Sixteen prisoners have been released from Russian prisons in the biggest exchange deal between Russia and the West since the Cold War.

US President Joe Biden confirmed Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and US Marine veteran Paul Whelan are among those on their way back to the US.

According to Turkey, which said it had facilitated and hosted the swap earlier on Thursday, eight Russians held in American and European jails were returned in exchange.

They were held in the US, Norway, Slovenia, Poland and Germany and include several people with suspected ties to Russian intelligence.

A White House statement confirmed Alsu Kurmasheva and Vladimir Kara-Murza were also released by Russia and will return to the US.

Mr Biden said: “The deal that secured their freedom was a feat of diplomacy. All told, we’ve negotiated the release of 16 people from Russia – including five Germans and seven Russian citizens who were political prisoners in their own country.

“Some of these women and men have been unjustly held for years. All have endured unimaginable suffering and uncertainty. Today, their agony is over.”

German citizen Rico Krieger, sentenced to death in Belarus then pardoned by President Alexander Lukashenko, and Russian political prisoner Ilya Yashin were also on the list, Turkey said.

Moscow has not publicly commented on the deal, but it is expected that eight Russian prisoners will return home as part of the swap.

One of them is Vadim Krasikov, identified by German officials as a colonel in Russia’s FSB intelligence service, who is serving a life sentence for the 2019 murder of a Kremlin opponent in a Berlin Park.

The Turkish presidency said that all the prisoners were taken off aircraft at Ankara airport, moved to secure locations under the supervision of Turkish security officials, then put on planes for their respective destination countries.

The exchange comes after days of speculation about a major swap between various countries, which increased after several dissidents and journalists jailed in Russia were moved from their prison cells to unknown locations.

These include veteran human rights campaigner Oleg Orlov, who is also thought to be among those released.

Although secret prison transfers are common in Russia, the multiple “disappearance” of well-known prisoners was unusual.

The last high-profile prisoner swap took place in December 2022, when US basketball star Brittney Griner was exchanged on the tarmac at Abu Dhabi airport for notorious Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout, who had been held in an American prison for 12 years.

The last comparable one occurred in Vienna in 2010, when 10 Russian spies held in the US were swapped for four alleged double agents held in Russia.

One of them was Sergei Skripal, a former military intelligence officer, later poisoned by nerve agent Novichok in Salisbury in 2018.

Tensions between Moscow and the West have been high in recent years, especially since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

The US has confirmed three of its citizens imprisoned in Russia, including Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, are to be released in a prisoner exchange.

The others are former Marine Paul Whelan and Russian-American radio journalist Alsu Kurmasheva, the Biden administration says.

Several others are also believed to be part of the deal.

There has been speculation for days of a major swap between Russia and Western countries, which was heightened after several prisoners in Russia were moved from their prison cells to unknown locations.

US journalist Evan Gershkovich was sentenced to 16 years in a high-security penal colony earlier this month, after being convicted on espionage charges.

The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reporter was first arrested last March while on a reporting trip in the city of Yekaterinburg, about 1,600km (1,000 miles) east of Moscow, by security services.

Prosecutors accused him of working for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), accusations that Mr Gershkovich, the WSJ and the US government vociferously deny.

It marked the first conviction of a US journalist for espionage in Russia since the Cold War ended more than 30 years ago. After his initial arrest he was held in Moscow’s notorious Lefortovo prison.

Paul Whelan, 54, was given a 16-year jail sentence in 2020 after being arrested in Moscow on suspicion of spying in 2018.

The ex-US Marine is a citizen of four countries – the US, Canada, the UK and the Ireland. His lawyer said he was being held in a prison in the Mordovia region.

After being discharged from the military in 2008 for bad conduct, he become a security consultant and started to travel back-and-forth to Russia for work.

In December 2018, he was arrested by Russia’s FSB state security agency, which claimed he had been “caught spying” in Moscow. His family has always denied the charges.

On the same day Mr Gershkovich was convicted, Russian-American journalist Alsu Kurmasheva was sentenced to six-and-a-half years in a medium-security prison after a secret trial.

An editor for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, which is funded by the US government, she was convicted of spreading false information about the Russian military.

Her husband Pavel Butorin has said that was she arrested over the book “Saying no to war”, which the radio’s Tatar-Bashkir language service published last year and was a collection of stories about Russians opposed to the war in Ukraine.

Ms Kurmasheva holds US and Russian citizenship and lives in Prague with her husband and two daughters.

She was stopped in June 2023 at Kazan International Airport, after traveling to Russia to visit her mother, where both her passports were taken. She was then arrested in October as she waited for her passports to be returned.

Three of the men accused of plotting the 11 September 2001 attacks on the US have entered into a pre-trial agreement, the Department of Defense says.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Walid Muhammad Salih Mubarak Bin Attash, and Mustafa Ahmed Adam al-Hawsawi have been held at the US Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for years without going to trial.

Details of the deal have not been announced, but US news outlets say the men will plead guilty in exchange for the prosecution agreeing not to seek the death penalty.

Nearly 3,000 people in New York, Virginia and Pennsylvania were killed in the attacks, which sparked the “War on Terror” and the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.

Brett Eagleson, the president of 9/11 Justice, an organisation that represents 9/11 survivors and relatives of victims, said in a statement provided to the BBC that the families are “deeply troubled by these plea deals”.

He said the process lacked transparency and urged the authorities to pursue more information on the role of Saudi Arabia in the attacks.

Terry Strada, who lost her husband Tom, told the BBC’s Today Programme: “It was a gut-punch to hear that there was a plea deal today that was giving the detainees in Guantanamo Bay what they want.”

Ms Strada, the national chair of the campaign group 9/11 Families United, added: “This is a victory for Khalid Sheikh Mohammad and the other two, it’s a victory for them,” she said.

The 9/11 attacks were the deadliest assault on US soil since the 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, where 2,400 people were killed.

The plea deal was first announced in a letter sent by prosecutors to the families of victims, according to The New York Times.

It said the plea before a military court could come as early as next week.

• What happened on 9/11?
• How 9/11 mastermind slipped through FBI’s fingers

In its announcement, the US defence department said “the specific terms and conditions of the pretrial agreements are not available to the public at this time”.

The men have been accused of a litany of charges, including attacking civilians, murder in violation of the laws of war, hijacking and terrorism.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is widely considered the architect of the attack, in which hijackers seized passenger planes and crashed them into the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon outside of Washington.

A fourth plane crashed into a field in Pennsylvania after passengers fought back.

Mohammed, a US-educated engineer, was captured along with Hawsawi in Pakistan in March 2003.

Prosecutors argued that he brought his idea of hijacking and flying planes into US buildings to al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden, and later helped recruit and train some of the hijackers.

He was subjected to a number of “enhanced interrogation techniques”, including waterboarding – simulated drowning – at least 183 times before the practice was banned by the US government.

• In a courtroom just feet away from 9/11 suspects

The trial has been delayed for so long partly because of fears that the so-called brutal interrogation techniques which critics say amounted to torture could have undermined the evidence against the detainees.

“This is the least bad deal in the real world that would ever happen,” national security analyst Peter Bergen told CNN.

In September, the Biden administration reportedly rejected the terms of a plea deal with five men held at the US Navy base in Cuba, including Mohammed.

The men had reportedly sought a guarantee from the president that they would not be kept in solitary confinement and would have access to trauma treatment.

The White House National Security Council said that the president’s office was told on Wednesday of the new deal and had played no role in negotiations.

Fifteen of the 19 plane hijackers were Saudi nationals and families are bringing a lawsuit against the kingdom, which denies any involvement.

Republicans were quick to attack the Biden administration for striking a deal with the accused.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell condemned the move as “a revolting abdication of the government’s responsibility to defend America and provide justice”.

“The only thing worse than negotiating with terrorists is negotiating with them after they are in custody,” he said.

Israel’s military says it has confirmed that Hamas’s military chief Mohammed Deif was killed in an Israeli air strike in the Gaza Strip last month.

Deif was targeted in the strike on a compound in the Khan Younis area on 13 July. Hamas is yet to confirm his death.

Israel says Deif was one of the figures responsible for planning the 7 October attacks in southern Israel in which 1,200 people were killed and 251 taken hostage.

On Wednesday, Hamas political leader Ismael Haniyeh was killed during a visit to Iran. Israel has not commented on his death directly.

The Israeli military said in a statement that “following an intelligence assessment, it can be confirmed that Mohammed Deif was eliminated” in the 13 July strike.

Gaza’s Hamas-run health authorities said at the time of the air strike that it had killed more than 90 people, but denied that Deif was among the dead.

Deif is widely seen as the second-ranking Hamas official in Gaza, behind Yahya Sinwar, the group’s leader in the territory.

Israel’s Defence Minister, Yoav Gallant, said the death of Deif is “a significant milestone” in the dismantling of Hamas.

“This operation reflects the fact that Hamas is disintegrating, and that Hamas terrorists may either surrender or they will be eliminated,” he added.

Mohammed Deif was appointed head of the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades, the military arm of the Hamas movement, in 2002.

For decades he’s been seen as one of Israel’s most wanted men – and has survived a reported seven assassination attempts, including one that reportedly saw him lose an eye.

He was born in Gaza’s Khan Younis refugee camp in 1965, when the territory was occupied by Egypt.

As a young man in the late 1980s, he joined Hamas shortly after its formation and quickly rose to prominence within the group.

Israel accused him of planning and supervising bus bombings which killed tens of Israelis in 1996, and of involvement in the capture and killing of three Israeli soldiers in the mid-1990s.

Deif is also known to have helped engineer the construction of tunnels that have allowed Hamas fighters to enter Israel from Gaza.

During his leadership of the al-Qassam brigades, he was credited with designing Hamas’s signature weapon, the Qassam rocket.

In 2014, Israel attempted to kill Deif with an air strike on a house in the Sheikh Radwan neighbourhood of Gaza, which killed Deif’s wife, Widad, and their infant son, Ali. Israel thought it had killed Deif, too, but he was not in the building at the time.

Enemies are known to have dubbed Deif ‘the cat with nine lives’, due to the fact he survived so many attempts on his life.

During the current conflict, Deif is believed to have directed Hamas’ military operations from within underground tunnels inside Gaza.

• Bowen: Israel’s killing of Haniyeh deals hammer blow to ceasefire prospects
• Iran vows revenge after Hamas leader assassinated in Tehran

Israel’s confirmation of Deif’s death comes at the end of a turbulent week in the Israel-Gaza conflict, which has stoked fears of a broader regional war.

On Saturday, 12 Druze children and young people were killed after a rocket fell on a football field in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu blamed Lebanon-based Hezbollah, saying they would pay “a heavy price”.

On Tuesday, Israel retorted with air strike on Beirut which killed senior Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr, as well as four others, including two children.

Hours later, Hamas’s political leader Ismael Haniyeh was killed in a strike on a building he was staying in during a visit to Iran’s capital, Tehran.

Iran has blamed Israel for Haniyeh’s death, threatening “harsh punishment”.

When Lolita came to Australia in 2022, she was fleeing an older man she’d been forced to marry as a child in Saudi Arabia.

She told confidants she’d escaped a cycle of violence and sexual servitude so extreme it had repeatedly landed her in hospital.

But less than a year after her arrival, she vanished – last seen by a friend who claims he watched as she was taken from her apartment by a group of Saudi men in a black van.

Records show that Lolita, who is in her early 30s and goes by a single name, was put on a flight from Melbourne to Kuala Lumpur in May 2023. From there, her lawyer believes she was returned to Saudi Arabia and detained.

But Lolita’s exact whereabouts and safety – or whether she is even alive – remain unknown.

It’s far from the first time the mysterious plight of a Saudi woman fleeing her homeland has ended up in the headlines.

“What makes this case particularly compelling, compared to some other cases of Saudi women who have disappeared… or turned up dead, is that we have a witness,” says solicitor Alison Battisson.

The Saudi Arabian embassy in Canberra declined to comment. However, in a statement to the BBC, the Australian Federal Police said it became “aware” of the alleged kidnapping in June and had “started making immediate inquiries” both within the country and “offshore”.

Advocates fear Lolita’s case is part of a growing trend in Australia, in which agents of other countries are monitoring, harassing or assaulting their expats with impunity.

The government has declared foreign interference – of all forms – its “most significant” national security threat and promised a crackdown.

But Ms Battisson and other rights campaigners are questioning how a woman – who had told immigration authorities she was fleeing violence – could allegedly be snatched from her home in broad daylight.

Lolita first came to Melbourne in May 2022, according to flight records.

Although she mostly kept to herself, she soon struck up a friendship with a Sudanese refugee who had also lived in Saudi Arabia, as an undocumented migrant.

It was Ali – not his real name – who put Lolita in touch with Ms Battisson, as she had helped him with his own asylum claim.

The human rights lawyer spoke frequently with Lolita from that point onwards, describing her as a “soft spoken” woman with a clear resolve to take back her life: “She was determined this was her time.”

But their correspondence ended abruptly in May of last year, after Ms Battisson received a “strange” text message from Lolita.

“It was in much more formal language than she had ever used, and it said, ‘What is my visa status’,” she tells the BBC.

Lolita’s claim for a protection visa – for people at risk of persecution in their home country – had previously been rejected, but Ms Battisson was helping her appeal against the decision. She says that is something her client was acutely aware of, as the two discussed it frequently.

“I now believe that message was actually from the people who had taken Lolita,” Ms Battisson says. She thinks they were trying to work out whether Lolita had a permanent visa, which would have given her the right to Australian consular assistance back in Saudi Arabia.

Then came the radio silence. As the weeks turned to months, Ms Battisson knew in her gut that “something was seriously wrong”.

She couldn’t reach Ali either, which was highly unusual as the two kept in regular contact.

When Ali eventually did return Ms Battisson’s calls, her worst fears were confirmed.

He said that he had witnessed Lolita being taken, but that the incident had left him so paralysed with fear for his own family, that he’d gone to ground.

He detailed his last conversation with Lolita – a frantic phone call in which she pleaded for protection from a group of men planning to take her to Saudi Arabia.

She even sent him pictures of the bags she claimed they had forced her to pack.

Ali told Ms Battison he rushed to her flat, but on arrival an Arabic-speaking man threatened him, using personal details that Ali believes could only have come from the Saudi embassy in Canberra.

Changing tack, he contacted a friend and asked him to go to the airport, so the two of them could “create a fuss” and get the attention of security.

But they never saw Lolita in the terminal.

“It took me a year in total to confirm she had been taken,” Ms Battisson says, the dismay in her voice palpable.

The pro-bono lawyer has since been building a paper trail to try to piece together what happened.

“We have phone records and message records of her talking about being frightened. And we also have a pattern of her moving house because of that fear,” she says.

And then there’s the recent testimony of a relative. “As far as they know, Lolita is now in a Saudi prison or detention centre,” Ms Battisson says.

Glaring gaps in the story remain, but one thing Ms Battisson is unequivocal about is that “there are simply no safe options” for Lolita in her home country.

Since becoming the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia in 2017, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has, in some ways, sought to modernise the kingdom by loosening its long-standing restrictions on women.

Crucially though, all females still require a male guardian to sign them out of prison, and in Lolita’s case, that obligation would fall to the husband she allegedly fled halfway across the world to escape.

That fact alone, Ms Battisson says, should be enough to convince Australian authorities that there is “simply no way she would have willingly gone back to Saudi Arabia”.

Around the same time Lolita came to Australia, the country was grappling with the mysterious deaths of two other Saudi women.

In June of 2022, the badly decomposed bodies of sisters Asra and Amaal Alsehli were discovered in their Western Sydney apartment.

Little is known about how they died, but police have described the case as both “suspicious” and “unusual”, and it will soon be the subject of a coronial inquest.

But according to those who witnessed their behaviour, Asra and Amaal – who travelled to Australia from Saudi Arabia in 2017 to seek asylum – were living in fear.

Reports of Saudi women turning up dead while living abroad or being dragged back to the kingdom while trying to seek asylum are not new.

High profile examples include the case of Tala Farea and Rotana Farea, two sisters who were found duct-taped together in the Hudson River in 2018 after applying for asylum in the US. Or Dina Ali Lasloom, who claims she was intercepted by her uncles during a transit in Manila Airport, while trying to flee to Australia in 2017.

In recent years, scores of Australians with Chinese, Iranian, Indian, Cambodian and Rwandan heritage have also come forward to report incidents of monitoring, harassment, or assault, by agents they believed were employed by their respective governments.

And Australia’s intelligence chief has said that more people are now “being targeted for espionage and foreign interference” inside the country “than ever before”.

“Australians need to know that the threat is real. The threat is now. And the threat is deeper and broader than you might think,” Mike Burgess said in February.

Earlier this year, a parliamentary review of national foreign interference legislation found “significant flaws in its design and implementation” and that it had “failed to achieve its intended purpose”.

In response, the government announced reforms – which it calls “world-leading” – including the establishment of a support network to help diaspora communities identify and report suspicious behaviour, and a permanent foreign interference task force.

“These are complex problems, and we’re constantly working with our agencies to… protect vulnerable people,” Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil said in a statement about the measures.

But it is too early to assess how effective the changes will prove.

It is not, however, too late for the government to help Lolita, Ms Battisson argues. They could issue her a visa and help her return to Australia, a decision that would fall to the Immigration Minister, Tony Burke.

“As a country now, we have the opportunity to ensure that a victim of gendered violence is finally safe,” she says.

“All women deserve a safe environment in which to flourish, which is what Lolita was doing before she was taken.”

Thousands have turned out for the funeral procession in Iran of the Hamas political chief, Ismail Haniyeh, who was killed in a strike in Tehran on Wednesday.

Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, led prayers for the Hamas leader, whose body will be buried in Qatar.

US media have quoted Iranian officials as saying the supreme leader has ordered a direct attack against Israel, which it says was responsible for the attack on Iranian soil.

Israel has not commented on the assassination directly.

However, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his country had delivered “crushing blows” to its enemies in recent days, including the killing of a senior Hezbollah commander in Lebanon hours before the Tehran strike.

He warned Israelis that “challenging days lie ahead”, as fears of a wider conflict in the Middle East grow.

“Since the strike in Beirut, we have heard threats from all sides,” he told a televised address.

“We are prepared for any scenario and we will stand united and determined.”

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned against a “dangerous escalation” of hostilities in the region.

Hamas’s armed wing said the death of Haniyeh, who was widely viewed as the group’s overall leader, would “take the battle to new dimensions” and have major repercussions.

While Haniyeh’s funeral was still taking place, Israel’s military said it had confirmed that Hamas’s military chief, Mohammed Deif, was killed in an air strike in the Gaza Strip last month.

Deif was targeted in the strike on a compound in the Khan Younis area on 13 July. Hamas is yet to confirm his death.

Israel says Deif was one of the figures responsible for planning the 7 October attacks in southern Israel in which 1,200 people were killed. Since the attack, Israel has vowed to destroy Hamas.

Haniyeh, who played an important role in negotiations over a ceasefire in Gaza, was killed hours after attending the inauguration of Iran’s new president, Masoud Pezeshkian, in Tehran.

A senior Hamas official told the BBC the killing took place in the same building where Haniyeh had stayed during previous visits to Iran.

Three Hamas leaders and a number of guards were with him in the same building, they said.

Khalil Al-Hayya, a senior Hamas official, told a news conference that a missile hit Haniyeh “directly”, citing witnesses who were with him.

The group’s leadership has been left in “a state of shock”, top Hamas officials have told the BBC.

Hours before Haniyeh was targeted, Israel said it had killed senior Hezbollah leader Fuad Shukr in Beirut.

Israel believes he was responsible for a rocket attack that killed 12 people in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights on Saturday. Hezbollah has denied any involvement.

The Iran-backed group confirmed Shukr’s body was found among the rubble of the residential building which was struck. Four other people, including two children, were killed.

If you’re taking a flight on Korean Air, you might soon notice something missing from your menu – a cup of instant noodles.

From 15 August onwards, the carrier will stop serving the noodles to economy class passengers. It said the increased risk of turbulence, narrow aisles and passengers sitting closely together could mean “burn incidents occur frequently”.

Business and first class fliers, however, will continue to enjoy the treat.

The snack has long been a passenger favourite and something the carrier is widely known for. Many praise the fact that it is available for free on request.

In a statement, the carrier said that since 2019 the number of times turbulence had occurred on its flights had doubled.

It added that in economy class, several cups of noodles are all served at once, saying that the “risk of burns is greater with passengers crowded together”.

But in business and first class the snacks are brought individually to these passengers, reducing the likelihood of spillage in the event of turbulence, the carrier said.

Up until now, the Korean carrier had been providing the noodles for free to passengers on longer routes.

But this will now be replaced with sandwiches, corn dogs, pizza and “Hot Pockets” – crusty turnovers filled with cheese, meat and vegetables.

The move sparked discussion on social media. Some users expressed relief, while others pointed out that the carrier was still serving other items that could cause burns.

“Aren’t coffee and tea hot?” said one comment.

However, another called it a “very good decision”, saying they had always been “nervous” that they would be scalded.

One user said they had hoped the instant noodles would be removed “because of the smell”.

Korean Air said it will “continue to seek service methods that are safe while increasing customer convenience and satisfaction”.

Earlier this year, Singapore Airlines said it would stop serving hot drinks and meals during turbulence as part of a “more cautious approach”.

A 73-year-old British passenger died and dozens more were injured when flight SQ 321 encountered turbulence over Myanmar and was diverted to Thailand in May.

Turbulence is one of the most unpredictable of all weather phenomena, with severe turbulence becoming more likely with climate change, recent research shows.

The World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) says it is “unfairly caught” in a row between the US and China, with their geopolitical tensions spilling onto the Olympic stage.

China’s top swimmers have been in the spotlight after a slew of doping allegations, followed by contentious US claims that Wada was covering it up.

Chinese swimmers headed to Paris were drug-tested twice as much as some other nations, which, in turn, has fuelled accusations of a conspiracy to disrupt their performance.

Wada said in its statement on Tuesday that it had been caught in “the middle of geopolitical tensions between superpowers but has no mandate to participate in that”.

“Certain individuals [in the US] are attempting to score political points purely on the basis that the athletes in question are Chinese,” Wada head of media relations James Fitzgerald told the BBC. “The result is that it has created distrust and division within the anti-doping system.”

A trade war, geopolitical rivalries and Beijing’s friendship with Russia have soured relations between the world’s two largest economies.

It’s little surprise that some of those tensions play out in competitive sports but now they appear to be driving a harder – and harsher – wedge.

Last week, Wada had said it was considering legal action against its US counterpart, Usada, over “defamatory” accusations.

The latter had accused Wada and China’s anti-doping agency, Chinada, of being among the “dirty hands in burying positive tests and suppressing the voices of courageous whistleblowers”.

US lawmakers, too, have accused Wada of failing to investigate doping allegations against Chinese swimmers properly. And on Tuesday they introduced a bill that would give the White House power to cut funding to the agency.

“When members of congress and senators are inserting themselves into the largely technical world of anti-doping, it ceases to be about scientific and legal analysis, and it drifts into the political realm,” said Mr Fitzgerald.

Wada’s statement on Tuesday followed reports in the New York Times about a previously undisclosed case involving two Chinese swimmers – including one on this year’s Olympic team – who were investigated for doping.

They had tested positive for a banned steroid in 2022, but they were cleared to compete. China’s anti-doping agency concluded that the athletes had most likely consumed the steroid unknowingly while eating contaminated burgers.

Usada accused Wada of letting China “compete under a different set of rules, tilting the field in their favour”.

But Wada defended the decision. It said the athletes’ nutritional supplements and hair tests had returned negative results, and that both swimmers also provided control samples that were negative in the days before and after the one test that was positive.

It added that the two swimmers were suspended for more than a year and then their cases were closed.

Their cases are part of a “wider series of cases involving [Chinese] athletes from different sports”, the agency said, adding that, “based on the number of cases, clearly there is an issue of contamination in several countries around the world”.

In a statement in June, Wada noted that athletes who eat meat sometimes test positive for drugs if they have ingested clenbuterol, a banned substance which is used as a growth promoter for farm animals.

That statement, in response to questions from the New York Times, said the agency was investigating instances of contamination in China as well as Mexico, Guatemala and other countries.

The agency’s boss Olivier Niggli pointed out at the time that US media had “only asked questions about China when meat contamination is an issue in many countries”, and referred to “attempts to politicise anti-doping”.

All of this follows a bigger controversy in April, when the New York Times reported that 23 Chinese swimmers had tested positive for a performance-enhancing drug months before the 2021 Tokyo Olympics.

But they were cleared to compete after Chinese officials found the results were caused by contamination. The 30-member team went on to win six medals, inlcuding three golds in Tokyo. Eleven of those who tested positive were also picked to be part of the Chinese swimming team for the Paris Olympics.

US swimmer and 11-time Olympic medalist Katie Ledecky had said her confidence in anti-doping regulators was at an “all-time low” after the news about the 23 Chinese swimmers.

Wada’s investigation, however, found that it was “not in a position to disprove the possibility that contamination” was the source of the drug, heart medication trimetazidine (TMZ).

It said the contamination theory was supported by “the combination of the consistently low concentrations of TMZ as well as no doping pattern” among the tested athletes. That is, their test results over several days were not consistent, veering between negative and positive.

An independent investigation found that Wada did not mishandle the case or show bias towards the Chinese swimmers.

The scandals upped the pressure on anti-doping officals and by the time the Chinese swimming team arrived in Paris, they were being tested far more than is standard.

Since January, each of the team’s 31 members have been tested, on average, 21 times by various anti-doping organisations, according to World Aquatics, which oversees water sports.

In comparison, Australia’s 41 swimmers have been tested an average of four times and the 46 US swimmers, an average of six times.

The flurry of tests has sparked another set of allegations. The state-run Chinese newspaper the Global Times blames Western powers for “abusing doping tests to disrupt [the] Chinese swimming team”.

Speaking to the Global Times, an international politics professor in Shanghai, accused the US of dominating anti-doping rules.

Shen Yi suggested that the “relentless and unethical testing” had disrupted the Chinese team’s training, which she called a “disgrace to the Olympics”.

Chinese swimmer Qin Haiyang, who holds the world record for the 200m men’s breastroke, said this testing “proves that European and American teams feel threatened by the performances of the Chinese team in recent years”.

“Some tricks aim to disrupt our preparation rhythm and destroy our psychological defence. But we are not afraid,” he said on Chinese social media platform Weibo.

Qin, who won golds in the 50m, 100m and 200m breaststroke at the world championships last year, finished in seventh place in the men’s 100m breaststroke final on Sunday.

This criticism was echoed by former Chinese diving champion Gao Min who said the rigorous testing had “disrupted our Chinese swimming team” and called Qin’s performance “the worst in any competition over the past two years”.

China’s current medal tally stands at one gold, two silver and two bronze.

China’s “butterfly queen”, Zhang Yufei, who won a silver in the 100m event in Tokyo, was in tears over her bronze finish on Monday but said the doping tests did not have a big impact on her.

While they were a “bit annoying”, she said it was the pressure that was “far greater” than she had imagined.

Hopes of finding more survivors are fading as rescue operations continue in Kerala, where massive landslides have killed 182 people, according to officials.

Nearly 200 people are still missing after Mundakkai and Chooralmala areas in Wayanad district were flattened by thick torrents of mud and water on Tuesday.

Rescue operations have been hampered by heavy rains in the region all week.

The army is constructing a temporary bridge to Mundakkai, which is across a swollen river, to help stranded residents and search for more survivors.

Health officials reported 256 autopsies, but that included a number of body parts.

On Thursday, Wayanad remained on high alert for more rains as schools and colleges were closed for the day.

The hilly district is known for its cardamom plantations and tea estates and has several popular tourist spots.

Officials said nearly 1,600 people had been rescued from the affected villages and tea estates. But migrant workers from the estates were among those still missing.

More than 8,000 people have been moved to 82 relief camps set up in the district, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan has said.

The army is now building a temporary metal bridge to Mundakkai village, which is among the worst affected by the landslides.

Earlier, rescuers had constructed a temporary pedestrian bridge and used ropes to rappel across the river to reach stranded people there and move the injured to hospitals.

But heavy rains and strong river current had made it difficult to carry out full-fledged rescue work.

The temporary metal bridge is expected to be complete by Thursday evening. It will allow ambulances and heavy machinery to move rubble and search for survivors, Major General Vinod Mathew told reporters.

Meanwhile, the air force is conducting sorties to identify areas with survivors and distribute relief material.

Three army sniffer dogs were expected to reach the disaster zone to help detect people still trapped under the rubble.

“Still large areas are to be explored and searched to find out whether live people are there or not,” senior police officer MR Ajith Kumar told AFP news agency on Wednesday.

TV footage showed harrowing scenes at relief camps and hospitals as survivors searched for their loved ones or waited for news of them.

One man listed out names of those who had still not been found as he told Manorama News, “My house was spared but I have lost many children who were like my own.”

At a community centre that had bodies displayed for identification, a young man told The NewsMinute that he had identified two of his uncles, but was still searching for seven other relatives.

“I am in touch with people at other centres where bodies are placed and they are sending me pictures, but I am yet to identify any of my other missing relatives,” he told the news site.

With more heavy rainfall forecast for the district, the government has warned residents to be prepared for flash floods.

Donald Trump has questioned Kamala Harris’ racial identity during a heated exchange at a convention for black journalists.

Trump falsely claimed the vice-president and presumptive Democratic nominee had only emphasised her Asian-American heritage until recently when, he claimed, “she became a black person”.

“I didn’t know she was black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn black and now she wants to be known as black,” he said at the National Association of Black Journalists convention in Chicago on Wednesday.

“So I don’t know – Is she Indian? Or is she black?”

Ms Harris said Trump’s remarks were “the same old show” of “divisiveness… and disrespect”.

“The American people deserve better,” she told a meeting of the historically black sorority Sigma Gamma Rho in Houston. “We deserve a leader who understands that our differences do not divide us – they are an essential source of our strength.”

Ms Harris is the first black and Asian-American vice-president, with Indian and Jamaican-born parents. She attended Howard University, a historically black university, and joined the predominantly black Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority.

She became a member of Congressional Black Caucus after entering the Senate in 2017.

Trump’s claims prompted a heated exchange with ABC News’ correspondent Rachel Scott, one of the moderators of the Chicago event.

“I respect either one,” the Republican said in reference to Harris’ racial identity. “But she obviously doesn’t because she was Indian all the way and then all of a sudden she made a turn and she became a black person.”

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said no-one “has any right to tell someone who they are, how they identify. That is no-one’s right.”

“Since when is Donald Trump, with his long and ugly history of racism, the arbiter of Blackness?” congressman Ritchie Torres of New York posted on X. He described Trump as a “relic of a racist past”.

The Republican nominee and former president has a history of attacking his opponents on the basis of race.

He falsely accused Barack Obama, the country’s first black president, of not being born in the US.

Trump attacked the former UN ambassador and his Republican primary opponent Nikki Haley by falsely claiming she could not be president because her parents were not US citizens when she was born.

Ms Harris has faced a series of attacks since becoming the presumptive Democratic nominee. Republicans have criticised the decision, saying she was chosen only because of her race.

Tim Burchett, a Republican congressman from Tennessee, called her a “DEI vice-president” – a reference to diversity, equity and inclusion programmes.

On Wednesday, Scott pushed Trump to clarify whether he believed Ms Harris was a “DEI hire”. He replied: “I really don’t know, could be.”

Ms Harris has described growing up engaged with her Indian heritage and often visited the country. Her mother also immersed her two daughters in the black culture of Oakland, California – where she was raised, she said.

Trump also attacked Ms Harris’ credentials during the discussion, saying she had failed her bar exam early in her legal career. His comments were met with murmurs from the crowd.

“I’m just giving you the facts. She didn’t pass her bar exam and she didn’t think she would pass it and she didn’t think she was going to ever pass it and I don’t know what happened. Maybe she passed it,” he said.

Ms Harris graduated from the University of California Hastings College of Law in 1989. The New York Times reported that she failed her first attempt and passed at the second. The state bar of California says fewer than half of those who sit the test pass on the first attempt.

The Chicago discussion began with a contentious back and forth between Scott and the former president. Trump accused the journalist of giving a “very rude introduction” when she began the conversation asking about his past criticism of black people.

She cited Trump calling black journalists’ questions ”stupid and racist” and that he had ”dinner with a white supremacist at your Mar a Lago resort”.

“I love the black population of this country, I’ve done so much for the black population of this country,” he responded.

The former president criticised the conversation hours later on his social media platform. “The questions were rude and nasty, often in the form of a statement, but we CRUSHED IT!” he said.

North America correspondent Anthony Zurcher makes sense of the race for the White House in his weekly US Election Unspun newsletter. Readers in the UK can sign up here. Those outside the UK can sign up here.

Uber has announced a deal which aims to bring 100,000 electric vehicles (EVs) made by China’s BYD to the ride-hailing giant’s global fleet of cars.

The two companies say they will offer Uber drivers incentives to switch to electric cars, including discounts on maintenance, charging, financing and leasing.

The multi-year agreement will be rolled out first in Europe and Latin America, before being made available in the Middle East, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

The announcement comes as EV sales around the world have slowed and Chinese car makers face higher import charges in places like the US and the European Union.

“The companies aim to bring down the total cost of EV ownership for Uber drivers, accelerating the uptake of EVs on the Uber platform globally, and introducing millions of riders to greener rides,” the two firms said in a statement.

They also said they will work to integrate BYD’s self-driving technologies into Uber’s platform.

Earlier this year, Uber said it was working with Tesla to promote EV adoption among its drivers in the US and planned to develop a purpose-built EV with South Korean car giant Kia.

The US, the European Union and other major markets have recently announced tariff hikes on China-made EVs in moves aimed at protecting their car industries.

The move has prompted BYD and other Chinese EV makers to expand their production facilities outside China.

In July, BYD agreed a $1bn (£780m) deal to set up a manufacturing plant in Turkey.

The new plant will be able to produce up to 150,000 vehicles a year, according to Turkish state news agency Anadolu.

The facility is expected to create around 5,000 jobs and start production by the end of 2026.

Also last month, BYD opened an EV plant in Thailand – its first factory in South East Asia.

BYD said the plant will have an annual capacity of 150,000 vehicles and is projected to generate 10,000 jobs.

At the end of last year, BYD announced it would build a manufacturing plant in EU member state Hungary.

It will be the firm’s first passenger car factory in Europe and is expected to create thousands of jobs.

The company has also said it is planning to build a manufacturing plant in Mexico.

BYD, which is backed by veteran US investor Warren Buffett, is the world’s second-largest EV company after Elon Musk’s Tesla.

Evan Gershkovich, the first American journalist jailed in Russia since the Cold War, is expected to be released after more than 16 months in custody.

The Wall Street Journal reporter was detained by Russia’s Federal Security Service in May 2023 while on a reporting assignment in Yekaterinburg, a city about 1,000 miles east of Moscow.

He was sentenced last month to 16 years in prison after being found guilty of espionage by a Russian court, and is now expected to be part of the largest prisoner swap between Russia and the West since the Cold War.

Mr Gershkovich, his family, his employer and the US government have always maintained his innocence.

Now 32 years old, the US citizen was born in Princeton, New Jersey, on 26 October 1991.

He is the second child of Ella and Mikhail Gershkovich, Jewish immigrants who fled the Soviet Union in the late 1970s.

Mr Gershkovich and his older sister, Danielle, grew up speaking Russian at home.

A long-time football fan, he captained the football team at his local high school and was known to be a dedicated fan of Arsenal.

His flatmates from when he lived in Brooklyn, New York, have recalled since his incarceration that he would wake them up early in the morning on weekends to watch televised Arsenal matches – even if they had been out late the night before.

One friend, Jeremy Berke, recently described him to BBC Radio 4 as “the most extroverted person that I’ve ever met in my whole life”.

In 2014, Mr Gershkovich graduated with degrees in English and philosophy from Bowdoin College, a prominent liberal arts college in Maine – a state in America’s northeast.

The budding young journalist first honed his reporting skills in college, writing for The Bowdoin Orient student newspaper as well as a separate student-run publication, The Bowdoin Review.

He also disc-jockeyed at WBOR, the campus radio station.

His first professional foray into journalism came in 2016, when he moved to New York and worked as a news assistant for The New York Times.

But he began to show off his reporting chops and practice his Russian when he moved to Moscow and took a reporting job at The Moscow Times in 2017.

The independent outlet – now blocked in Russia and designated a “foreign agent” by its government – is known for its hardnosed reporting, which often led to scoops that the rest of the Western press corps scrambled to match.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, Mr Gershkovich interviewed medical students forced to treat infected patients and statisticians who where concerned the state was fudging Russia’s case numbers.

Many of his fellow reporters in Russia quickly became his friends, including the BBC’s Will Vernon and James Beardsworth.

Everyone was “impressed by his drive, his knowledge of Russia’s language and culture, his ease at making contacts, and his willingness to go the extra mile”, The New Yorker’s Joshua Yaffa writes.

After a brief stint at the Agence France-Presse (AFP) wire service, he joined the Wall Street Journal in January 2022.

A month later, Russia invaded Ukraine and a package of war-time censorship laws forced Mr Gershkovich and other reporters to flee the country, unsure of how to continue their work.

The US citizen would arrange with the Journal to be based in London but go into Russia on assignment for two or three weeks at a time before returning to the UK.

He travelled around the massive country with a valid Russian visa and proper journalistic accreditation, but was reportedly often followed during his visits.

His last Journal article, in March 2023, covered how the strain of a war entering its second year and the bite of Western sanctions had harmed the Russian economy.

His ordeal began roughly two months later during his reporting trip to Yekaterinburg, a major Russian industrial hub.

Russian authorities say the American was “caught red-handed” with “classified information” while reporting in the city.

The Journal’s editor-in-chief told the BBC earlier this year that is “complete, total and utter nonsense”.

Western politicians roundly condemned Russia when it found the journalist guilty of espionage last month and sentenced him to 16 years in prison.

US President Joe Biden said Mr Gershkovich had “committed no crime” and was “targeted by the Russian government because he is a journalist and an American”.

“Evan has endured his ordeal with remarkable strength,” Mr Biden added.

Mr Gershkovich has sent and received letters from friends, family and supporters throughout his detention in Moscow’s Lefortovo prison, where Russia has held high-profile political prisoners and dissidents since Tsarist times.

Danielle Gershkovich has spoken of their correspondence as light and reassuring.

“We have a lot of sibling banter back and forth, a lot of teasing with love,” she told the BBC earlier this year.

Her brother has even managed to surprise the family while locked away.

“On International Women’s Day, he arranged for the women in his life to receive bouquets,” she said.

“We want him to focus on himself and there he was taking care of us.”

The man who was once the most trusted and most recognisable face of BBC journalism has pleaded guilty over images that show child sexual abuse – and the BBC has serious questions to answer.

The director general faces some stark and uncomfortable truths.

Most difficult to explain is why the BBC continued to pay Huw Edwards his vast salary for five months after he had been arrested. Edwards resigned in April citing medical advice.

The BBC said in its statement that if Edwards had been charged, it would have acted. It’s true that a charge would have indicated prosecutors believed they had the evidence to convict. Edwards wasn’t charged until after he had resigned.

But for many, his guilty pleas on Wednesday make it difficult to justify those months paying out a total of more than £200,000 of public money to the now former presenter of News at Ten and the lead presenter on so many landmark moments for the nation.

• Huw Edwards admits child abuse image charges
• BBC knew Huw Edwards had been arrested in November
• Huw Edwards’ BBC pay increased by £40,000 last year
• A long broadcasting career that ended in disgrace

At the time of his arrest, Edwards had already been off air since July 2023, after the Sun newspaper had published claims he had paid a young person for sexually explicit images. Police found no evidence of criminal behaviour in relation to this and the current court case is unrelated.

Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy has called an urgent meeting with the director general following Edwards’ admission of guilt.

This is yet another sign of the pressure on the corporation over its handling of the situation.

One of the questions the government wants answering is about the use of taxpayers’ money in this way, as well as when decisions were taken and by whom.

Why didn’t the BBC sack Edwards, in light of his arrest, instead of giving him the space to leave, apparently on his own terms, albeit with no pay off?

There will have only been a handful of people in the room where these conversations were taking place.

The benefit of hindsight is a wonderful thing. The decisions they took can’t have been easy and they will have been weighing up different scenarios – and competing advice.

Imagine a situation in which an employee is sacked after being arrested on serious charges. Imagine then that they are found not guilty.

Or imagine something worse; for an employee struggling with severe mental health problems and in a very vulnerable state.

Where would an employer stand then?

Senior HR and legal advisors will have advised the BBC it had a duty of care towards Edwards as an employee. They will likely also have said he would have a legal case against the corporation if he was sacked unfairly. The BBC says it was made aware of “significant risk to his health”.

But it is difficult to see this specifically through an HR or legal prism.

In the end, this was a judgement call for the people at the very top of the BBC and the optics are reputationally damaging. The BBC spent public money on a man now guilty of serious offences.

Many people will believe the corporation made the wrong judgement.

There is an added dimension to the story. Did the corporation also have a duty to its audiences to inform the public about the arrest, rather than sit on the information?

This too is complex, especially when it concerns an employee struggling with his mental health. People who are arrested do have an expectation of a right to privacy. In certain cases, privacy can be outweighed by arguments around what’s in the public interest.

It’s important to note that BBC News, where I’m employed, is editorially independent from the corporate side. We didn’t know about the arrest or charges until earlier this week when the story broke.

Our job is to hold organisations to account, on behalf of the public – and that includes the BBC. We have had the freedom to cover the story without fear or favour throughout.

Italy, which receives the most migrant arrivals in the European Union, is partially outsourcing the challenge from today, as it opens the first of two planned camps in neighbouring Albania.

The centres will be used to house up to 3000 migrants per month rescued en route to Italy as part of Europe’s first “offshoring” scheme, while the continent grapples with how to respond to the challenge of irregular migration.

The camp that opens today is located in the northern Albanian port of Shengjin. The opening of a second centre, on a former air force base in nearby Gjader, has been delayed.

The structures will be entirely managed by the Italian government, which paid for their construction.

They will be used for migrants picked up in international waters – though not women, children, or those deemed vulnerable.

Once there, they will be allowed to request asylum in Italy. If refused, they will be sent back to countries deemed safe to return.

“Italian and European legislation will be applied in these centres,” Fabrizio Bucci, Italy’s ambassador in Albania, told me. “It’s like having a centre in Italy – but in Albania.”

The agreement signed by the Italian and Albanian Prime Ministers will remain in place for five years – with the option to extend if it proves successful in reducing the migrant burden on Italy and deterring some from attempting to come.

Arrivals in Italy by sea this year – around 31,000 so far – are down by more than half from the same period in 2023.

Giorgia Meloni, the Italian Prime Minister, ran for office promising to clamp down hard on migration – and the Albania plan has become a key tenet of that.

The hefty price tag, estimated at upwards of €650m (£547), is one of the criticisms levelled by Italian opposition politicians and human rights groups.

“It’s an excessive cost to detain a limited number of migrants”, said Riccardo Magi, an MP with the left-wing +Europa party.

When Ms Meloni recently visited the site in Albania, he approached her car to protest – and was grabbed by Albanian security officials. As she intervened, telling them to ease off, he shouted: “If they treat an elected MP like this, imagine how they’ll treat the migrants”.

Speaking to the BBC, he compared the structures to a penal colony.

He also doubted the ability of night-time rescuers to properly screen those picked up to ensure that no vulnerable individuals are sent to Albania.

“They won’t be able to delve deep into whether somebody has suffered torture or sexual violence or discrimination due to their sexuality back in Africa”, Mr Magi said.

“It’s all an attempt at dissuasion and a PR show to tell Italians this is the first time a government can keep migrants out. But nobody who has risked their life to cross to Italy will be discouraged.”

Fabrizio Bucci, the Italian ambassador in Tirana, disagrees. “It’s one of the elements that migrants and smugglers will have to factor in,” he said.

“What do we have to lose? We’ve been trying to redistribute migrants throughout the EU and it hasn’t worked. So why not try to chart a new way?” He refers to it as an experiment that, if successful, could be replicated.

Indeed, 15 EU members, led by Denmark, recently wrote an open letter to the European Commission backing the outsourcing of migration. Sir Keir Starmer praised the Italy-Albania deal after meeting both Prime Ministers.

It has drawn comparison with the plan of the previous Conservative government to deport failed asylum seekers from the United Kingdom to Rwanda – ditched by Mr Starmer.

But the agreements are significantly different.

While Rwanda would have managed the asylum requests and centres under its deal, giving successful claimants asylum there and deporting failed ones to third countries deemed safe by the Rwandan government, the Albania deal will be under Italian jurisdiction.

“We made sure the Albanian legislation was already in full compliance with EU and international laws”, said Ambassador Bucci.

For Albania, the reward is a boost to its image as it negotiates European Union membership.

But Vladimir Karaj, a Tirana-based journalist with the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network, said it was a “complete surprise” when it was announced by the Prime Minister Edi Rama. Before the Rwanda deal was struck, there were reports that Britain was aiming for an agreement with Albania, which Mr Rama forcefully shot down.

“He claimed he was strictly against this kind of treatment for refugees”, he said. “So when Albania struck the deal with Italy, there was huge speculation over what Rama was gaining personally.”

Mr Karaj says there’s no “smoking gun”: “The government’s narrative is that Italy is our best friend and took in Albanians when our dictatorship fell in the 1990s.”

The deal, Mr Karaj said, has been met only with short-lived protests by some claiming it was aimed at replacing Albanians with foreigners, or giving away territory to Italy.

He suspects other countries may now come knocking on Albania’s door.

“Albania needs the support it can get from the west”, he said. “If western governments like the UK or Germany see this is a solution, I don’t think Rama’s words about it just being for Italy will be that easy to sell.”

Few people know how perilous the migrant journey across Mexico has become in recent months better than a group of women in the eastern state of Veracruz, known as Las Patronas.

For the past 30 years, as policies towards Central American migrants have hardened on both sides of the Rio Grande, they have unfailingly kept up the same humanitarian gesture to the migrants who pass through their village.

Every day, Las Patronas bag up rice, beans, tortillas, bread, tins of tuna and bottles of water.

As the freight train known as , meaning The Beast, approaches, they scramble to the side of the tracks and hold out the food for the migrants travelling on its roofs to grab as they thunder past.

“Gracias! God bless you!” the migrants yell over the deafening noise of the train as it clatters north, a fleeting moment of kindness on what is one of the most dangerous migrant journeys in the world.

Many will struggle to make it much further north.

This year, Mexico has stopped around three times as many migrants who have crossed into its territory from Central America as it did a year ago. While the 280,000 interdictions a month by the Mexican authorities have won approval in Washington, they have made life unbearable for those on the road.

“The dream that many call the American Dream has turned into a nightmare”, reflects Norma Romero, the founder of Las Patronas.

Mexico and the United States are at a pivotal point in their relationship.

Mexico has just chosen its first woman president, Claudia Sheinbaum, who will take office in October. The United States, meanwhile, is heading full steam into its election campaign with possibly its first female president in Kamala Harris, or a second Trump presidency on the horizon.

Neither scenario gives Norma much cause for optimism.

“I never put my faith in politics. Rather, I believe in ordinary people who bring about change and who have different ways of thinking,” she says, as her fellow volunteers chop vegetables to flavour the rice.

Nor does she think having a woman at the helm will make any difference in terms of tackling the widespread abuses of migrants in Mexico.

“Sadly, politics hasn’t improved since, well, as long as I can remember. Really, there’s never been any change that has brought any benefit to migrants.”

I first met Norma a decade ago when, as she showed the BBC, the freight trains were heaving with migrants fleeing violence and hardship in their home countries for the prospect of a better life in the United States.

Successive Mexican governments tended not to stop people heading north if they were simply passing through. In the United States, undocumented immigration was not the polarising electoral topic that it has since become.

Today, that attitude has noticeably changed. Particularly in US border states, it is the leading issue heading into November’s vote.

In June, President Joe Biden issued an executive order which grants US Border Patrol the right to deport people who have crossed into the US illegally without processing their asylum-requests. In the first four weeks of the new policy, there was a 40% reduction in detentions on the US southern border.

Norma says Las Patronas have seen noticeably emptier trains in recent weeks – sometimes without any migrants on them at all. She thinks the migrants are using other routes, by bus or on foot.

But, she says, they remain woefully uninformed about such US policy developments or the extent of the obstacles they face on the road:

“The migrants don’t have the basic knowledge they need about what is involved in travelling through Mexico,” she laments. “We see what’s happening to them and try to think about their wellbeing as human beings.”

Las Patronas also run a shelter where weary migrants can get a hot meal, a bed, bathe, wash their clothes and receive medical attention.

Among those staying for a few days to rest and gather their strength is Guadalupe, a Salvadoran migrant travelling with her 17-year-old daughter Nicole. She says they won’t travel on again, having twice been taken off the freight train by immigration officers.

The experience, she recalls, was brutal.

“They hit a lot of people who were with us and gave others electric shocks with tasers. They almost tasered me too. That was the worst experience we’ve had here in Mexico.”

Given the threat of kidnappings, sexual abuse and extortion by the country’s drug cartels, traversing Mexico is one of the most fraught parts of a journey which, for some, began in the Andes or the Caribbean.

Often though, says Guadalupe, they’re extorted by migration and security officials, the very men and women charged with upholding the law in Mexico.

“Once they take us off the train, many migration officers demand bribes from us. If we have enough money, we can pass. This time, we didn’t, and they sent us back to the border with Guatemala. That was the hardest thing.”

Mexican law enforcement has undoubtedly kept down the numbers of migrants reaching the US’s door.

“There is no crisis in migration at present,” said Mexico’s President, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, recently as he urged the US to bolster development aid to Central America to dissuade people from leaving home in the first place.

Rather than outright deportations – Mexico only sent back around 8,500 people in the first three months of this year – the Mexican authorities have been employing a form of ‘internal removal’ instead. Thousands of detained migrants have been dropped in towns on the border with Guatemala, some 2,000 kilometres from the US border.

The strategy saps the migrants of the funds and energy they need to keep going. Salvadoran migrant, Guadalupe, likens the tactic to a giant game of snakes and ladders:

“It’s very similar. Just like the board game, you have to avoid stepping on the snakes or you’re back to square one. It’s the same here too. If we don’t hide or run faster than the immigration agents, then our journey ends and we’re sent all the way back to the start.”

The BBC repeatedly requested an interview with the Mexican government over undocumented immigration, but no-one was made available.

As another train approaches, Guadalupe helps Norma Romero and the other women to take the food down to the tracks.

No matter who wins in the US, or what their relationship with President-elect Sheinbaum, Norma says Las Patronas won’t turn off their stoves as long as migrants keep coming past.

Listen to ‘Las Patronas’ on The Documentary on the BBC World Service.

A loud noise shook Ajay Ghosh awake at his home in the southern Indian state of Kerala in the early hours of Tuesday.

At first, the salesman, who lives in Wayanad district’s Mundakkai village, did not quite understand what caused the sound.

But when he looked out and saw an enormous amount of mud flowing down from a hill above, he knew what was coming.

At least 166 people have been killed and 192 people are still missing in the massive landslides that hit Mundakkai and the neighbouring Chooralmala area that night.

The disaster, which is the worst the state has seen since floods in 2018, has left behind a trail of destruction in its wake.

• India landslides kill 120 and trap dozens

Pictures show uprooted trees, flattened houses and broken bridges submerged in muddied waters.

“My family survived but 40 people died near my house, not even a mile away,” Mr Ghosh said.

The intensity of the landslide was so high that it split the Iruvanipuzha river, which flows through the area, into two.

On Tuesday, authorities launched a massive rescue operation in the area to look for possible survivors. But their efforts have been complicated by heavy rains.

A hilly region known for its rugged terrain and stunning vistas, Wayanad is a popular tourist destination which attracts more than 100,000 visitors every year. The district is mainly inhabited by indigenous tribes and is dotted with picturesque tea and cardamom estates.

A part of the ecologically sensitive Western Ghats – a mountain range that runs along the western coast of India – the district is not new to landslides.

• Scores still missing as India landslides kill 158

In fact, a 2011 report submitted by a panel of experts, led by ecologist Madhav Gadgil, had classified the entire Wayanad region as “fragile, medium fragile and less fragile area”.

The report also recommended a ban on all ” environmentally-hazardous” human activities along the Western Ghats, including in Wayanad.

The recommendations have since been continuously opposed by all political parties and governments of Kerala, who maintain that it would stall development in the area.

It was also opposed by the neighbouring state of Karnataka, which argued that it would impact livelihoods of local people.

The indecision on the issue has meant that environmentally-hazardous activities like deforestation, mining and building construction have continued in the region.

Experts say excessive rainfall in Wayanad this season – about 60-70% higher than usual – has added to the scale of the disaster.

“This time, the accumulated heavy rainfall of the last two weeks was followed with this extreme category rainfall of Tuesday, causing massive flooding,” said Abhilash S, director of the department of atmospheric sciences in Cochin University of Science and Technology.

“That was the primary triggering factor,” he added.

Others point out that rapid urbanisation and increasing mining activities in surrounding areas have made the region even more fragile.

In 2019, 17 people died in a landslide that struck Puthumala, 10km (six miles) away from Tuesday’s disaster. A report by the Kerala Forest Research Institute (KFRI) had then pointed out that the landslide was caused by rock mining and quarrying in the region.

“This entire area has very steep slopes. The only thing that holds it together is vegetation,” said TV Sajeev, the chief scientist of KFRI.

But in recent years, the Kerala government has allowed certain non-plantation activities in this region. “As a result, plantation owners have shifted to tourism and built mega structures for which the ground had to be levelled, making it even more fragile,” Mr Sajeev added.

The scientist says the government should go back to the Gadgil report that said fragile land must be managed in a different way.

“The way out is to make sure that our ecological systems are really healthy. If they are healthy, they can handle any kind of climate change,” he said.

As Democratic presidential hopeful Kamala Harris vets potential running mates, spare a thought for the contenders as they undergo a process that one past participant likens to “a colonoscopy performed with a telescope”.

This is just some of the material in questionnaires fired off during the exhaustive vetting process for previous US vice-presidential nominees.

Potential partners to join Ms Harris on the Democratic ticket for November’s election will have to answer up to 200 questions before they can even begin to be seriously considered.

The vetters – campaign officials and lawyers who volunteer their billable hours for the networking and prestige – often have about a month to dig up every grain of dirt they can find.

The Harris campaign has a matter of days to pick a running mate, with a paperwork deadline looming. The vice-president, who went through the process herself only four years ago, has been assessing around a dozen contenders, with Governor Josh Shapiro and Senator Mark Kelly among those being touted.

Pete Buttigieg, who is also among the rumoured potential picks, was asked this week if the possible running mates are aware they are being vetted. “Yeah, you know,” he said with a smile.

What makes the whole undertaking especially challenging is that, unlike with cabinet picks, the FBI does not perform background checks on vice-presidents.

The vetters will pore over a contender’s tax returns and medical history. They may log on to his or her private social media accounts. They will scour the social media posts of his or her children. The grandchildren’s, too.

The least suggestion of marital infidelity, or any other skeleton in the closet, will be picked apart.

They will check every record of every word the potential candidate has ever uttered or written.

Jim Hamilton, a Democratic lawyer who evaluated potential running mates for John Kerry, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, told the BBC that notes of the process are destroyed afterwards to preserve “a strict, strict veil of confidentiality”.

He oversaw more than 200 lawyers who were tasked with finding Mrs Clinton’s running mate (she picked Virginia Senator Tim Kaine).

“Everybody’s got something in their background they’d just sooner not talk about,” Mr Hamilton said. “But you’d be surprised, once people commit to the process, at how candid they are in their answers.”

Evan Bayh, a finalist to become Barack Obama’s running mate in 2008, remembers the procedure took nearly three months and was “like having a colonoscopy performed with a telescope”.

“There was a whole team assigned to me: an accountant, a lawyer, a physician, you know,” the former Indiana senator and governor told the BBC. “They talked to my wife, they talked to my father.”

Television crews were soon camped outside his house in Washington DC. Mr Bayh recalls his shock one morning as he sat down to breakfast with the television on and heard an MSNBC host remark that the senator’s bowl of yoghurt and granola “sure looks tasty”.

The head of the vetting team phoned one day to ask Mr Bayh about a false internet rumour that he had once received psychiatric treatment.

“And I said, ‘No, it’s not true. But if you guys don’t hurry up and make a decision, it might be true,’” he remembers joking.

A list of 20 names was whittled away. Mr Bayh says it ultimately came down to himself and Joe Biden, then a Delaware senator.

He recalls how he was flown out “very clandestinely” to St Louis, Missouri, in August that year to meet the future president in his hotel room. They spoke for around three hours.

“There was about a three-foot high stack of materials there,” he recalls, “that he [Mr Obama] just gestured to it, and he said, ‘I’ve gone over all the reports on you, and nothing in there bothers me.’

“He said, ‘But if there’s anything that our team didn’t discover, you should tell me now because it will come out.’

“And I said, ‘Well, your people did do a very thorough job. But there were probably two or three things I should mention to you.’ And I did.

“And he looked at me, he said, ‘That’s it?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, that’s it.’ And he said, ‘Well, you haven’t led very much of a life, have you?’”

Mr Bayh did not elaborate to the BBC on his disclosures to Mr Obama in the hotel room, except to say they were family matters.

Mr Biden was ultimately successful. Campaign manager David Plouffe later quoted President Obama as saying it was a “coin toss” between the two.

Sometimes a vetter can pose a question that no-one else thought of, revealing a potential red flag, even if it’s not disqualifying.

Gary Ginsberg, who worked for the Clinton campaign in ’92, told the BBC he remembers Al Gore at a loss for words when asked during the process if he had any friends.

The reserved Tennessee senator bristled. But when pressed, he could name none, beyond his brother-in-law and two congressmen. Mr Gore’s lack of a social circle bothered one top campaign official.

From a long-list of 50, he was nevertheless picked to be running mate. They won. Mr Gore, however, would struggle to overcome low personal likability ratings.

The vetting process used to be largely informal and much less invasive, since it was seen as rude to ask a senator or governor about personal matters.

Two selection disasters changed all that forever.

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In 1972, the Democratic White House nominee George McGovern dumped his running mate after just 18 days. He had picked Missouri Senator Thomas Eagleton based on a two-minute phone conversation and no background check.

It almost immediately emerged in media reports that Mr Eagleton had received electroshock treatment in hospital for clinical depression a decade earlier.

Nixon aides began asking reporters: “How could McGovern be trusted after putting a crazy man on the ticket?”

In that November’s election, the Republican president annihilated his Democratic challenger.

Vetters soon began to cast their nets wider, to look more closely at a potential running mate’s family members, after another embarrassment upended the 1984 White House race.

Democratic nominee Walter Mondale needed a game-changer against Ronald Reagan that year, so he picked Geraldine Ferraro, the first female running mate ever on a major party national ticket.

But the campaign was hamstrung by revelations about her real estate developer husband’s financial dealings.

President Reagan went on to win 49 states in a landslide re-election.

Sometimes a potential running mate dazzles at the audition, but fizzles on the political stage. In 2008, Republican presidential nominee John McCain’s campaign had just 72 hours to vet Sarah Palin.

The then-44-year-old Alaska governor was asked by aides how she would react in a national security crisis where the president had been temporarily incapacitated by surgery.

Under this scenario, the director of national intelligence comes to Acting-President Palin and tells her they have pinpointed Osama Bin Laden.

A plane is overhead ready to kill the al-Qaeda leader.

But there’ll be multiple civilian casualties.

“Do you take the shot?” she was asked.

“Yes,” she said, “I would take the shot because I’m the President of the United States, this is our archenemy who took the lives of 3,000-plus Americans. And then I would get down on my knees and ask for forgiveness for the innocent souls whose lives I would be taking.”

The vetters were highly impressed with this answer.

Yet after she was unveiled as the vice-presidential nominee, Ms Palin proved unable to answer a reporter’s basic question about what newspapers she read. Soon she was seen as gaffe-prone and unready for the political primetime.

Even when the vetting process is conducted with more rigour, the final decision is always up to the nominee.

George HW Bush – one of the 15 US vice-presidents who became president- went with his gut when he picked little-known Indiana Senator Dan Quayle to be his running mate in 1988.

Though they won, Mr Quayle, 41, was widely seen as more of a liability than an asset to the ticket, as recounted in the book First in Line, by Kate Andersen Brower.

The vice-presidential nominee was asked by a reporter aboard the campaign plane in 1988: “What’s the favourite book that you’ve read?”

Mr Quayle turned to his wife, Marilyn.

“What’s the favourite book I’ve read?” he asked her, leaving a nearby political aide aghast.

Syeda X, a poor migrant woman living in shanty towns that skirt India’s capital Delhi, struggled through more than 50 jobs in 30 years.

She trimmed jeans threads, cooked savouries, shelled almonds and made tea strainers, door knobs, photo frames and toy guns. She also stitched school bags and did bead and jewellery work. Despite her hard work, she earned meagre wages, like 25 rupees (30 cents; 23 pence) for assembling 1,000 toy guns.

The protagonist of a new book, The Many Lives of Syeda X, by journalist Neha Dixit, Syeda relocated to Delhi with her family in the mid-1990s after religious riots in the neighbouring state of Uttar Pradesh. Reported over 10 years with more than 900 interviews, the book highlights, in part, the precarious life of an Indian home-based female worker.

Ms Dixit’s book shines a spotlight on the invisible lives of India’s neglected female home-based workers. After being recognised officially as a distinct category of workers only in 2007, India defined a home-based worker as someone who produces goods or services for an employer from their own home or chosen premises, regardless of whether the employer provides equipment or materials.

Over 80% of working women in India are employed in the informal economy, with home-based work being the largest sector after agriculture. Yet, no legislation or policy supports these women.

Wiego, an organisation that supports women in informal employment, estimated that by 2017-18, women comprised about 17 million of the 41 million home-based workers in India. These women represented approximately 9% of total employment. Their numbers in the city have grown faster than in India’s countryside. “The centre of gravity in home-based workers appears to be shifting to urban areas,” says Indrani Mazumdar, a historian who has worked extensively on the subject.

Bereft of social security or any protection, these women are in a constant battle with poverty, precariousness and wayward spouses. Often their family’s main breadwinners, they strive to earn enough to educate their children out of poverty. These women also face the brunt of climate change, losing livelihoods and running losses: monsoon waterlogging in their homes leads to wastage of their supplied material.

In India, around 75% of female workers in manufacturing work are home-based, says economist Sona Mitra. “These women are recorded as self-employed and they are largely invisible,” she adds.

Ms Dixit’s harrowing narrative portrays Syeda X and other home-based working women as archetypes of helplessness and exploitation. No-one knows who sets the abysmal rates for their work. No-one provides instructions, training, or tools. These women rely solely on each other to learn how to get the job done.

Finding work is also often about following the news cycle, Ms Dixit writes.

When Kalpana Chawla became the first Indian-origin woman in space in 1997, women dressed plastic dolls in hand-stitched white spacesuits. During the 1999 cricket World Cup, they stitched hundreds of cheap footballs. A viral 2001 rumour about a “monkey man” attacking people in Delhi spurred a demand for masks resembling the creature to be sold at traffic crossings. During elections, they made flags, key rings and caps for political parties. When schools resumed, they packed crayons and school bags and bound books.

Many women also find it difficult to get home-based work for more than 20 days a month. Ms Dixit writes that only those who don’t negotiate rates or ask too many questions, buy their own tools, deliver on time, never ask for advances or help during crises and tolerate delayed payments are able to find work easily.

The precarity of female home workers has increased due to changes in the nature of the work, according to Ms Mazumdar. Up until the 1990s, the readymade garment industry outsourced many tasks to home workers. This shifted in the 1990s as factories began bringing tasks in-house and machines replaced human labour, particularly for embroidery. “Home-based work became very volatile,” she says.

In 2019, the International Labour Organisation, drawing on household surveys in 118 countries, estimated there were around 260 million home-based workers worldwide, representing 7.9% of the global employment.

Research from Brazil and South Africa shows that monitoring work conditions and protecting workers’ rights in subcontracted or home-based work is possible when local governments and trade unions collaborate effectively.

Such examples in India are few and far between. There’s the 52-year-old Self Employed Women’s Association (Sewa), a membership-based organisation that unites poor, self-employed women in the informal economy. There are self-help groups of home-based workers and micro-finance to support them. “But these schemes have really not helped them when it comes to employment,” says Ms Mazumdar.

In 2009, women in Delhi who shelled and cleaned almonds from homes stopped working, demanding better pay and overtime, among other things. (They were paid 50 rupees for cleaning a 23kg bag for 12-16 hours.) The strike paralysed the almond processing industry at its peak season.

A study in Tamil Nadu state by social scientist K Kalpana illustrated how home and neighbourhood-based female workers subcontracted to make (papadumin Chennai successfully defended their rights, despite government agencies ignoring claims of trade unions.

Syeda X and her friends had no such luck. “If she ever took time off to nurse an illness or to attend to her children, her job would be lost to another faceless migrant, fighting to take her place,” writes Ms Dixit. Displacement and hardship were the only constants in her life, shifting from job to job and home to home.

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The killing of Hamas’s political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran represents a major escalation in the tensions between Iran and Israel.

Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei has blamed Israel for the air strike, and said the killing required “a harsh punishment”.

He added that it was Iran’s “duty to avenge his blood”.

The country’s new president Masoud Pezeshkian echoed this sentiment, saying: “We will make the occupying terrorist regime regret its action.”

Israel has yet to respond but has previously vowed to eliminate Hamas’s leaders following the 7 October attack launched by the group.

Iran has confirmed Mr Haniyeh and his bodyguard were killed at a guest house in northern Tehran at 02:00 local time by a missile fired from beyond Iran’s borders.

The immediate concern now is Iran’s response – what shape it might take and whether it would inflame tensions in the region, which are already at an all-time high.

In a post on X, formerly Twitter, Iran’s mission to the UN said the response to the strike would be comprised of “special operations”, which would be “harder and intended to instil deep regret to the perpetrator”.

In April, Iran fired more than 300 missiles and drones at Israel in reaction to the killing of seven of its officers – including a top commander of its Quds Force – in the Syrian capital Damascus.

The action was unprecedented in its scope and seriousness, although Israel – together with the US and a number of regional and international partners – managed to destroy almost all the Iranian missiles and drones.

It’s thought Iran could now unleash an attack of a similar kind on Israel. Tehran could also ask its proxy militias in the region to step up their attacks.

Lebanon’s Hezbollah already has a reason of its own to escalate its cross-border missile war with Israel. The assassination of Mr Haniyeh came only a few hours after the killing of one of the group’s own senior military commanders in southern Beirut.

Already there are commentators in the region who believe the tensions between Israel and Hezbollah could themselves spark a full-scale war.

The strike happened on a significant day for Iran’s leaders. Mr Haniyeh was in the Iranian capital to take part in the swearing-in of newly elected president Masoud Pezeshkian.

He was among invited guests at the inauguration ceremony, alongside the leaders of some of Tehran’s key allies.

The leader of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad group, Hezbollah’s second-in-command, and a leader from Yemen’s Houthi group were all also front row guests at the ceremony. All received a warm welcome from Ayatollah Khamenei.

In his statement on Haniyeh’s death, Iran’s supreme leader said Israel had “martyred our dear guest in our house”.

Mr Pezeshkian has reacted to the killing on X, saying that while yesterday he was raising his hand in parliament, today he has to shoulder Mr Haniyeh’s coffin.

The new Iranian president is viewed as a relatively moderate figure, who has spoken previously about mending relations with the West through dialogue, and putting Iran back on the map as a responsible member of the international community.

However, Mr Pezeshkian will be under pressure to take a hard line on Israel and to support Iran’s proxy militias in the region.

But ultimately, it is the supreme leader and the Revolutionary Guard that will decide on regional policies and Iran’s response.

Reports from Tehran say the country’s national security council has held an emergency meeting at Ayatollah Khamenei’s residence. What has been decided has not been made public, but the shape and timing of Iran’s response are the questions most likely to have been discussed.

Iran may decide to move quickly, given that the targeted killing is a major loss of face for Tehran.

Does this make all-out war in the region more likely? It is difficult to say. Nobody appears to want such an outcome at the moment, but wars are not always the result of calculated risks.

A leopard attacked two men at a South African air force base that borders the world-famous Kruger National Park.

One of the men, a uniformed air force member, was attacked while out for a run. The other, a civilian working at the base, encountered the leopard while on a walk, an air force spokesman said.

The two individuals were admitted to hospital with scratches but no major injuries, Brig Gen Donavan Chetty told the BBC.

One has since been discharged and the other is due to leave on Thursday.

On Wednesday, the leopard was captured and relocated to a sanctuary around 100km (62 miles) from the Hoedspruit air force base, following last week’s attacks.

Gen Chetty said that encounters with leopards are common, but not usually dangerous, for those living and working near the park.

The park, a tourist magnet famed for its rich wildlife, is largely fenced off.

However, Gen Chetty said it was impossible to contain leopards, which are known for their agility, with fences.

“[The leopards] are basically in and amongst the human population,” he said, adding that around 150 of them are known to be living in the area.

Leopards are nocturnal animals that hunt a variety of prey, including wildebeest, antelope and fish, the Kruger National Park website says.

In 2017, three lions were killed after escaping from the park.

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A lavish lobster dinner for King Charles III cost the French president’s office €475,000 (£400,000), according to the country’s audit office.

President Emmanuel Macron pulled out all the stops for the monarch’s visit in September – with guests being treated to blue lobster, crab and an assortment of cheeses.

But in its annual report of the presidential accounts, the Cour des Comptes warned that higher spending on state receptions had contributed to leaving their budget €8.3m in the red.

And it says the Elysée now needs to make “significant efforts… to restore and sustain the financial balance of the financial balance of the presidency”.

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Of the money spent on the dinner, over €165,000 was on catering, with another €40,000 on drinks.

Guests at the star-studded banquet – which included actor Hugh Grant, football manager Arsene Wenger and Rolling Stone Mick Jagger – were treated to a menu of blue lobster and crab followed by Bresse poultry and mushroom gratin.

There was also a course of cheeses – including French Comté and British Stichelton blue.

And for dessert they were served a rose macaroon cookie, composed of rose petal cream, raspberries and lychees.

The extravagant banquet at the Palace of Versailles was part of King Charles’ three-day state visit to France, aimed at reinforcing a key alliance between the two countries.

It had been originally scheduled for March, but was postponed after widespread protests over pension reform hit major cities.

The King’s visit is not the only one cited in the report, with a July 2023 banquet for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the Louvre – which cost the presidential office €412,000 – also mentioned.

As a result of higher spending, including on these state receptions, expenditure increased by 14% on the previous year, the audit office said.

That compared to only a 6.5% gain in revenue earned by the presidency.

The organisers of a music festival in Kuala Lumpur are suing British band The 1975 for breach of contract and damages after its singer Matty Healy attacked Malaysia’s anti-LGBT laws, leading to the event being cancelled.

During the band’s headline performance last July, Healy also addressed the audience in a profanity-laden speech and kissed a fellow band member.

The company behind the Good Vibes Festival is seeking £1.9m ($2.4m) in compensation in the UK’s High Court over a violation of performance rules.

Homosexual acts are illegal in Malaysia and punishable by 20 years in prison. The festival does not allow talking about politics and religion, swearing, smoking or drinking alcohol on stage.

The BBC contacted the band who said “they have nothing to add at this time”.

In a court filing, the festival organisers said The 1975 and its management team were aware of its rules for performers.

Future Sound Asia said the band had performed at the same festival in 2016, and were given multiple reminders of the rules ahead of its performance last July.

The lawsuit alleges that the band decided to “act in a way that was intended to breach guidelines”.

It cited Healy’s “provocative speech” and “long pretend passionate embrace” with bassist Ross MacDonald, that it said had “the intention of causing offence and breaching the regulations”.

It added that the band also smuggled a bottle of wine on stage to give Healy “easy access” to it.

Future Sound Asia also cited guidelines by the Malaysia Central Agency for the Application for Foreign Filming and Performance by Foreign Artistes, which ban “kissing, kissing a member of the audience or carrying out such actions among themselves”.

The event in Kuala Lumpur was cancelled the day after the band’s performance. Malaysia’s communications ministry said it took an “unwavering stance against any parties that challenge, ridicule or contravene Malaysian laws”.

Last August the organisers threatened the band with legal action and demanded they acknowledge their liability and compensate the organisers for damages incurred.

Healy’s performance was also criticised by members of the country’s LGBT community who said the act of “performative activism” would make their lives harder.

The 35-year-old singer subsequently defended his actions.

“The 1975 did not waltz [into] Malaysia unannounced, they were invited to headline a festival by a government who had full knowledge of the band with its well-publicised political views and its routine stage show,” he said on stage in Dallas last October.

“Me kissing Ross was not a stunt simply meant to provoke the government,” he continued. “It was an ongoing part of the 1975 stage show, which had been performed many times prior.

“To eliminate any routine part of the show in an effort to appease the Malaysian authorities’ bigoted views of LGBTQ people would be a passive endorsement of those politics.”

The band were sued in a separate class action by several musicians and vendors who said they suffered a loss of earnings as a result of the second and third days of the festival being cancelled.

If you’re taking a flight on Korean Air, you might soon notice something missing from your menu – a cup of instant noodles.

From 15 August onwards, the carrier will stop serving the noodles to economy class passengers. It said the increased risk of turbulence, narrow aisles and passengers sitting closely together could mean “burn incidents occur frequently”.

Business and first class fliers, however, will continue to enjoy the treat.

The snack has long been a passenger favourite and something the carrier is widely known for. Many praise the fact that it is available for free on request.

In a statement, the carrier said that since 2019 the number of times turbulence had occurred on its flights had doubled.

It added that in economy class, several cups of noodles are all served at once, saying that the “risk of burns is greater with passengers crowded together”.

But in business and first class the snacks are brought individually to these passengers, reducing the likelihood of spillage in the event of turbulence, the carrier said.

Up until now, the Korean carrier had been providing the noodles for free to passengers on longer routes.

But this will now be replaced with sandwiches, corn dogs, pizza and “Hot Pockets” – crusty turnovers filled with cheese, meat and vegetables.

The move sparked discussion on social media. Some users expressed relief, while others pointed out that the carrier was still serving other items that could cause burns.

“Aren’t coffee and tea hot?” said one comment.

However, another called it a “very good decision”, saying they had always been “nervous” that they would be scalded.

One user said they had hoped the instant noodles would be removed “because of the smell”.

Korean Air said it will “continue to seek service methods that are safe while increasing customer convenience and satisfaction”.

Earlier this year, Singapore Airlines said it would stop serving hot drinks and meals during turbulence as part of a “more cautious approach”.

A 73-year-old British passenger died and dozens more were injured when flight SQ 321 encountered turbulence over Myanmar and was diverted to Thailand in May.

Turbulence is one of the most unpredictable of all weather phenomena, with severe turbulence becoming more likely with climate change, recent research shows.

For Nashville native Jacki Thrapp flying to Europe this summer to see her idol Taylor Swift perform live was a “no brainer”.

With the cheapest tickets for the remaining US dates of Swift’s continuing Eras Tour now costing $2,500 (£2,000) on the resale market, up from their face value of $49, some American fans realised that it would be cheaper for them to fly across the Atlantic to catch one of the European shows instead.

So back in May, Jacki went to see Swift perform twice in Sweden, with each ticket costing her less than $200.

“Americans are paying so much money, and a lot of Taylor Swift fans are people in their 20s and 30s,” says the 32-year-old. “We’re paying so much money to see her in the US when a lot of us still can’t even afford a house.”

Although Jacki bought two Swedish tickets on the secondary market, the mark-up of the most expensive was only around double its face value. This is said to be because buying resold tickets is not an established thing to do in Sweden, unlike in the US and UK.

In other European countries, such as Germany, tickets cannot be resold at more than 25% above their face value. Meanwhile, some nations go even further. Italy, Portugal and the Republic of Ireland all have laws in place that prevent concert tickets being sold above their original price.

In the UK and the US the price of re-sold tickets can currently be as high as people are willing to pay. In April, 250 musical artists, including Billie Eilish and Cyndi Lauper, signed an open letter that attacked “predatory resellers”, and called the current ticking system “broken”.

The situation may change for the better in the UK in the next few years, as the Labour Party, which forms the new government, said in March that it planned to cap the resale price of tickets.

Yet laws preventing excessive pricing on the secondary market do not stop two key issues – touts getting their hands on excessive amounts of tickets in the first instance, and the risk of people buying counterfeit tickets or being scammed.

The latter is said to have affected hundreds of Taylor Swift fans who tried to buy tickets for her concerts in the UK this summer.

Asher Weiss, chief executive of ticketing start-up Tixologi, believes that technology is the solution, particularly AI.

“People [touts] will buy a ticket and list it on multiple marketplaces for secondary sale,” he says. “And then even if it sells on one, they won’t take it down off the other one.

“So multiple people end up with the same ticket, trying to get in,” explains Mr Weiss, whose firm is based in Los Angeles.

To prevent people buying excessive numbers of tickets, he says that Tixologi’s AI “will be able to flag people making multiple purchases from the same IP address as unusual purchasing behaviour”.

“That would prevent those bad actors, and protect the true fans and customers,” adds Mr Weiss.

His firm is also able to ensure that only one copy of a ticket can ever exist. It does this by using blockchain, the technology that underpins cryptocurrencies. This prevents duplication.

Tixologi’s electronic tickets also have a rotating QR code that is said to be extremely difficult to copy, so that fake ones are instantly spotted when scanned. And a venue or artist can select a function called “disable transfers”, which prevents a user from emailing the ticket to someone else. This makes them much harder to re-sell.

UK ticketing company Seat Unique is working with London’s Wembley Stadium to sell hospitality tickets for Taylor Swift’s tour. She returns to the stadium for five shows in August, following three there in June.

“It is probably the most popular event I’ve seen in 15 years,” says Robin Sherry, Seat Unique’s founder and chief executive.

The company specializes in allowing venues and artists to sell their tickets via dynamic pricing. What this means is that the price is allowed to go up, and down, according to demand.

The idea is that the venue and artists sell the tickets directly, and therefore get the additional income if prices rise, instead of that money going to sellers on the secondary market.

To set the dynamic price Seat Unique is now using AI to constantly monitor demand and automatically respond to it.

“It’s ultimately about keeping tickets in the hands of fans not scalpers,” says Mr Sherry, who also works with sports clubs and organisations.

He adds that AI also has the ability to transform the marketing of concerts and other events, with adverts specifically targeted at individuals based on learning what they are interested in.

“I always jokingly say, AI will know what events you want to go to before I do,” he adds, saying that this will be “revolutionary in an industry that has been slow to modernise”.

While AI is starting to change how we are able buy tickets to concerts and other events, it is also beginning to appear on the stage.

In November a new AI-powered hologram of Elvis Presley will be performing live in London.

The creator of the Elvis Evolution production, Andrew McGuiness, says the hologram is so lifelike that it will be “less like Abba Voyage and more like time travel”.

But whether AI will be the answer for fans like Jacki Thrapp remains to be seen. “This was the first time I’ve ever left America to see one of my favourite artists, but there has to be a better way to do this,” she says.

Both Seat Unique and Tixologi hope that better way will be delivered by advances in AI.

The authoritarian leader of Belarus has pardoned a German citizen who had been sentenced to death.

Rico Krieger was arrested in October and had been accused of acting as a mercenary and of planting explosives. But news of his death sentence only became widely known last week.

Today’s intervention by Alexander Lukashenko means his death sentence is officially commuted to a life sentence and he will not be executed.

The unusual nature of the case, the sudden focus – and the equally sudden pardon – have all prompted speculation Belarus might be looking to release Mr Krieger in a high-profile swap involving prisoners in both Germany and Russia, a close ally of Belarus.

It comes days after Mr Krieger was shown in a film on Belarusian state television in tears and begging for help.

The 16-minute film released on Friday included re-enactments involving guards in balaclavas and truncheons and looked like a crude attempt to pressure the German authorities into action.

Foreign Ministries in Berlin and Minsk confirmed they were in talks. A spokesman in Belarus said various “proposals” had been made.

Mr Krieger is the first Westerner ever sentenced to death in Belarus.

In his televised confession, clearly made under duress, Mr Krieger admitted to planting explosives beside a train line, supposedly on the orders of Ukrainian intelligence, the SBU.

He said he had wanted to fight in Ukraine with an international legion but was instructed to carry out a mission in Belarus, first.

But the film produced no direct evidence of that and there were multiple oddities and inconsistencies in the account.

It ended with Mr Krieger making a sobbing plea for help from the German government.

Now he’s been pardoned, state media are full of praise for Mr Lukashenko’s “merciful” nature and damning the Germans, claiming they abandoned their own.

One notorious reporter was filmed giving the official line: the crime was very serious and unjustifiable, but Mr Lukashenko was wise and fair – and would make “the right call”.

It is possible this presidential pardon is the latest in a series of tentative gestures by Mr Lukashenko towards the West.

Widely condemned and sanctioned after his security forces brutally suppressed mass opposition protests in 2020, he was isolated still further when he allowed Russia to use Belarusian territory for its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Lukashenko owed Vladimir Putin for coming to his support during the street protests.

Now some see hints he is trying to build bridges again with Europe: he released a handful of political prisoners earlier this month.

Reports of a recent meeting with Vladimir Putin in Russia suggest it was unusually tense.

But there are other theories, including speculation Mr Krieger could be a key part in a complex, multi-country prisoner exchange.

That might also involve Vadim Krasikov a Russian FSB assassin in prison in Germany who the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, wants back.

Mr Krasikov’s fate has previously been linked to that of the American reporter Evan Gershkovich, who was arrested in Russia and recently convicted of espionage.

His employer, the Wall Street Journal, friends and families all insist that is absurd and he is a political hostage.

The only sure fact for now is Mr Krieger – who had been facing death by firing squad – has been spared.

What Mr Lukashenko wants in return for that is not clear.

Sixteen prisoners have been released from Russian prisons in the biggest exchange deal between Russia and the West since the Cold War.

US President Joe Biden confirmed Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and US Marine veteran Paul Whelan are among those on their way back to the US.

According to Turkey, which said it had facilitated and hosted the swap earlier on Thursday, eight Russians held in American and European jails were returned in exchange.

They were held in the US, Norway, Slovenia, Poland and Germany and include several people with suspected ties to Russian intelligence.

A White House statement confirmed Alsu Kurmasheva and Vladimir Kara-Murza were also released by Russia and will return to the US.

Mr Biden said: “The deal that secured their freedom was a feat of diplomacy. All told, we’ve negotiated the release of 16 people from Russia – including five Germans and seven Russian citizens who were political prisoners in their own country.

“Some of these women and men have been unjustly held for years. All have endured unimaginable suffering and uncertainty. Today, their agony is over.”

German citizen Rico Krieger, sentenced to death in Belarus then pardoned by President Alexander Lukashenko, and Russian political prisoner Ilya Yashin were also on the list, Turkey said.

Moscow has not publicly commented on the deal, but it is expected that eight Russian prisoners will return home as part of the swap.

One of them is Vadim Krasikov, identified by German officials as a colonel in Russia’s FSB intelligence service, who is serving a life sentence for the 2019 murder of a Kremlin opponent in a Berlin Park.

The Turkish presidency said that all the prisoners were taken off aircraft at Ankara airport, moved to secure locations under the supervision of Turkish security officials, then put on planes for their respective destination countries.

The exchange comes after days of speculation about a major swap between various countries, which increased after several dissidents and journalists jailed in Russia were moved from their prison cells to unknown locations.

These include veteran human rights campaigner Oleg Orlov, who is also thought to be among those released.

Although secret prison transfers are common in Russia, the multiple “disappearance” of well-known prisoners was unusual.

The last high-profile prisoner swap took place in December 2022, when US basketball star Brittney Griner was exchanged on the tarmac at Abu Dhabi airport for notorious Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout, who had been held in an American prison for 12 years.

The last comparable one occurred in Vienna in 2010, when 10 Russian spies held in the US were swapped for four alleged double agents held in Russia.

One of them was Sergei Skripal, a former military intelligence officer, later poisoned by nerve agent Novichok in Salisbury in 2018.

Tensions between Moscow and the West have been high in recent years, especially since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Donald Trump has questioned Kamala Harris’ racial identity during a heated exchange at a convention for black journalists.

Trump falsely claimed the vice-president and presumptive Democratic nominee had only emphasised her Asian-American heritage until recently when, he claimed, “she became a black person”.

“I didn’t know she was black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn black and now she wants to be known as black,” he said at the National Association of Black Journalists convention in Chicago on Wednesday.

“So I don’t know – Is she Indian? Or is she black?”

Ms Harris said Trump’s remarks were “the same old show” of “divisiveness… and disrespect”.

“The American people deserve better,” she told a meeting of the historically black sorority Sigma Gamma Rho in Houston. “We deserve a leader who understands that our differences do not divide us – they are an essential source of our strength.”

Ms Harris is the first black and Asian-American vice-president, with Indian and Jamaican-born parents. She attended Howard University, a historically black university, and joined the predominantly black Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority.

She became a member of Congressional Black Caucus after entering the Senate in 2017.

Trump’s claims prompted a heated exchange with ABC News’ correspondent Rachel Scott, one of the moderators of the Chicago event.

“I respect either one,” the Republican said in reference to Harris’ racial identity. “But she obviously doesn’t because she was Indian all the way and then all of a sudden she made a turn and she became a black person.”

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said no-one “has any right to tell someone who they are, how they identify. That is no-one’s right.”

“Since when is Donald Trump, with his long and ugly history of racism, the arbiter of Blackness?” congressman Ritchie Torres of New York posted on X. He described Trump as a “relic of a racist past”.

The Republican nominee and former president has a history of attacking his opponents on the basis of race.

He falsely accused Barack Obama, the country’s first black president, of not being born in the US.

Trump attacked the former UN ambassador and his Republican primary opponent Nikki Haley by falsely claiming she could not be president because her parents were not US citizens when she was born.

Ms Harris has faced a series of attacks since becoming the presumptive Democratic nominee. Republicans have criticised the decision, saying she was chosen only because of her race.

Tim Burchett, a Republican congressman from Tennessee, called her a “DEI vice-president” – a reference to diversity, equity and inclusion programmes.

On Wednesday, Scott pushed Trump to clarify whether he believed Ms Harris was a “DEI hire”. He replied: “I really don’t know, could be.”

Ms Harris has described growing up engaged with her Indian heritage and often visited the country. Her mother also immersed her two daughters in the black culture of Oakland, California – where she was raised, she said.

Trump also attacked Ms Harris’ credentials during the discussion, saying she had failed her bar exam early in her legal career. His comments were met with murmurs from the crowd.

“I’m just giving you the facts. She didn’t pass her bar exam and she didn’t think she would pass it and she didn’t think she was going to ever pass it and I don’t know what happened. Maybe she passed it,” he said.

Ms Harris graduated from the University of California Hastings College of Law in 1989. The New York Times reported that she failed her first attempt and passed at the second. The state bar of California says fewer than half of those who sit the test pass on the first attempt.

The Chicago discussion began with a contentious back and forth between Scott and the former president. Trump accused the journalist of giving a “very rude introduction” when she began the conversation asking about his past criticism of black people.

She cited Trump calling black journalists’ questions ”stupid and racist” and that he had ”dinner with a white supremacist at your Mar a Lago resort”.

“I love the black population of this country, I’ve done so much for the black population of this country,” he responded.

The former president criticised the conversation hours later on his social media platform. “The questions were rude and nasty, often in the form of a statement, but we CRUSHED IT!” he said.

North America correspondent Anthony Zurcher makes sense of the race for the White House in his weekly US Election Unspun newsletter. Readers in the UK can sign up here. Those outside the UK can sign up here.

Israel’s military says it has confirmed that Hamas’s military chief Mohammed Deif was killed in an Israeli air strike in the Gaza Strip last month.

Deif was targeted in the strike on a compound in the Khan Younis area on 13 July. Hamas is yet to confirm his death.

Israel says Deif was one of the figures responsible for planning the 7 October attacks in southern Israel in which 1,200 people were killed and 251 taken hostage.

On Wednesday, Hamas political leader Ismael Haniyeh was killed during a visit to Iran. Israel has not commented on his death directly.

The Israeli military said in a statement that “following an intelligence assessment, it can be confirmed that Mohammed Deif was eliminated” in the 13 July strike.

Gaza’s Hamas-run health authorities said at the time of the air strike that it had killed more than 90 people, but denied that Deif was among the dead.

Deif is widely seen as the second-ranking Hamas official in Gaza, behind Yahya Sinwar, the group’s leader in the territory.

Israel’s Defence Minister, Yoav Gallant, said the death of Deif is “a significant milestone” in the dismantling of Hamas.

“This operation reflects the fact that Hamas is disintegrating, and that Hamas terrorists may either surrender or they will be eliminated,” he added.

Mohammed Deif was appointed head of the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades, the military arm of the Hamas movement, in 2002.

For decades he’s been seen as one of Israel’s most wanted men – and has survived a reported seven assassination attempts, including one that reportedly saw him lose an eye.

He was born in Gaza’s Khan Younis refugee camp in 1965, when the territory was occupied by Egypt.

As a young man in the late 1980s, he joined Hamas shortly after its formation and quickly rose to prominence within the group.

Israel accused him of planning and supervising bus bombings which killed tens of Israelis in 1996, and of involvement in the capture and killing of three Israeli soldiers in the mid-1990s.

Deif is also known to have helped engineer the construction of tunnels that have allowed Hamas fighters to enter Israel from Gaza.

During his leadership of the al-Qassam brigades, he was credited with designing Hamas’s signature weapon, the Qassam rocket.

In 2014, Israel attempted to kill Deif with an air strike on a house in the Sheikh Radwan neighbourhood of Gaza, which killed Deif’s wife, Widad, and their infant son, Ali. Israel thought it had killed Deif, too, but he was not in the building at the time.

Enemies are known to have dubbed Deif ‘the cat with nine lives’, due to the fact he survived so many attempts on his life.

During the current conflict, Deif is believed to have directed Hamas’ military operations from within underground tunnels inside Gaza.

• Bowen: Israel’s killing of Haniyeh deals hammer blow to ceasefire prospects
• Iran vows revenge after Hamas leader assassinated in Tehran

Israel’s confirmation of Deif’s death comes at the end of a turbulent week in the Israel-Gaza conflict, which has stoked fears of a broader regional war.

On Saturday, 12 Druze children and young people were killed after a rocket fell on a football field in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu blamed Lebanon-based Hezbollah, saying they would pay “a heavy price”.

On Tuesday, Israel retorted with air strike on Beirut which killed senior Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr, as well as four others, including two children.

Hours later, Hamas’s political leader Ismael Haniyeh was killed in a strike on a building he was staying in during a visit to Iran’s capital, Tehran.

Iran has blamed Israel for Haniyeh’s death, threatening “harsh punishment”.

Thousands have turned out for the funeral procession in Iran of the Hamas political chief, Ismail Haniyeh, who was killed in a strike in Tehran on Wednesday.

Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, led prayers for the Hamas leader, whose body will be buried in Qatar.

US media have quoted Iranian officials as saying the supreme leader has ordered a direct attack against Israel, which it says was responsible for the attack on Iranian soil.

Israel has not commented on the assassination directly.

However, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his country had delivered “crushing blows” to its enemies in recent days, including the killing of a senior Hezbollah commander in Lebanon hours before the Tehran strike.

He warned Israelis that “challenging days lie ahead”, as fears of a wider conflict in the Middle East grow.

“Since the strike in Beirut, we have heard threats from all sides,” he told a televised address.

“We are prepared for any scenario and we will stand united and determined.”

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned against a “dangerous escalation” of hostilities in the region.

Hamas’s armed wing said the death of Haniyeh, who was widely viewed as the group’s overall leader, would “take the battle to new dimensions” and have major repercussions.

While Haniyeh’s funeral was still taking place, Israel’s military said it had confirmed that Hamas’s military chief, Mohammed Deif, was killed in an air strike in the Gaza Strip last month.

Deif was targeted in the strike on a compound in the Khan Younis area on 13 July. Hamas is yet to confirm his death.

Israel says Deif was one of the figures responsible for planning the 7 October attacks in southern Israel in which 1,200 people were killed. Since the attack, Israel has vowed to destroy Hamas.

Haniyeh, who played an important role in negotiations over a ceasefire in Gaza, was killed hours after attending the inauguration of Iran’s new president, Masoud Pezeshkian, in Tehran.

A senior Hamas official told the BBC the killing took place in the same building where Haniyeh had stayed during previous visits to Iran.

Three Hamas leaders and a number of guards were with him in the same building, they said.

Khalil Al-Hayya, a senior Hamas official, told a news conference that a missile hit Haniyeh “directly”, citing witnesses who were with him.

The group’s leadership has been left in “a state of shock”, top Hamas officials have told the BBC.

Hours before Haniyeh was targeted, Israel said it had killed senior Hezbollah leader Fuad Shukr in Beirut.

Israel believes he was responsible for a rocket attack that killed 12 people in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights on Saturday. Hezbollah has denied any involvement.

The Iran-backed group confirmed Shukr’s body was found among the rubble of the residential building which was struck. Four other people, including two children, were killed.

If you’re taking a flight on Korean Air, you might soon notice something missing from your menu – a cup of instant noodles.

From 15 August onwards, the carrier will stop serving the noodles to economy class passengers. It said the increased risk of turbulence, narrow aisles and passengers sitting closely together could mean “burn incidents occur frequently”.

Business and first class fliers, however, will continue to enjoy the treat.

The snack has long been a passenger favourite and something the carrier is widely known for. Many praise the fact that it is available for free on request.

In a statement, the carrier said that since 2019 the number of times turbulence had occurred on its flights had doubled.

It added that in economy class, several cups of noodles are all served at once, saying that the “risk of burns is greater with passengers crowded together”.

But in business and first class the snacks are brought individually to these passengers, reducing the likelihood of spillage in the event of turbulence, the carrier said.

Up until now, the Korean carrier had been providing the noodles for free to passengers on longer routes.

But this will now be replaced with sandwiches, corn dogs, pizza and “Hot Pockets” – crusty turnovers filled with cheese, meat and vegetables.

The move sparked discussion on social media. Some users expressed relief, while others pointed out that the carrier was still serving other items that could cause burns.

“Aren’t coffee and tea hot?” said one comment.

However, another called it a “very good decision”, saying they had always been “nervous” that they would be scalded.

One user said they had hoped the instant noodles would be removed “because of the smell”.

Korean Air said it will “continue to seek service methods that are safe while increasing customer convenience and satisfaction”.

Earlier this year, Singapore Airlines said it would stop serving hot drinks and meals during turbulence as part of a “more cautious approach”.

A 73-year-old British passenger died and dozens more were injured when flight SQ 321 encountered turbulence over Myanmar and was diverted to Thailand in May.

Turbulence is one of the most unpredictable of all weather phenomena, with severe turbulence becoming more likely with climate change, recent research shows.

The US has confirmed three of its citizens imprisoned in Russia, including Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, are to be released in a prisoner exchange.

The others are former Marine Paul Whelan and Russian-American radio journalist Alsu Kurmasheva, the Biden administration says.

Several others are also believed to be part of the deal.

There has been speculation for days of a major swap between Russia and Western countries, which was heightened after several prisoners in Russia were moved from their prison cells to unknown locations.

US journalist Evan Gershkovich was sentenced to 16 years in a high-security penal colony earlier this month, after being convicted on espionage charges.

The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reporter was first arrested last March while on a reporting trip in the city of Yekaterinburg, about 1,600km (1,000 miles) east of Moscow, by security services.

Prosecutors accused him of working for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), accusations that Mr Gershkovich, the WSJ and the US government vociferously deny.

It marked the first conviction of a US journalist for espionage in Russia since the Cold War ended more than 30 years ago. After his initial arrest he was held in Moscow’s notorious Lefortovo prison.

Paul Whelan, 54, was given a 16-year jail sentence in 2020 after being arrested in Moscow on suspicion of spying in 2018.

The ex-US Marine is a citizen of four countries – the US, Canada, the UK and the Ireland. His lawyer said he was being held in a prison in the Mordovia region.

After being discharged from the military in 2008 for bad conduct, he become a security consultant and started to travel back-and-forth to Russia for work.

In December 2018, he was arrested by Russia’s FSB state security agency, which claimed he had been “caught spying” in Moscow. His family has always denied the charges.

On the same day Mr Gershkovich was convicted, Russian-American journalist Alsu Kurmasheva was sentenced to six-and-a-half years in a medium-security prison after a secret trial.

An editor for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, which is funded by the US government, she was convicted of spreading false information about the Russian military.

Her husband Pavel Butorin has said that was she arrested over the book “Saying no to war”, which the radio’s Tatar-Bashkir language service published last year and was a collection of stories about Russians opposed to the war in Ukraine.

Ms Kurmasheva holds US and Russian citizenship and lives in Prague with her husband and two daughters.

She was stopped in June 2023 at Kazan International Airport, after traveling to Russia to visit her mother, where both her passports were taken. She was then arrested in October as she waited for her passports to be returned.

The Bank of England’s governor said a decision to cut interest rates is “an important moment in time” but warned people not to expect a sharp fall in the coming months.

In a closely-run decision, rates were lowered to 5% from 5.25% on Thursday, marking the first cut since the start of the pandemic in March 2020.

Interest rates dictate the cost of borrowing set by High Street banks and money lenders for the likes of mortgages and credit cards.

Bank governor Andrew Bailey said that lower inflation had paved the way for the fall in interest rates but told the BBC it was “not mission accomplished yet”.

He said policymakers needed “to make sure inflation stays low and be careful not to cut interest rates too quickly or by too much”.

Interest rates have climbed over the last few years, as the Bank has battled to control soaring price rises.

The higher rates have put pressure on household finances, although returns for savers have improved.

The fall to 5% means that homeowners on tracker mortgages will see an immediate reduction in their monthly mortgage payments. Those on variable rate deal may also benefit from the fall.

But many homeowners on fixed rate mortgages still face the prospect of much higher mortgage rates when those deals expire over the next few years.

There are hopes that falling interest rates will improve consumer confidence, which has been subdued of late.

Rupali Wagh, co-owner of Tukka Tuk street food in The Cardiff Market, said an interest rate cut would be good for business as customers would have more disposable income.

While business has picked up recently because of the hotter weather, some customers were still ordering less and trying fewer things from the menu.

“They’re very restricted with what they spend. I have never had so many conversations on the table about mortgages and expenses,” she said.

Mr Bailey was asked by reporters if the interest rate cut was “one and done” – that is, will there be no more cuts after this?

He said that he has no view on the path of rates and that the Bank would decide from meeting to meeting.

Although on Thursday, financial markets predicted that there was a 75% chance the Bank would cut rates again in November, after the Labour government holds its first Budget at the end of October.

The decision by the Bank’s nine-member committee was finely balanced – five, including Mr Bailey, voted for a quarter point cut.

The Bank’s chief economist Huw Pill was in the minority of four who voted to hold interest rates.

While the interest rate cut will be a boost for some homeowners, the Bank of England signalled that a mortgage shock still lay ahead for others.

Around a third of people with a fixed-rate mortgage are still paying less than 3%, after getting a deal when interest rates were a great deal lower.

The Bank said that most of these home loans will expire before the end of 2026 “meaning that effective interest rates will rise somewhat further over that period”.

The inflation rate – which measures the pace of price rises for goods and services – hit the Bank’s 2% target in May and has remained there.

But core inflation, which strips out volatile elements such as food and fuel prices, remains relatively high. And the Bank expects inflation to rise in the second half of this year as energy bills tick higher in the colder months.

The Bank noted that wage growth – which can worsen inflation – had slowed but would continue to monitor it,

It does not, however, expect a recent public sector pay rise promised by Chancellor Rachel Reeves to have a major impact on inflation.

Ms Reeves confirmed offers of wage increases of between 5% and 6% for public sector staff including NHS workers and teachers on Monday.

Based on “back of the envelope’” calculations, Mr Bailey suggested they would have a “very small” effect on inflation.

Ms Reeves welcomed the rate cut but said that “millions of families” still faced higher mortgage rates because of former Prime Minister Liz Truss’s mini-budget.

She added that the government was “taking the difficult decisions” to fix the economy after “years of low growth”.

But Conservative former prime minister Rishi Sunak claimed on X that Labour’s “inflation-busting public sector pay rises” would put further interest rate cuts at risk.

On Monday, Ms Reeves claimed the Conservative government had left a £22bn “black hole” in public finances and had attempted to cover it up.

The Tories have rejected this, claiming Labour is laying the groundwork for tax rises.

The Bank confirmed that it had been briefed by the Treasury about the figures on Monday before Ms Reeves made her statement in the House of Commons.

A witness to the Titan submersible disaster has told BBC News about the fear and false hope felt by those on its support ship.

Rory Golden was on the Oceangate expedition when contact with the sub and its five passengers was lost on a dive to the Titanic in June 2023.

“We had this image in our heads of them being down there, running out of oxygen in the freezing cold, getting terribly frightened and scared,” he said.

But after learning the sub had imploded just hours into the dive, he said it was a comfort to know those onboard hadn’t suffered.

Mr Golden was on the Polar Prince support ship to give presentations about the Titanic when the submersible went missing.

“When the sub was overdue we weren’t unduly concerned because communications break down a lot in the ocean,” he explained.

“But when the alarm was finally raised, that’s when we realised that there were some serious issues.”

A major search and rescue operation was launched by the US Coast Guard.

A few days in, underwater sounds detected by search aircraft raised hopes that these were coming from the missing sub.

But it’s now known that those onboard most likely died instantly after Titan suffered a catastrophic failure as it neared the Titanic at the bottom of the Atlantic.

“We lived in false hope for four days,” Mr Golden said. “There’s still a lot of questions to be answered.”

Those who perished were British explorer Hamish Harding, the British-Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman, Stockton Rush, the CEO of Oceangate, and French diver Paul Henri – or PH – Nargeolet.

Rory Golden was a close friend of PH – a veteran deep sea explorer. He is now on the first expedition to the Titanic since the tragedy – an expedition that PH Nargeolet was supposed to be leading.

A plaque is being laid in his honour at the wreck site and a memorial service for all those who died on the sub has been held at sea.

Mr Golden told the BBC he was one of the last people to see PH alive.

“He left the ship in great spirits, in great form and he was happy. He was going somewhere that he wanted to be.”

Rory Golden had also visited the Titanic on the Oceangate sub.

”PH and I had discussed the submersible in the past and I had actually made a dive in it myself the year before,” he said.

“And I’m here – as are many others. The Titan sub had made 15 dives to the Titanic up to that point, so it had worked.

“I was comfortable, I spent 12 hours at the Titanic and it was a whole different experience being in a submersible that I could actually move around quite well in.”

He told the BBC that he didn’t regret his dive at all.

“It wasn’t my time,” he said. “You never know when your time is going to come. And that certainly brought that home to all of us.”

The discovery of the wreckage of Titan four days after it went missing confirmed the fate of those onboard.

“We all cried when the remains were found of the sub,” he said.

“A special bond has been formed between all of us who were there on the ship that week. And that’s a bond that will always be there.”

Industry experts had raised many serious questions about the safety of the Titan submersible prior to the dive.

Investigations by the US Coast Guard and Canadian Coast Guard are still ongoing.

They are likely to call for changes to ensure such a tragedy doesn’t happen again.

A 17-year-old charged with murdering three girls who were stabbed at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in Southport has been named.

Axel Muganwa Rudakubana is also charged with 10 counts of attempted murder after eight other children and two adults were seriously injured in the attack on Monday.

The suspect, who is from the Lancashire village of Banks, appeared at Liverpool Crown Court, and also faces a charge of possessing a curved kitchen knife.

He was remanded into youth detention accommodation.

The Cardiff-born teenager could not previously be named due to his age but Recorder of Liverpool Judge Andrew Menary KC ruled it could be made public following applications from the media.

The defendant is due to turn 18 next week.

The judge said he was mindful of “misinformation” that had spread regarding the accused’s identity.

Southport saw a night of unrest on Tuesday following a vigil in memory of the victims, with protesters gathering near a mosque in the Merseyside town.

Five men were arrested – with one later charged with possessing a knife – after a police van was set alight and bricks were thrown, with 53 police officers injured.

Judge Menary said: “Continuing to prevent full reporting at this stage has a disadvantage of allowing others up to mischief to continue to spread misinformation in a vacuum.”

He acknowledged his decision was “exceptional” but said “the balance clearly comes down in favour of the public interest in allowing full reporting of these proceedings”.

Arguing against naming the teenage defendant, the prosecution said he had an “autism spectrum disorder diagnosis”, and had been “unwilling to leave the house and communicate with family for a period of time”.

He attended an earlier appearance at a youth court at about 09:00 BST, arriving in a prison van with a large police escort.

In front of a packed press gallery, he glanced at reporters before he was asked to sit down before District Judge James Hatton.

Wearing a grey police-issued tracksuit, the defendant pulled his sweatshirt above his nose and lowered his head during the five-minute hearing, in which he did not speak.

None of the families of either the victims or the defendant were in court.

Bebe King, six, Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, and Alice Dasilva Aguiar, nine, died after the stabbings on Hart Street in the Merseyside town, just before midday on Monday.

Eight children and two adults were also seriously injured.

Earlier on Thursday, Alder Hey Children’s Hospital confirmed two children who were being treated there had been discharged.

The hospital said it was continuing to treat five other children, and all were now in a stable condition.

A statement read: “We are delighted that two of the children involved in Monday’s awful incident have now been discharged.

“Our heartfelt sympathies remain with all those affected by Monday’s incident.”

Following Tuesday’s disturbances in Southport, further disorder broke out in areas across England, with more than 100 people arrested at a protest in central London on Wednesday night.

There were also incidents in Hartlepool, Manchester and Aldershot.

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said “action will be taken” following the “violent disorder” at a meeting with police chiefs at Downing Street earlier.

He said: “This government will make sure you [police] have got the powers you need and will back you in using those powers.”

Merseyside Police announced they were charging the teenager at a midnight press conference on Thursday, but did not name him at that stage.

Following Monday’s attack, the families of Bebe King and Alice Dasilva Aguiar issued tributes and asked for privacy.

Bebe’s family said “no words can describe the devastation that has hit our family as try to deal with the loss”.

The family of Alice Dasilva Aguiar said “keep smiling and dancing like you love to do our Princess”.

The teenager was scheduled to appear again at Liverpool Crown Court on 25 October for a pre-trial preparation hearing.

CrowdStrike is being sued by its shareholders after a faulty software update by the cybersecurity firm crashed more than eight million computers and caused chaos around the world.

The lawsuit accuses the company of making “false and misleading” statements about its software testing.

It also says the company’s share price dropped 32% in the 12 days after the incident, causing a loss in market value of $25bn (£14.5bn).

CrowdStrike denies the allegations and says it will defend itself against the proposed class action lawsuit.

Meanwhile, the firm has said computers affected by the massive global IT outage are effectively now back to normal.

The US-based company stated that as of 5pm local time on Monday, 29 July (00:00, Tuesday GMT), the outage had been fixed – ten days after the incident began.

The suit filed in the Austin, Texas federal court, alleges that CrowdStrike executives defrauded investors by making them believe the company’s software updates were adequately tested.

The lawsuit is seeking an unspecified amount of compensation for investors who owned CrowdStrike shares between 29 November and 29 July.

It cites chief executive George Kurtz, who said in a conference call on 5 March that the firm’s software was “validated, tested and certified.”

CrowdStrike told BBC News that its disputes the claims.

“We believe this case lacks merit and we will vigorously defend the company,” a spokesperson said.

Meanwhile, the chief executive of Delta Air Lines, Ed Bastian, has said in an interview with business news channel CNBC that the disruption caused by the outage cost the airline $500m, including lost revenue and compensation to passengers.

Delta has reportedly hired a prominent lawyer and is preparing to seek compensation from CrowdStrike.

The faulty update on 19 July crashed 8.5 million Microsoft Windows computers around the world. The outage disrupted businesses and services, including airlines, banks and hospitals.

In a detailed review of the incident, CrowdStrike said there was a “bug” in a system designed to ensure software updates worked properly.

CrowdStrike said the glitch meant “problematic content data” in a file went undetected.

The company said it could prevent a repeat of the incident with better software testing and checks, including more scrutiny from developers.