 year old, known as the “queen of power ballads”, has been having therapy to “rebuild” her voice, as she told the BBC in June, and help her sing again.

On Friday, her delivery of Edith Piaf’s classic L’Hymne à l’Amour gave encouraging signs that the treatment is working.

She was accompanied by a pianist on the first level of the Eiffel Tower, beneath giant illuminated Olympic rings.

• Opening ceremony lights up Paris in unique style
• Watch the best bits of Paris 2024 opening ceremony
• Spectacular photos from the opening ceremony

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said that she “is a Canadian icon, an incredible talent, and she overcame a lot to be there tonight”.

He added: “Celine, it’s great to see you singing again”.

Italian singer Laura Pausini wrote: “My hands were shaking and my eyes were crying as I listened and saw my beloved Celine Dion.”

Her appearance had been hotly anticipated, with crowds of fans waiting outside her hotel in the city in recent days.

Dion has a big following in France. Her 1995 album D’eux is the best-selling French-language album of all time.

Friday’s appearance was the second time that Dion, known for hits including My Heart Will Go On and It’s It’s All Coming Back to Me Now, had participated in an Olympic opening ceremony, after Atlanta 1996.

And her comeback performance came six months after a surprise appearance to present an award at the Grammys.

She has also teased a new residency in Las Vegas. “We have been working so hard to put this show together – because I’m back,” she told the BBC in June.

She already holds the record for the most successful residency of all time on the Las Vegas strip.

Last month, she discussed her struggles with SPS in a film called I Am: Celine Dion, which Amazon Prime Video said on Thursday had become its most successful documentary ever.

Donald Trump’s vice-presidential candidate JD Vance has defended resurfaced comments in which he called Democratic politicians a “bunch of childless cat ladies with miserable lives”.

His remarks, made in 2021, have been roundly criticised this week, with Hollywood actress Jennifer Aniston among those to have hit out at the 39-year-old Republican.

“Obviously it was a sarcastic comment. People are focusing so much on the sarcasm and not on the substance of what I actually said,” Mr Vance told the conservative media personality Megyn Kelly on Friday.

“The substance of what I said, Megyn – I’m sorry, it’s true,” he added.

Mr Vance, who has three children, said he was not criticising people who do not have children in the interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, which he gave while running for the Senate.

“This is about criticising the Democratic Party for becoming anti-family and anti-children,” he told The Megyn Kelly Show.

“The simple point that I made is that having children, becoming a father, becoming a mother, I really do think it changes your perspective in a pretty profound way,” he said.

“I’m making an argument that our entire society has become sceptical and even hateful towards the idea of having kids.”

In the original interview, he questioned why some leading politicians did not have children. One of those he named was Kamala Harris, the presumptive Democratic nominee for November’s election, who is stepmother to her husband Doug Emhoff’s two children.

“The entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children,” he said at the time. “How does it make any sense we’ve turned our country over to people who don’t really have a direct stake in it?”

The Senator from Ohio said the country was being run “by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable too”.

On Friday, Mr Vance said: “I wish her step-children and Kamala Harris and her whole family the very best. The point is not that she’s lesser. The point is that her party has pursued a set of policies that are profoundly anti-child.”

Mr Vance made similar remarks against Democrats in a 2021 speech at the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, in which he also said his criticism was not directed at those who could not have children for biological or medical reasons.

Jennifer Aniston, who has spoken publicly about her struggles while trying to have children through in-vitro fertilisation (IVF), was among those who criticised his comments.

“I truly can’t believe that this is coming from a potential VP of the United States,” she said on Thursday.

Pete Buttigieg, who was another Democratic politician named by Mr Vance in the original interview, also addressed the comments earlier this week, speaking about adopting twins with his husband, Chasten.

“The really sad thing is he said that after Chasten and I had been through a fairly heart-breaking setback in our adoption journey,” Mr Buttigieg told CNN’s The Source programme.

Speaking to Fox News, Trump co-campaign chairman Chris LaCivita rejected any suggestion that Trump might regret his choice of running mate.

“JD was the best pick,” Mr LaCivita said. “The president loves him. We love him.”

Tears welled in Tasha Porttin’s eyes as she reminisced on the sheer beauty of the place she’s called home for 10 years.

Jasper’s mountain peaks and the picture-perfect pine trees that frame its vivid baby-blue lakes make it a popular tourist destination attracting millions each year. The natural beauty and small businesses, like the pharmacy she started, make the quaint alpine town in Canada’s Alberta province a jewel of the nation.

It’s a “place that has the biggest heart of any community I’ve met”, she said through tears. “It grabs people and never lets go.”

Those memories have now been replaced by an evolving nightmare. An out-of-control blaze has levelled about 33% of the buildings in the Canadian Rockies resort town, and fire crews are still working to douse the flames that have already burned 89,000 acres (36,000 hectares).

Rain tamped down the fire on Thursday night, and no new blazes have started in the last day, officials said in an update on Friday. But winds were expected to pick up and hot, dry weather is forecast to return by Monday.

Out of a total of 1,113 structures in the town of Jasper, 358 have been destroyed, according to town officials, who added that it may be weeks before residents can return home.

But “all critical infrastructure in Jasper was successfully protected” – including schools, a hospital, and a water treatment plant.

Jasper Mayor Richard Ireland said his own home may have been destroyed by the fire. “Where the fire did the most damage, that’s where my home is”.

“How I will react remains to be seen.”

The mayor said despite preparation and years of training, the nature of the fire “humbled the humans on the ground”.

He added that “nature prevailed” with 100m (328 ft) high walls of flames that were metres wide.

Ms Porttin rushed to flee the area in a camping trailer that her husband bought less than a month ago. She has been monitoring the fire, waiting with concern as buildings nearby crumble.

“I have seen images of it standing,” she said of her business. “Unfortunately, the buildings next to it are not. That’s pretty much all I know.”

“It’s just surreal to think our downtown is not the way we left it.”

Canadians and elected officials have described a deep sense of grief and a devastating cultural loss as the area continues burning.

Sitting just north of the more popular Banff National Park, Jasper National Park is the largest in Canada’s Rocky Mountains.

The Unesco World Heritage Site is home to elk, grizzly bear, moose and bison.

The adjacent town of Jasper has a population of around 5,000, but has around a dozen hotels to accommodate the roughly 2.5 million people who pass through to visit the park.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called the area a “special and cherished place” for many Canadians.

Karyn Decore, whose family has owned the historic Maligne Lodge over 60 years, has been receiving condolences from around the country since learning it was destroyed as the fire swept through town.

In an interview on Friday, she said she has always loved sharing the Canadian “icon” with international visitors, calling it “one of the most famous national parks in the world”.

“People understand the beauty, and the power, and the magic of Jasper National Park,” she says, recalling her lifetime of wildlife viewing, mountain biking, fishing and skiing in Jasper.

Ms Porttin said she loves watching visitors fall in love with Jasper. Most who end up moving to the town have a similar-sounding origin story.

“Most people say I came for a summer, and I stayed the rest of my life,” she says. “It grabs people and never lets go.”

Town residents, she says, enjoy meeting people from around the world as they come and “fall in love with the place that we love”.

Ms Porttin said she rushed to leave as the blaze closed in. She said the recently bought camping trailer was already stocked with some necessary supplies.

“Without that,” she said, “I don’t know what we would have done.”

Along with her four-year-old, she had only 30 minutes to pack on Monday.

Her husband was away, so a friend who owned a truck came over, and hooked up the trailer so they could all flee.

The two families spent two nights camped out together before her husband was able to join them.

“As much as you think you’re prepared, you’re never prepared to leave,” she said.

The destruction is expected to have a steep economic cost, as tourists stay away during the height of travel season.

Ms Decore says her now-destroyed hotel is normally 100% occupied from May to October every year. Now, all of the tourists and staff have evacuated the area, and they don’t know when they may return.

Park officials estimated that a power outage in the town last year, which lasted two weeks, deprived local businesses of some $10m in revenue.

It remains to be seen how long it will take to restore the resort, as well as the pristine ecology that helps make the majestic park a pride of Canada.

Meanwhile, there are currently 51 wildfires burning “out of control” around the Alberta province, forcing some 17,000 Albertans to flee.

Ismael ‘El Mayo’ Zambada is one of most notorious names in drug war history, synonymous with the fearsome power and corrosive influence of the most important drug cartel in the world.

The last of an original generation of drug cartel leaders, he created the Sinaloa Cartel alongside Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzman from the remnants of the Guadalajara Cartel after it collapsed in 1989.

But unlike his infamous partner who was twice jailed and escaped, El Mayo was able to evade capture for some 35 years. Until now.

US authorities arrested him in El Paso, Texas on Thursday. He has already pleaded not guilty to multiple charges in federal court in Texas.

He was lured to the US as part of an elaborate sting operation, masterminded by the son of his former partner, El Chapo. Joaquin Guzman Lopez, one of the heirs to El Chapo’s operation, was arrested alongside Zambada having led him to believe he was travelling to northern Mexico to look at prospective properties for clandestine airstrips.

“Are you worried of being captured?” Zambada was asked in 2010 by the late Mexican journalist, Julio Scherer García, who had travelled deep into the mountains for an unprecedented interview with the drug lord.

“The idea of being jailed gives me panic,” he answered. “I’m not sure I have what it takes to kill myself. I’d like to think I do and that I’d take my own life.”

When it came to it, however, either he didn’t have the means or the opportunity.

For someone who exercised such caution over so many years, it seems extraordinary that Zambada was duped aged 76. Perhaps it was always going to take something unique to see him in custody.

“It doesn’t surprise me that Zambada didn’t go willingly,” says Mike Vigil, a former DEA agent. “He is in his 70s, in poor health and already said that prison was his greatest fear.”

The arrests – and possible plea deal between the sons of El Chapo, known as Los Chapitos, and the US Government – begs the question of who will take control of the Sinaloa Cartel.

After El Chapo Guzman was arrested and extradited to the US in 2016, a round of bloodletting began as rival factions wrestled for control of territory as well as fought opposing drug gangs who sensed weakness.

Even more shocking, and violent, was the response of the Sinaloa Cartel’s foot soldiers when their leader, Ovidio Guzman Lopez, was arrested in October 2019.

After he was detained, hundreds of gunmen descended on the city of Culiacan and opened fire on civilian, police and military targets with .50 calibre weapons and rocket launchers. Eventually, the authorities handed Ovidio Guzman back to his men to bring the fighting to an end.

He was later re-arrested, extradited and is currently awaiting trial in a US prison.

Mike Vigil thinks a similar explosion of violence, which became known as the Culiacanazo, might be avoided this time around:

“The Sinaloa Cartel has a very strong bench of possible leaders who could take over including El Chapo’s brother,” he says.

In fact, Mr Vigil argues, the “Kingpin strategy” – that is focusing on bringing down individual cartel leaders – is rarely successful.

“Under the administration of (then-Mexican President Felipe) Calderon, it only tended to create internal conflict within the cartels which then led to a bloodbath.”

If that happens this time, suggests former DEA agent Mike Vigil, “the only winner would be their rivals, the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG)”.

That said, moments of flux and possible power vacuums such as this one are deeply unpredictable. The Mexican authorities have already sent additional forces to the state of Sinaloa ahead of any flare-up of violence.

The other obvious question over Zambada’s arrest is: why now?

The operation was planned for months. However, some reports say there was also an opportunistic element to it. When the various elements behind the ruse appeared to be coming together, despite some scepticism among the US authorities, they ultimately decided they had nothing lose by trying it.

The bigger reason behind the timing, though, was revealed by the words of the US Attorney General Merrick Garland in a video message confirming the arrests:

“Fentanyl is the deadliest threat our country has ever faced”, he said promising that the US justice department “will not rest until every single cartel leader, member and associate responsible for poisoning our communities is held accountable.”

Fentanyl overdoses are now the leading cause of death for Americans between the ages of 18 and 45. It is a staggering statistic and one that has perhaps focussed minds in the Biden administration, especially in an election year.

Both Los Chapitos and El Mayo have made billions through fentanyl, which is easy to produce and transport without the need for large coca plantations in the Andes as with the manufacture of cocaine.

Experts say that shutting down the smuggling of fentanyl altogether is virtually impossible. It is simply too profitable to the cartels and too riven into the modern landscape of Mexico’s drug war.

However, US law enforcement wants to hurt the cartels that are producing it, diminish their influence and, wherever possible, dismantle their leadership.

The capture of El Mayo Zambada – even if aging, in poor health and captured in a double-cross – was always going to remain a key part of that strategy.

The National Wax Museum in Dublin is “committed” to creating a new wax figure of Irish singer Sinéad O’Connor after significant public backlash.

It comes after the museum unveiled a waxwork of the late singer and activist to coincide with the first anniversary of her death.

O’Connor was found dead at the age of 56 in her south London home last July.

The figure was first unveiled on Thursday as a tribute to the singer, but the museum has now said it will be removed in order to create “a more accurate representation”.

Among those who criticised the original figure was O’Connor’s brother, John.

He said he was shocked when he first saw the waxwork online and said it was “inappropriate”.

“It looked nothing like her and I thought it was hideous,” he told Irish broadcaster RTÉ’s Liveline radio programme on Friday.

He added that the figure looked “between a mannequin and something out of the Thunderbirds”.

A statement from the museum said: “In response to the public’s feedback regarding the wax figure, we acknowledge that the current representation did not meet our high standards or the expectations of Sinéad’s devoted fans.

“We have listened closely to the reactions and agree that the figure does not fully capture Sinéad’s unique presence and essence as we intended.”

The museum said O’Connor’s impact on music is “immeasurable” and its goal was to honour the late singer in the “most fitting and respectful manner”.

“With this in mind, we are committed to creating a new wax figure that better reflect’s Sinéad O’Connor’s true spirit and iconic image,” it added.

“Our team of skilled artists will begin this project immediately, ensuring that every detail is meticulously crafted to celebrate her legacy appropriately.”

It said the museum looks forward to unveiling a new figure that “truly honours” O’Connor and her “extraordinary impact”.

Sinéad Marie Bernadette O’Connor was born on 8 December 1966 in the affluent Glenageary suburb of Dublin.

Her debut album in 1987, The Lion and the Cobra, was a storming success, earning O’Connor a Grammy nomination for best female rock vocal performance.

But it was her 1990 Prince cover single Nothing Compares 2 U which saw her catapult to worldwide fame.

O’Connor was outspoken on subjects including religion, women’s rights and racism.

In 1992, she tore up a photo of Pope John Paul II while performing on US television programme Saturday Night Live in protest against child sexual abuse in the Catholic Church.

In 2018, she converted to Islam, changing her name to Shuhada Sadaqat.

However she continued to perform under her birth name.

On 26 July 2023, the musician was found unresponsive at her home in Herne Hill, south London and was later pronounced dead.

A coroner ruled that she died of natural causes.

Everything was in place.

Streets in the centre of Paris were blocked off, metro stations closed and thousands of police, soldiers and other guards deployed to maintain security on the big showpiece day to kick off the Olympics.

But the saboteurs struck away from the capital, at five apparently unguarded places.

France’s state-owned rail company SNCF said the saboteurs either vandalised or tried to vandalise five signal boxes and electricity installations between 01:00 and 05:30 on Friday.

One site was at Courtalain, east of Le Mans and 150km to the south-west of Paris. The local community’s social media page posted a picture of burnt-out cables in a shallow gulley, with its protective SNCF paving stones discarded.

The SNCF spoke of a “massive, large-scale attack aimed at paralysing” its services, involving arson and theft targeting cabling, not just at Courtalain but at Pagny-sur-Moselle, a village outside the eastern city of Metz and Croisilles, not far from the northern city of Arras.

Small sites, but at big junctions on the high-speed TGV network.

Another attempted attack, on another TGV junction to the south-east of Paris at Vergigny, was foiled by SNCF workers who just happened to be carrying out maintenance on site in the early hours of Friday.

The sabotage was clearly co-ordinated and the effects were immediate, on one of the busiest days imaginable for France’s highly regarded rail system.

The head of SNCF, Jean-Pierre Farandou, has spoken of a “premeditated, calculated, co-ordinated” attack that demanded considerable repair work.

Friday 26 July marked the start of the (big getaway) for many French holidaymakers heading out of the cities. It was also the day of the showpiece opening ceremony that the Paris Olympics organisers have worked on for years.

Hundreds of stranded passengers filled the main concourses at Gare du Nord and Gare Montparnasse, two of the big rail hubs in Paris for travellers on lines to the north and west of the capital.

Passengers at Gare du Nord waited patiently for news about delayed trains, not just within France but to London, Brussels and Amsterdam.

The much-vaunted high-speed TGV network heading in and out of Paris – north to Lille, west to Le Mans and east towards Strasbourg – was down.

At the nearby Gare de L’Est, which serves the east, an SNCF official said the company had diverted high-speed TGV trains onto other, slower lines, which would mean long delays and disruptions, but would also keep the network moving.

By the afternoon, trains in all three directions were slowly resuming, but with limited services, delays of up to two hours and still some cancellations.

“Everything points us to these fires being deliberate,” said Transport Minister Patrice Vergriete. “The timing [of the attacks], the vans that have been recovered after people have fled, the incendiary agents found on the scene.”

Clearly acts of sabotage, and evidently timed to cause severe disruption on the day that Paris was trying to show its best face to the world.

Caretaker Prime Minister Gabriel Attal said the repercussions for the rail network were massive and serious, and France’s intelligence services and forces of order had been deployed to “find and punish those behind these criminal acts”.

French authorities have been on alert for potential acts of sabotage targeting the Games for months.

During the spring, they warned that several groups had tried to disrupt Olympic events, including the torch relay that has been going on across France in the run-up to the opening ceremony.

It has now emerged that incendiary devices were found on the high-speed TGV line between Aix-en-Provence and Marseille on the day the Olympic flame arrived in France’s big southern port on 8 May.

Several bottles filled with yellow liquid were found 4km (2.5 miles) outside Aix, according to French TV.

But who would want to ruin the plans of hundreds of thousands of French travellers and disrupt the start of the Olympic Games?

One security source suggested in French media that the arson attacks bore all the hallmarks of the extreme left.

However, Mr Attal has refused to speculate who might have been behind the sabotage.

He appealed to the public to be cautious as the investigation was only just starting, although he did say the fact that the saboteurs had targeted “nerve centres” on the high-speed network indicated awareness of where it was vulnerable to attack.

In recent weeks, Russia has been linked to at least two alleged plots in France.

Last month, a Russian-Ukrainian national was arrested at a hotel near Charles de Gaulle Airport on suspicion of being part of a Russian-sabotage campaign,

Only this week a Russian man was arrested on suspicion of involvement in a “destabilisation” plot targeting the Games.

Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin said he was suspected of aiming to “organise operations of destabilisation, interference, spying” on behalf of Russia’s FSB intelligence service.

So far no Russian link has been made by French authorities to Friday’s attacks.

Mr Darmanin said this month that 3,570 people had been barred from the Games, including people seen as security risks as well as “dozens of radical individuals close to Islamist, ultra-left and ultra-right circles”.

Almost a million people, ranging from athletes and coaches to Olympic volunteers, have gone through a security check ahead of the Games in Paris.

But preventing acts of sabotage at unguarded sites in rural areas is a wholly different prospect.

Louis van Schoor, a convicted mass murderer in South Africa known as the “Apartheid Killer”, has died.

The 72-year-old had been in hospital with an infection in his leg. His daughter told the BBC he died on Thursday afternoon “due to complications from sepsis”.

Van Schoor’s death came less than a week after a BBC investigation into his past, which exposed horrific new details about a series of killings he carried out in the late 1980s during the final years of white-minority rule.

The sister of one of his victims has told the BBC she hopes the police will re-open the cases for investigation despite his death.

At a time when the racist apartheid system imposed a strict hierarchy that privileged white South Africans, Van Schoor was operating as a private security guard in the coastal city of East London.

Between 1986 and 1989, he shot and killed at least 39 people. All of his victims were black and the youngest was just 12 years.

• Mass killer who ‘hunted’ black people says police encouraged him

In 1991, Van Schoor was arrested and later convicted on seven charges of murder, but he was released on parole after serving just 12 years in jail.

At least 32 of his killings are still classified as “justifiable homicides” by the police.

In his lifetime, Van Schoor claimed that all his victims were criminals who he caught “red-handed”.

He relied on apartheid-era laws that gave people the right to use lethal force against intruders to maintain his innocence.

But the BBC’s report raised serious questions about these so-called “justifiable” shootings.

It included extensive interviews with Van Schoor in which he described his activities as “exciting” and “hunting”, and where he made a series of allegations about the involvement of the police in his activities in the 1980s.

The BBC also reviewed long-forgotten archival documents, including witness statements by multiple survivors of Van Schoor’s shootings, who gave graphic accounts of him gunning them down after they had surrendered.

“He picked me up and propped me up against a table and then he shot me again,” said one survivor, who was 14 years old at the time.

There is no statute of limitations for murder in South Africa and many relatives of victims still have hopes of launching criminal or civil lawsuits in pursuit of justice.

Marlene Mvumbi, whose brother Edward was killed by Van Schoor in 1986, was shocked to hear of his sudden death.

“He got off easy!” she said. “I hope they still re-open these cases. The families deserve justice. We got nothing and the pain is still the same.”

The Apartheid Killer, watch on iPlayer (UK only)

Outside the UK, watch on the BBC Africa YouTube channel.

In 2021, Van Schoor had both his legs partially amputated following circulatory complications.

His hospitalisation a month ago, in the same East London hospital where many of his victims were taken, was due to an infection in the remains of one of his limbs.

Sepsis develops when the body’s immune system overreacts to an infection and starts attacking its own tissues and organs.

Van Schoor’s family said his condition deteriorated rapidly once sepsis set in, despite the best efforts of hospital staff.

In his final interview with the BBC, Van Schoor denied that he was a “serial killer”, but also said he had “no remorse” and “no guilt” for his past actions.

Isa Jacobson, a journalist and filmmaker who has spent 20 years investigating his case, says it is essential that killers from the apartheid era continue to be scrutinised – before it is too late.

“I think that we only know a small percentage of the killings that occurred in this country,” she said.

“People that hold the truth in their minds are dying… The longer we wait, the harder it will be to have that truth revealed.”

World of Secrets, Season 3: The Apartheid Killer: A new six-episode season from the BBC’s global investigations podcast. A BBC World Service investigation.

Listen now on BBC Sounds. If you are outside of the UK click here.

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A German man who has been sentenced to death in Belarus for terrorism has been shown in a heavily choreographed interview on state-controlled television, apparently confessing to planting explosives near a railway line.

There is no direct evidence of that in the 16-minute video for which Rico Krieger was filmed, handcuffed, through the metal bars of an oddly pristine and empty cell.

He says he was acting on instruction from Ukraine, though no proof is given.

Krieger is then shown in tears appealing to the German government for help “before it’s too late”.

He is believed to be the first Western citizen ever given the death penalty in Belarus, which is carried out by firing squad.

The emotional and crudely produced video on state TV appears to be part of a campaign of increasing pressure in talks with the German authorities, which some believe may focus on a possible prisoner exchange.

State media say Rico Krieger has not appealed against the verdict, which is extremely rare for someone sentenced to death.

“I’m very surprised,” said Andrei Paluda, a Belarusian campaigner against the death penalty. “I don’t know the circumstances, I can only surmise. But maybe he’s been promised that consultations are ongoing and there might be some kind of swap.”

The unprecedented nature of the case has prompted speculation about links to efforts by Russia, a close ally of Belarus, to free an FSB hitman imprisoned in Germany for the 2019 murder in Berlin of a Chechen-Georgian who fought against Russia.

The deputy spokeswoman for the German foreign ministry declined to comment on such rumours. She also pointed to a history in Belarus of filming staged interviews with prisoners, including opposition activists forced to make confessions to secure their release.

The ministry told the BBC that it was working “intensively” with the Belarusian authorities on behalf of “the person concerned” in this case, but gave no more details citing privacy reasons.

It condemned the death penalty as a “cruel and inhumane form of punishment”.

Last week in Minsk, a foreign ministry spokesman confirmed that a German citizen had been convicted of “terrorism” and “mercenary activity”.

Anatoly Glaz said “a number of options” had been proposed to Berlin, adding that “consultations” were under way.

A profile for Rico Krieger on the LinkedIn platform includes an application for a job in the USA posted last year.

There, he described himself as a 29-year-old Red Cross paramedic from Berlin who had previously worked in security for the US embassy.

He mentioned plans to emigrate to the US and said he had applied for a passport.

A US State Department spokesperson has confirmed to the BBC that Krieger worked for Pond Security, a firm offering security services to US facilities in Germany, between 2015 and 2016. The company itself declined to comment, citing “diplomatic efforts” and privacy.

The German Red Cross also confirmed that Rico Krieger had worked “in the past” for “a district association” of the organisation. A spokesman mentioned his “great concern”, but added that the Red Cross had been told not to comment.

In this story, there are precious few incontrovertible facts.

Officials in Belarus either don’t reply, or reply that they will say nothing – not even to confirm the precise charges.

That may be at least partly due to the political sensitivities. It’s also standard practice in cases involving the death penalty, highly secretive in this authoritarian state.

“I will give you no information,” Vladimir Gorbach, the lawyer who represented Krieger in court, told me by phone. Then he added: “Watch Belarusian official TV. It’s all written there.”

Rico Krieger’s trial appears to have concluded in June. But state-controlled media were silent about this case for weeks. Independent journalists are mostly in exile now, or in prison.

But now it seems information has been fed to faithful state reporters and the order to make a noise has been given.

On Monday, state TV journalist Ludmilla Gladkaya wrote that Krieger had been found guilty on six counts, including an act of terrorism and intentional damage to communication lines.

Citing court documents which the BBC has not been able to obtain, she claimed he had applied to join the Kalinovsky Regiment, founded by Belarusians to fight in Ukraine and designated a “terrorist group” in Belarus.

The journalist claims Krieger was following instructions from the regiment – as well as from Ukraine’s SBU security service – as some kind of initiation process, including in planting the explosives.

The SBU won’t comment, while the Kalinovsky regiment told me only: “He is not our fighter.”

When Belarusian state TV presented its own case – labelling its film the “confession” of a “German terrorist” – it didn’t prove any link to the regiment either.

It showed no communication with the Kalinovsky Regiment.

Instead it displayed screenshots from encrypted email messages which it said were Krieger seeking to sign up with other foreign units in Ukraine. One is supposedly to the II International Legion but a spokesperson there tells me the address is false.

“Perhaps it was created specially for fishing [sic] or something,” they wrote, calling it an act of “fraudulence”.

There are multiple other oddities about this case.

We’ve never heard of foreign volunteers in Ukraine being required to perform “tests” as part of their recruitment, let alone something so risky as set a bomb in Belarus.

There are precious few Western tourists in the country these days. Rico Krieger was never going to blend into the background.

In the propaganda film, he claims he was motivated by the high pay offered to fight in Ukraine. But he then says the monthly salary is around €2,000 (£1,680), less than he was being paid in Germany.

Whilst Krieger writes in good English on LinkedIn, messages attributed to him in the film are barely literate. One reads: “I can’t find the address that me Was given”.

And at one point, the film displays a photo of Krieger from his LinkedIn account. But it’s been doctored, with a Ukrainian flag added to the background for extra impact.

Ludmilla Gladkaya’s article tallies with Krieger’s “confession” for the state TV cameras: that he photographed military sites and railway lines for a handler in Ukraine and was then directed to a rucksack hidden in long grass.

He was told to take it to a railway station in Azyaryshcha, east of Minsk, and leave it by the rails. Later that night there was an explosion – but no casualties.

The following day Krieger was arrested.

The journalist quotes his statements on arrest, refers to data from his phone and witnesses including a taxi driver. But no independent information has emerged about any evidence.

There are certainly CCTV images of Krieger arriving at Minsk airport last October. They show the German smiling at passport control, apparently relaxed. He’s travelling alone and only has hand luggage.

But no surveillance footage of him planting explosives, or acting suspiciously, has been released.

There are just shots of Krieger entering Minsk’s main railway station, and then standing on the platform of an unidentified regional train station, in broad daylight.

The timing of this case seems significant.

The “noise” erupted just after the US journalist Evan Gershkovich was found guilty of espionage in Russia, a charge his friends and employers denounce emphatically as false. He’s been sentenced to 16 years.

Vladimir Putin has hinted in the past that he would consider exchanging Gershkovich – and possibly others – for Vadim Krasikov, the FSB assassin imprisoned in Germany. But months on, no deal has yet been done.

So could Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko be riding to his rescue – with a German bargaining chip?

The propaganda film is definitely heavy on threat. It has a doom-laden voiceover and threatening scenes acted out by men in balaclavas and with truncheons.

At the centre of it all is a man begging for his life.

In tears, Rico Krieger says he has made the “worst mistake” ever and now feels “absolutely abandoned” by his government. His words seem scripted, though the emotion is raw.

“His only chance now is to ask for a pardon – and for the president to change the death penalty to life in prison,” activist Andrei Paluda said.

“We know of cases when political mechanisms, not legal ones, have come into play. Perhaps that can work here, too.”