US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has revoked a pre-trial agreement reached with men accused of plotting the 11 September terrorist attacks.

In a memo on Friday, Mr Austin also said he was revoking the authority of the officer overseeing the military court who signed the agreement on Wednesday.

The original deal, which would reportedly have spared the alleged attackers the death penalty, was criticised by some families of victims.

The memo named five defendants including the alleged ringleader of the plot, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, all of whom are held in Guantánamo Bay. The original deal named three men.

“I have determined that, in light of the significance of the decision to enter into pre-trial agreements with the accused… responsibility for such a decision should rest with me as the superior authority,” Mr Austin wrote to Brig Gen Susan Escallier.

“I hereby withdraw your authority. Effective immediately, in the exercise of my authority, I hereby withdraw from the three pre-trial agreements.”

The White House said on Wednesday that it had played no role in the plea deal.

The five men named in the memo were: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, often referred to as KSM, Walid Muhammad Salih Mubarak bin Attash, Mustafa Ahmed Adam al-Hawsawi; and two others not mentioned in the original plea: Ramzi bin al-Shibh and Ali Abdul Aziz Ali.

The men have been in custody for decades without trial. All have alleged they were tortured – KSM was subjected to simulated drowning, so-called “waterboarding”, 183 times before it was banned by the US government.

All have already faced more than a decade of pre-trial hearings, complicated by the allegations and evidence of torture against them.

Several family members of victims had criticised the terms of the deal struck on Wednesday as too lenient.

Brett Eagleson, the president of 9/11 Justice, which represents survivors and relatives of victims, had told the BBC earlier this week that the families were “deeply troubled by these plea deals”.

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.”

A lawyer at Guantanamo representing Mr Mohammed told The New York Times that he was shocked by the sudden u-turn.

“If the secretary of defence issued such an order, I am respectfully and profoundly disappointed that after all of these years the government still has not learned the lessons of this case,” said lawyer Gary Sowards.

“And the mischief that results from disregarding due process and fair play.”

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

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.

KSM is alleged to have brought the idea of hijacking and flying planes into buildings to al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. He was captured in Pakistan in 2003 along with Hawsawi, a Saudi who was an alleged fundraiser.

Ali, a computer scientist and nephew of KSM, is accused of providing technical support to the 9/11 operation.

Bin al-Shibh, a Yemeni, allegedly co-ordinated the attacks and had planned to be a hijacker but could not secure a US visa.

Bin Attash, also a Yemeni, is accused of bombing the USS Cole in Yemen in 2000, which killed 17 sailors, and involvement in the 11 September attacks.

Several Republicans applauded the defence secretary for revoking the deal.

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson said the “Biden-Harris Administration is correct to reverse course”, which he said followed Republicans “launching investigations into this terrible plea deal”.

“Now deliver long awaited justice for 9/11 families,” he said.

South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham said the decision “exercised good command judgement”.

“The previous plea deal would have sent absolutely the wrong signal to terrorists throughout the world,” he added.

Earlier on Friday, Republican Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee Mike Rogers demanded answers from Mr Austin on how the deal was struck.

“This deal signals willingness to negotiate with terrorists who deliberately harm Americans,” he wrote in a letter to the defence secretary.

The 9/11 attacks in New York, Virginia and Pennsylvania sparked the “War on Terror” and the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.

They were the deadliest assault on US soil since the 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, where 2,400 people were killed.

At least 32 children have died during student protests that engulfed Bangladesh last month, the UN’s children’s agency has said.

The youngest child killed had yet to turn five years old, a Unicef spokesperson said, adding that most of those who died were bystanders.

They were among more than 200 people who were killed during demonstrations against job quotas in the civil service, according to figures verified by BBC Bangla.

The quota system has now been scaled back by the government following a Supreme Court ruling, but students have continued protesting – now demanding justice for those who died or have been injured or detained.

While the protests are now smaller in scale, the government is struggling to control the rising tide of anger over how it initially responded to the demonstrations.

“Why are our brothers in graves and the killers outside?” asked a crowd which had gathered outside the largest mosque in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, following Friday prayers, according to the AFP news agency.

Security forces responded to the thousands who filled the streets with tear gas and rubber bullets, according to Reuters news agency. It reported that at least 20 people were injured.

Sanjay Wijesekera, Unicef’s regional director for south Asia, said he had been made aware of reports of children being detained during a visit to Bangladesh this week.

He added that the 32 deaths the organisation had confirmed were “a terrible loss”.

A spokesperson for the UN agency said most of those killed were aged 13 or older, with one under five and one child aged between six and 12.

“Children must be protected at all times,” Mr Wijesekera said. “That is everyone’s responsibility.”

Bangladeshi junior Information Minister Mohammad Ali Arafat responded that the government had no information regarding Unicef’s death toll.

“We don’t know where they [Unicef] got the numbers from,” he told the BBC, adding: “Our position is clear: Whoever has been killed, we are going to investigate and bring the perpetrators to book.”

Security forces have been accused of using excessive force to quell the initial protests, with many of the dead and injured suffering gunshot wounds, according to doctors who spoke to the BBC.

But the government – which has said a number of police officers were also killed – has blamed political opponents for the unrest.

On Thursday, it banned the country’s main Islamist party – Jamaat-e-Islami and its student wing, Islami Chhatra Shibir – which it claimed was behind some of the violence.

“We have evidence that they have participated in the killings and in the destruction of government and private properties,” Anisul Huq, Bagladesh’s law minister, told the BBC.

The opposition party’s leader described the move as “illegal, extrajudicial and unconstitutional”.

Leaders of the student protest were also detained for a week – something done for their own protection, officials claimed. However, their release on Thursday has done little to dampen the outrage.

In a joint statement released on Friday, the students questioned the grounds on which they were held.

The group alleged “harassment, torture and drama” towards them and their families during their seven days of detention.

“No one is safe in the custody of those who kill unarmed students and citizens,” the statement said, as it urged people to continue taking to the streets.

Nearly 10,000 people have reportedly been detained since the authorities began their crackdown on the protests.

But Mr Arafat rebuffed the statement by the student leaders.

He said the authorities had to take the student leaders into custody because the government was aware of a potential threat to their lives.

“Their protection became our top priority,” he added.

It’s something Vladimir Putin does rarely: go to the airport to meet people off a plane. Personally.

But he was there last night: on the tarmac at Moscow’s Vnukovo Airport to meet and greet those Russians whose release he’d secured from foreign jails; part of the largest prisoner swap between Russia and the West since the Cold War.

Out of the plane and down the steps came 10 people, including spies, sleeper agents and a convicted assassin.

“Congratulations on your return to the Motherland!” he told them.

You could tell that the Kremlin believes it has something to celebrate.

For the returning Russians there was a red carpet reception and a guard of honour. There were bouquets of flowers and – for some – hugs from the president. Mr Putin embraced Vadim Krasikov, the FSB hitman who’d been serving a life sentence in Germany for assassinating a Georgian-born Chechen dissident.

President Putin promised them all state awards.

“I would like to address those of you who have a direct connection to military service,” he continued. “Thank you for your loyalty to your oath and your duty to your Motherland, which has never forgotten you for a moment.”

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There’s another message the pro-Kremlin press is putting out right now: good riddance to those Russia has freed from its prisons and who’ve been flown abroad.

“Eight Russians who’d been jailed in Nato countries have returned to the Motherland in exchange for individuals who had been acting to the detriment of Russia’s national security,” says the government paper.

Referring to the dissidents released by Moscow, Komsomolskaya Pravda claims “they have ditched their former Motherland and flown to those who hired them.”

Attempts to discredit critics and opponents; lavish praise for loyal supporters who are portrayed as true patriots. All this helps the authorities make the case with the Russian people that the prisoner swap was a success for the Kremlin.

There is little doubt that the Kremlin views the prisoner swap as a victory for Moscow. It got what it wanted… it got its agents back, including the man who was No.1 on its wish list, Krasikov. The German authorities had initially been unwilling to release a convicted assassin, who a German court had concluded had acted on behalf of the Russian authorities.

That reluctance softened as a wider deal took shape.

But why was it so important for the Kremlin to secure Vadim Krasikov’s release and to bring him home?

Today’s Russian newspapers provide a clue.

“We’re returning our guys” is the headline in the government paper Rossiyskaya Gazeta,

“We don’t abandon our own!” declares the pro-Putin tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda.

That is precisely the message the Kremlin wants to send to its agents and spies: if we send you on missions abroad, and things go wrong, we’ll find a way of getting you home.

Two Russian dissidents released in a prisoner swap on Thursday have said they refused to sign a petition for mercy to be sent to Russian President Vladimir Putin as requested by prison officials.

During a news conference in Germany, Vladimir Kara-Murza and Ilya Yashin said they did not admit guilt nor give Russian officials their consent to be removed, and vowed to return home one day.

Mr Kara-Murza said the deal had saved “16 human lives” and that he had been convinced he would die in prison.

He added that many Russians were “opposed to Putin’s war in Ukraine”.

The two men were released as part of the exchange, which saw 24 people jailed in seven different countries exchanged.

Those released by Russia included US journalist Evan Gerschkovich and former Marine Paul Whelan.

The Russians released by Western nations included convicted assassin Vadim Krasikov, who had been serving a life sentence in Germany for killing a Georgian-born Chechen dissident in a Berlin park.

On Friday, Mr Kara-Murza and Mr Yashin – along with a third dissident, Andrei Pivovarov – pledged to continue working towards a “free” Russia and advocating on behalf of political prisoners still being held there.

Mr Yashin said he had “conflicting feelings” about the swap. While he expressed gratitude for those who worked to free him, he said his first desire when he arrived in Germany was to buy a ticket to return to Russia.

Mr Yashin told the BBC that it was “much more comfortable” for Mr Putin to have an exiled opposition “because the voice of opposition in prison always has much more weight than the voice in emigration”.

“I never imagined myself outside Russia,” he said. “I am eternally grateful for their help. But I am a guest here – and my main wish is to return to Russia.”

He added: “I’m not the only one who demanded not to be sent into exile… but no-one asked our opinion.”

However, he acknowledged that his return to Russia would make it more difficult to negotiate the exchange of other political prisoners and could intensify criticism of the German government, which he said had faced an “ethical dilemma” in releasing Krasikov.

Russian rights group Memorial says hundreds of political prisoners are currently held in prison.

While Mr Pivovarov argued the latest swap was a “sign of light” for them that release was possible, Mr Kara-Murza said the exchange was a “drop in the ocean, because so many innocent people who’ve never committed a crime in their life are being held in torturous conditions”.

Mr Kara-Murza, a dual Russian and British citizen, said he was held in solitary confinement for more than 10 months – and was only able to talk to his wife over the phone once during two-and-a-half years of imprisonment.

“I did not believe I would ever see my wife again,” he recalled. “I did not believe I’d ever see my family again and this feels really surreal. This feels like a film.”

The political activist said he thought he might be shot on the day of his release – only realising what was happening when he saw the other imprisoned dissidents.

He recounted how, sitting on the plane out of Russia, a man he identified as a government agent told him it was the last time he would see his homeland.

Mr Kara-Murza said he responded: “I know that I will be back in my home country.”

Sasha Skochilenko, another Russian dissident and artist among those freed told BBC Newshour that she also believed she was going to be killed on the day of her release.

Ms Skochilenko said she was in “shock” and “on adrenaline” as a now-free woman.

“I’m so glad, I’m so happy and I’m so grateful”, she continued. “I’m finally with my beloved family, with my girlfriend, my fiancée. We’re going to marry. We finally can do it in Germany… This is the happiest day of my life”.

The freed dissidents also paid tribute to Alexei Navalny, a leading critic of Mr Putin who died in prison in February after Russian officials said he became unwell.

The White House said on Thursday that Mr Navalny had been due to be included in a deal.

Mr Yashin said: “The fact that Alexei Navalny is not with us is a crime committed by Putin, who bears direct responsibility for his murder.”

Mr Kara-Murza said he wanted “to remind people in democratic countries that Russia and Putin are not the same thing”.

“I will absolutely carry on,” he told the BBC following the news conference.

“I care about my country – and I think Russia deserves better than a corrupt KGB dictator. I want to make sure that Russia becomes… a normal, modern, democratic country.”

Mystery surrounds an American woman who was found chained to a tree “screaming” in a forest in the western Indian state of Maharashtra.

Lalita Kayi, 50, was discovered a week ago in the dense forests of Sindhudurg district after her cries for help were heard by shepherds. They alerted the police who sawed off the chain and rescued her.

Ms Kayi, who appeared completely emaciated, was taken to hospital. Her physical health has since improved and, on Friday, she was moved to a psychiatric facility for further treatment, doctors treating her told the BBC.

In a written statement to the police, she has alleged that her husband “chained her and left her in the forest to die without food or water”.

Police say they are looking for her husband in the southern state of Tamil Nadu on the basis of information she provided them.

But seven days after Ms Kayi was rescued, there is still no clarity on who she is, how she came to be in the forest, who tied her to the tree, and why.

Pandurang Gawkar, a cow herder who found her last Saturday, told BBC Marathi that he had taken his cattle to graze in the forest when he heard “a woman screaming loudly”.

“The sound was coming from the forest on the side of the mountain. When I went there, I saw that one of her legs was tied to a tree. She was screaming like an animal. I called other villagers and the local police.”

Police said that on her they found a copy of her passport, which stated that she was an American citizen, and her Aadhaar card – a unique ID for Indians – with her home address in Tamil Nadu.

They said she also had a mobile phone, a tablet and 31,000 rupees ($370; £290) in her possession – which allowed them to rule out theft as a motive.

Locals say that it was the woman’s good fortune that the shepherd picked a spot near her to graze his flock that day. The forest she was discovered in is vast and she otherwise could have gone for days without anyone hearing her cries for help.

Police initially took her to a local hospital before moving her to a hospital in the neighbouring state of Goa.

Dr Shivanand Bandekar, dean of Goa Medical College, told The Indian Express newspaper that she had some wounds on her leg and that she appeared to be suffering from a mental health condition.

“We do not know for how long she did not eat, but her vital signs are stable,” Dr Bandekar said.

On Friday, the woman’s physical health had improved enough to be moved to a psychiatric hospital in Ratnagiri district of Maharashtra state.

“Currently, her health is stable,” hospital superintendent Dr Sanghamitra Phule told BBC Marathi.

“She is taking medication, eating, and interacting with people. If she wants something, she can communicate it. She only knows English.”

According to the police, Ms Kayi was a ballet dancer and yoga practitioner in America – some reports say specifically Massachusetts – and moved to India about 10 years ago to study yoga and meditation in Tamil Nadu.

It was there that she met her husband – in some media reports, police have called him Satish. Police say they believe at some point she fell out with her husband.

Some reports say that she stayed in a hotel in Goa for two days and then travelled to Mumbai city, India’s financial capital.

But there is no clarity surrounding when or how she then ended up in the forest where she was discovered last week.

Ms Kayi, who was initially unable to speak, communicated with the police and doctors by scribbling notes on a pad. Through them she blamed her husband for tying her to the tree and claimed that she had gone without food and water for 40 days.

She also claimed that she had been given an “injection for extreme psychosis” which locked her jaw and prevented her from drinking water, and that she had to be provided nutrition intravenously.

“I am a victim and survived. But he ran away from here,” she alleged.

Police say they have been unable to verify these claims and believe it is unlikely that someone would survive without food or water for so long.

They have registered a case of attempted murder against her husband and have dispatched teams to Tamil Nadu, Goa and Maharashtra to investigate the matter further. Her husband is yet to be traced by the police and hasn’t made any statements to the media.

Police say they are also looking for clues in the mobile phone and the tablet they found on the woman.

The US embassy in Delhi – which media reports say has been “exerting pressure on the police to speed up the investigation” – has refused to comment on the case.

A spokesperson told the BBC that it could not respond to inquiries “due to the US Privacy Act”, which governs the dissemination of private information.

The United States will deploy additional warships and fighter jets to the Middle East to help defend Israel from possible attacks by Iran and its proxies, the Pentagon said.

Tensions remain high in the region over the assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Iran and a key commander of the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.

Missile defence forces were placed on a state of increased readiness to deploy, the Pentagon said, adding that its commitment to defend Israel was “ironclad”.

Iran’s leader Ayatollah Khamenei has vowed “harsh punishment” against Israel for the assassination of Haniyeh, and declared three days of national mourning.

The Hamas leader was killed in Tehran on Wednesday. Iran and its proxy in Gaza blamed the attack on Israel, which has not commented.

Haniyeh, 62, was widely considered Hamas’s overall leader and played a key role in negotiations aimed at reaching a ceasefire in the Gaza war.

His death came just hours after Israel claimed it killed Fuad Shukr, the top military commander of Iran’s proxy in Lebanon, Hezbollah.

A Pentagon statement said the new deployments would “improve US force protection… increase support for the defence of Israel, and … ensure the US is prepared to respond to various contingencies”.

The deployments would include additional ballistic missile defense-capable cruisers and destroyers, it said.

The US military had also intensified deployments before 13 April, when Iran launched an attack on Israel with drones and missiles. Israel and its allies shot down almost all of roughly 300 drones and missiles that were fired.

Israel has not commented directly on the strike which killed Haniyeh. But Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his country had delivered “crushing blows” to its enemies in recent days, including the killing of Shukr in Beirut.

He warned Israelis that “challenging days lie ahead… we have heard threats from all sides. We are prepared for any scenario”.

Earlier, Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh said the US did not believe escalation was inevitable.

“I think we are being very direct in our messaging that certainly we don’t want to see heightened tensions and we do believe there is an off-ramp here and that is that ceasefire deal,” Singh said.

An Israeli delegation will travel to Cairo in coming days for negotiations to reach a Gaza ceasefire and hostage release deal, Mr Netanyahu said on Friday.

Hamas sparked the war with its 7 October attack on Israel, which killed 1,200 people. Israel responded with an ongoing military operation in Gaza that has killed almost 40,000 people, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.

Donald Trump returning to the White House would be “a once-in-a-thousand-year opportunity” for North Korea, according to a man in a unique position to know.

Ri Il Kyu is the highest-ranking defector to escape North Korea since 2016 and has been face to face with Kim Jong Un on seven separate occasions.

The former diplomat, who was working in Cuba when he fled with his family to South Korea last November, admits to “shivering with nerves” the first time he met Kim Jong Un.

But during each meeting, he found the leader to be “smiling and in a good mood”.

“He praised people often and laughed. He seems like an ordinary person,” Mr Ri tells the BBC. But he is in no doubt Mr Kim would do anything to guarantee his survival, even if it meant killing all 25 million of his people: “He could have been a wonderful person and father, but turning him into a god has made him a monstrous being.”

In his first interview with an international broadcaster, Mr Ri provides a rare understanding of what one of the world’s most secretive and repressive states is hoping to achieve.

He says that North Korea still views Mr Trump as someone it can negotiate with over its nuclear weapons programme, despite talks between him and Kim Jong Un breaking down in 2019.

Mr Trump has previously hailed the relationship with Kim as a key achievement of his presidency. He famously said the two “fell in love” exchanging letters. Just last month, he told a rally Mr Kim would like to see him back in office: “I think he misses me, if you want to know the truth.”

North Korea is hoping it can use this close personal relationship to its advantage, says Mr Ri, contradicting an official statement from Pyongyang last month that it “did not care” who became president.

The nuclear state will never get rid of its weapons, Mr Ri says, and would probably seek a deal to freeze its nuclear programme in return for the US lifting sanctions.

But he says Pyongyang would not negotiate in good faith. Agreeing to freeze its nuclear programme “would be a ploy, 100% deception”, he says, adding that this was therefore a “dangerous approach” which would “only lead to the strengthening of North Korea”.

Eight months after his defection, Ri Il Kyu is living with his family in South Korea. Accompanied by a police bodyguard and two intelligence agents, he explains his decision to abandon his government.

After years of being ground down by the corruption, bribery and lack of freedom he faced, Mr Ri says he was finally tipped over the edge when his request to travel to Mexico to get an operation on a slipped disc in his neck was denied. “I lived the life of the top 1% in North Korea, but that is still worse than a middle-class family in the South.”

As a diplomat in Cuba, Mr Ri made just $500 (£294) a month and so would sell Cuban cigars illegally in China to make enough to support his family.

When he first told his wife about his desire to defect, she was so disturbed she ended up in hospital with heart problems. After that, he kept his plans secret, only sharing them with her and his child six hours before their plane was due to depart.

He describes it as a “life-or-death gamble”. Regular North Koreans who are caught defecting would typically be tortured for a few months, then released, he says. “But for elites like us, there are only two outcomes – life in a political prison camp or being executed by a firing squad.”

“The fear and terror were overwhelming. I could accept my own death, but I could not bear the thought of my family being dragged to a gulag,” he says. Although Mr Ri had never believed in God, as he waited nervously at the airport gate in the middle of the night, he began to pray.

The last known high-profile defection to the South was that of Tae Yong-ho in 2016. A former deputy ambassador to the UK, he was recently named the new leader of South Korea’s presidential advisory council on unification.

Turning to North Korea’s recent closer ties with Russia, Mr Ri says the Ukraine war had been a stroke of luck for Pyongyang. The US and South Korea estimate the North has sold Moscow millions of rounds of ammunition to support its invasion, in return for food, fuel and possibly even military technology.

Mr Ri says the main benefit of this deal for Pyongyang was the ability to continue developing its nuclear weapons.

With the deal, Russia created a “loophole” in the stringent international sanctions on North Korea, he says, which has allowed it “to freely develop its nuclear weapons and missiles and strengthen its defence, while bypassing the need to appeal to the US for sanctions relief”.

But Mr Ri says Kim Jong Un understands this relationship is temporary and that after the war, Russia is likely to sever relations. For this reason, Mr Kim has not given up on the US, Mr Ri says.

“North Korea understands that the only path to its survival, the only way to eliminate the threat of invasion and develop its economy, is to normalise relations with the United States.”

While Russia might have given North Korea a temporary respite from its economic pain, Mr Ri says the complete closure of North Korea’s borders during the pandemic “severely devastated the country’s economy and people’s lives”.

When the borders reopened in 2023 and diplomats were preparing to return, Mr Ri says families back home had asked them to “bring anything and everything you have, even your used toothbrushes, because there is nothing left in North Korea”.

The North Korean leader demands total loyalty from his citizens and the mere whiff of dissent can result in imprisonment. But Mr Ri says years of hardship had eroded people’s loyalty, as no-one now expected to receive anything from their “Supreme Leader” Kim Jong Un.

“There is no genuine loyalty to the regime or to Kim Jong Un anymore, it is a forced loyalty, where one must be loyal or face death,” he says.

Recent change has largely been driven by an influx of South Korean films, dramas and music, which have been smuggled into the North and are illegal to watch and listen to.

“People don’t watch South Korean content because they have capitalist beliefs, they are simply trying to pass the time in their monotonous and bleak lives,” Mr Ri says, but then they begin to ask, “Why do those in the South live the life of a first-world country while we are impoverished?”

But Mr Ri says that although South Korean content was changing North Korea, it would not bring about its collapse, because of the systems of control in place. “Kim Jong Un is very aware that loyalty is waning, that people are evolving, and that’s why he is intensifying his reign of terror,” he says.

The government has introduced laws to harshly punish those who consume and distribute South Korean content. The BBC spoke to one defector last year who said he had witnessed someone be executed after sharing South Korean music and TV shows.

North Korea’s decision, at the end of last year, to abandon a decades-old policy of eventually reunifying with the South, was a further attempt to isolate people from the South, Mr Ri says.

He describes this as Kim Jong Un’s “most evil act”, because all North Koreans dream of reunification. He says that while North Korea’s past leaders had “stolen people’s freedom, money and human rights, Kim Jong Un has robbed what was left of them: hope”.

Outside North Korea, much attention is paid to Kim Jong Un’s health, with some believing that his premature death could trigger the collapse of the regime. Earlier this week, South Korea’s intelligence agency estimated that Mr Kim weighed 140kg, putting him at risk of cardiovascular disease.

But Mr Ri believes the system of surveillance and control is now too well established for Kim’s death to threaten the dictatorship. “Another evil leader will merely take his place,” he says.

It has been widely speculated that Mr Kim is grooming his young daughter, thought to be called Ju Ae, to be his successor, but Mr Ri dismisses the notion.

Ju Ae, he says, lacks the legitimacy and popularity to become the leader of North Korea, especially as the sacred Paektu bloodline, which the Kims use to justify their rule, is believed to run only through the men of the family.

At first, people were fascinated by Ju Ae, Mr Ri says, but not any more. They question why she was attending missile tests rather than going to school, and wearing luxury, designer clothes instead of her school uniform, like other children.

Rather than waiting for Mr Kim to become ill or die, Mr Ri says the international community has to come together, including North Korea’s allies China and Russia, to “persistently persuade it to change”.

“This is the only thing that will bring about the end of the North Korean dictatorship,” he adds.

Mr Ri is hoping that his defection inspires his peers, not to defect themselves, but to push for small changes from the inside. He does not have lofty ambitions, that North Koreans will be able to vote or travel, merely that they can choose what jobs to work, have enough food to eat and be able to share their opinions freely among friends.

For now, though, his priority is helping his family settle into their new life in South Korea and for his child to assimilate into society.

At the end of our interview, he poses a scenario. “Imagine I offer you a venture and tell you, if we succeed we win big, but if we fail it means death.

“You wouldn’t agree, would you? Well that is the choice I forced upon my family, and they silently agreed and followed me,” he says.

“This is now a debt I must repay for the rest of my life.”

US Vice-President Kamala Harris has passed the threshold to clinch the Democratic presidential nomination in a vote of party delegates.

Speaking by telephone, Ms Harris said she was “honoured to be the presumptive nominee” as the virtual roll call continues ahead of the Democratic National Convention (DNC) in Chicago later this month.

Ms Harris is the first black woman and first South Asian woman to become the White House standard-bearer for a major US political party.

If she defeats Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, in November she would be America’s first female president.

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She ran unopposed in the virtual roll call after President Joe Biden stepped aside last month and quickly endorsed her. Several potential rivals followed his lead.

On Friday afternoon, Ms Harris formally became the nominee after securing the support of 2,350 delegates, the threshold required to earn the nomination.

“We believe in the promise of America and that’s what this campaign is about,” she said in brief remarks by phone as she crossed the benchmark.

“We are in this, we are on the road and it’s not going to be easy, but we’re going to get this done.”

In total, Democrats have said 3,923 delegates – or 99% of the participants – plan to vote for her.

The rollcall began on Thursday and ends on Monday.

Presidential and vice-presidential nominees are typically anointed at their party conventions, but the relatively late date of the 2024 DNC risks falling afoul of state ballot access laws.

Ms Harris, 59, was born in Oakland, California, and is the first Democratic nominee in the party’s nearly 200-year history to hail from a western state.

She rose through the ranks of state politics from San Francisco district attorney to California attorney general and then US senator.

Before dropping out of the race, Mr Biden had easily won the Democratic primary. He did not face stiff opposition despite voter concerns about his age and had won backing from 99% of pledged DNC delegates.

But the 81-year-old faced escalating pressure from within the party to withdraw after a poor June debate performance against Trump.

The decision to hold a virtual nominating process ahead of the 19-22 August convention was made while Mr Biden was still the presumptive candidate.

It came in response to rules for ballot access in the state of Ohio, which requires that candidates for the November ballot be formally selected 90 days before the election – or by 7 August.

Republican leaders in the state had warned they would enforce the law and, though lawmakers eventually created an exemption as they have done in the past, Democrats said an early rollcall would pre-empt further risks of their candidates being excluded from the ballot.

Delegates do not need to vote on the vice-presidential pick.

Ms Harris is expected to name her running mate by Monday.

The Trump campaign and some Republicans have criticised the replacement of Mr Biden with Ms Harris, arguing she is the first major party candidate to secure the nomination without holding a press conference or a sit-down interview. Some have referred to the substitution as a “coup”.

But Ms Harris has hit the campaign trail hard since Mr Biden’s endorsement, making the case against Trump in multiple campaign rallies and fundraisers across battleground states.

On Friday, the campaign announced it had raised more than $310m (£242m) in the month of July, with more than two-thirds of people donating money for the first time.

That figure is more than double the $138m raised by the Trump campaign last month and marks the biggest haul of the 2024 election cycle so far.

A police office building has been attacked and the property next to it set alight during clashes between rioters and police in Sunderland.

Three injured officers were taken to hospital and eight people arrested, Northumbria Police said.

Beer cans and stones were thrown at police officers in riot gear outside a mosque and at least one car was set alight during the disorder on Friday night.

Unrest has broken out in towns and cities across England following the killing of three young girls in Southport on Monday.

Northumbria Police Ch Supt Helena Barron said officers had been met with “serious and sustained” levels of violence, which was “utterly deplorable”.

She said a full investigation was under way to identify those responsible for any criminal behaviour.

“I want to make it absolutely clear that the disorder, violence and damage which has occurred will not be tolerated,” Ch Supt Barron added.

Of the three injured police officers, one has been discharged and two remain in hospital for further treatment, she said.

Some members of the crowd could be heard shouting Islamophobic slurs and chanting in support of far-right activist Stephen Yaxley-Lennon – who uses the alias Tommy Robinson.

Mr Yaxley-Lennon’s X account has promoted false claims that the alleged Southport attacker had been an asylum seeker who recently arrived in the UK by boat.

Mounted police were deployed to Sunderland’s city centre to push back demonstrators, some of whom were in masks.

Officers also had beer barrels thrown at them, as young men shouted: “Whose streets? Our streets”.

Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said criminals attacking the police would “pay the price for their violence and thuggery”.

Tyne and Wear Fire and Rescue Service confirmed it had been called out to the fire near the Sunderland Central Police office.

Rail and bus services were halted with Tyne and Wear Metro operator Nexus saying it had been asked by British Transport Police to close Sunderland Rail Station at around 22:15 BST.

The Omniplex cinema in the city was also forced to close during the evening in the interest of public and staff safety, it said.

Residents said they could still hear police helicopters in the sky past midnight.

North East Mayor Kim McGuinness said she was “appalled” by the scenes in Sunderland.

“Make no mistake, if your response to tragedy is to use it to commit violence, to abuse others, attack the police and damage property you stand for nothing except thuggery,” she said.

“You don’t speak for Sunderland. You don’t speak for this region.”

Sunderland AFC posted on social media: “Tonight’s shameful scenes do not represent our culture, our history, or our people.

“Our great city is built on togetherness and acceptance, and Sunderland will forever be for all. We are stronger as one community.”

Sunderland Central MP Lewis Atkinson said the police had his full support in response to the criminal “thuggery”.

A crowd of about 200 anti-racist protesters also gathered outside the Abdullah Quilliam Mosque in Liverpool on Friday night after rumours of a far-right protest there.

The group chanted: “Say it loud, say it clear, refugees are welcome here”.

Director of Public Prosecutions Stephen Parkinson said extra prosecutors had been called into work this weekend to deal with the disorder.

“We have deployed dozens of extra prosecutors who are working round the clock this weekend, supporting the police, and ready to make immediate charging decisions so that justice is swiftly delivered,” he said.

Towns and cities including London, Hartlepool, Manchester, and Aldershot have seen protests descend into violence following the Southport knife attack.

In response, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer announced a new national violent disorder programme to help clamp down on violent groups by allowing police forces to share intelligence.

In a televised speech on Thursday, Sir Keir said: “These thugs are mobile, they move from community to community, and we must have a police response that can do the same.”

He also condemned “violent disorder, clearly whipped up online”.

“We will take all necessary action to keep our streets safe”, the PM said.

The BBC has identified at least 30 demonstrations being planned by far-right activists around the UK over the weekend, including a new protest in Southport.

X (formerly Twitter)

For six years the BBC’s Paul Adams has been in contact with a young graduate in Gaza. Her text messages give a unique insight into the terrors and small triumphs she has experienced during the current conflict, and her fears for the future.

My phone lights up. It is Asmaa. “Still alive,” she writes.

It is 19 March 2024 and after several weeks of silence, Asmaa Tayeh has reappeared on WhatsApp.

“Sorry. Bad internet connection and dangerous days.” And then silence. For another two months.

It has been like this since 7 October. Long disappearances, punctuated by flurries of text messages, as the 28-year-old emerges, briefly, amid the nightmare of Gaza’s longest war.

It is always late at night. Somewhere, Asmaa has found a signal. Far away in London, my phone pings as the messages tumble in.

I met Asmaa in 2018. I was in Gaza, reporting on daily protests at the border fence with Israel, where thousands of mostly young Palestinians angrily commemorated their ancestors’ displacement during Israel’s War of Independence, 70 years earlier.

Asmaa was not part of the protests. I found her at her family’s home a few miles away in Jabalia, quietly writing stories, some of which I had read online, about daily life in a place she both loved and hated.

Her laptop was a cherished portal to the world outside. She had only ever known the Gaza Strip and its stifling sense of isolation. From her spartan room, she watched vloggers and Youtubers casually exploring places she could only dream of.

As a recent graduate in a place with few job prospects and frequent outbreaks of extreme violence, the exotic images flashing onto her computer screen were intoxicating but painful.

“They show me how handcuffed I am,” she wrote that year.

A refugee camp of tents and tin shacks in the 1950s, Jabalia had long since morphed into a small city, more than 100,000 people crammed together in a place of tall buildings, teeming alleyways and open sewers.

Despite her narrow confines, the young Asmaa was hopeful.

In September 2022, she launched her own business, Star Café, an online coffee delivery service. Her social media feeds suggested an optimistic young entrepreneur, finally achieving long-cherished goals and planning for the future.

A year later, on 6 October 2023, in an Instagram post artfully depicting her branded products alongside a vase of roses and a manicured hand, she thanked God for “the blessing of self-employment”.

But what she didn’t know was that a meteor was hurtling in her direction, about to obliterate everything.

The following day, Hamas gunmen stormed across the border fence, killing about 1,200 Israelis and foreigners in nearby communities and at the Nova music festival.

Israel’s response was like nothing Gazans had ever seen before. Its military would go on to kill tens of thousands of people, displace more than 80% of the population, and render large parts of the Gaza Strip uninhabitable.

Three days later, on 10 October, Asmaa got in touch.

“Hey Paul. It’s nice to hear from you. We are unharmed,” she messaged.

“But to be honest, I don’t feel safe at all. We could be bombed at any minute.”

Despite hearing airstrikes hitting nearby targets, Asmaa was hopeful the war would soon be over.

But this was not a repeat of earlier Gaza wars. Within days, Israeli planes dropped leaflets, telling everyone in the northern Gaza Strip – more than one million people – to move south.

Jabalia started to empty, but Asmaa’s family – 13 people spanning three generations – stayed put, fearing going south would prove a one-way journey.

For the descendants of refugees who were forced or fled from their homes in 1948, never to return, the thought of history repeating itself stirred deep fears.

Only her grandparents, elderly and frail, travelled, eventually finding shelter in Rafah.

With electricity cut, food in freezers spoiling, and communications increasingly difficult, the family used a small generator every couple of days to charge mobiles and monitor the news.

Asmaa’s messages were becoming increasingly sporadic.

“It’s dangerous all over the Gaza Strip,” she told me on 15 October.

At the end of October, Jabalia experienced its worst airstrikes so far. Israel said it had targeted underground Hamas structures and killed large numbers of fighters.

The scenes were apocalyptic, with civilians and rescue workers searching for survivors through vast craters and wrecked buildings.

Asmaa vanished. My WhatsApp messages were no longer being read. I assumed the worst.

But six weeks later, she suddenly reappeared. “I’m still alive, by God’s miracles,” she wrote on 12 December.

It did, indeed, feel miraculous.

In a torrent of messages that followed, Asmaa described the previous chaotic weeks. The family’s reluctant decision to leave Jabalia, efforts to head south thwarted by the intensity of the fighting, terrifying journeys through a city at war.

“I saw so much that I cannot find words to describe,” she said.

“The streets are scary and the smell of death is everywhere. People are getting skinny and sick. I feel like I’m living inside a horror movie.”

When forced to walk, the family would spread out along the road, hoping this would improve their chances of survival.

“We kept distance between us, so if any air strike comes, not all of us will die.”

During a week-long ceasefire in late November, the family had briefly returned to the house in Jabalia.

The top floor was gone. Asmaa’s own room, which had doubled up as her Star Café office and studio, was pockmarked by shrapnel.

When the ceasefire collapsed on 1 December, they fled once more, finding refuge in a printing shop in Gaza City where one of Asmaa’s brothers had worked before the war. It was filthy, reeked of paint, and had no kitchen, mattresses, or water.

“We basically lived with rats,” she says.

When it was safe enough to go outside, they would walk, sometimes for hours, searching for clean water – especially vital to make up the formula for Asmaa’s two-month-old nephew.

But after less than three weeks in the shop, Asmaa got a phone call from the Israeli army. She was used to the army’s recorded messages and leaflets dropped from the sky, with instructions to leave areas about to be attacked.

But this time she found herself talking to a real person.

The man said Israel was about to start an operation nearby. For her safety, and that of her family, she needed to leave.

“I wanted to curse him, but I couldn’t.”

She says she was curious, after two-and-a-half months of war, to find herself speaking to an Israeli. She imagined what it must feel like to spend your whole day making the same phone call over and over.

“I felt like there is on the other side an employee who’s sick of his work.”

For all the horrifying immediacy of the war consuming the north, this was as close as Asmaa ever came to meeting an Israeli soldier. Part of her wishes that she’d had more contact.

“I’m really curious about the way they’re fighting, how they look at us, how they understand the struggle,” she told me later.

“I feel like I need to dive inside their minds.”

At the end of December, as the bulk of the fighting moved south, the family made its weary way back to the house in Jabalia.

“We started the new year in the best way ever – all together in our partially-destroyed home.”

Asmaa’s father, a retired carpenter, spent the following weeks repairing the damage, fixing windows, doors and cupboards.

But food was in desperately short supply. International aid agencies warned that famine was looming. Asmaa noticed that people in Jabalia were starting to look gaunt.

Asmaa’s family had stocked up on canned goods. But flour, meat, fruit and vegetables had all disappeared from the markets. Aid agencies were struggling to bring humanitarian relief to the north.

The family eked out their dwindling rations, ate twice a day, and drank tea without sugar – something practically unheard of among Palestinians.

On the roof of the house, where her brother’s room had once stood, her father started growing vegetables.

Asmaa had lost 9kg (almost 20lb) and felt her appetite ebbing away. But slowly, the humanitarian situation started to improve. Air drops and new aid routes into the north kept famine at bay.

Flour was back. The family had chicken and tomatoes for the first time in months.

There was more water, too. Enough for the occasional shower.

“We started to feel a little bit settled down.”

But then the war came back.

On 12 May, the Israeli army returned to Jabalia, saying intelligence indicated Hamas was once more operating out of the area.

Asmaa was bewildered.

“Only days ago, they were talking about a very possible ceasefire,” she wrote, “and suddenly I woke to ‘Let’s pack, we have to leave asap.’”

The family went west, to an area known as al-Nasr, near the coast, where her grandparents had lived before the war.

Al-Nasr was a wasteland, much of it reduced to rubble months earlier. But her grandparents’ house was intact. Long-since looted following their departure for the south, but somehow undamaged.

The family moved in and settled down, wondering how long this third dislocation would last.

One day, driven by curiosity, Asmaa walked to the nearby beach, where she marvelled at the sight of Gazans frolicking in the waves, despite the ominous presence of Israeli gunboats patrolling offshore.

“We’ve started to feel careless,” she told me. “We don’t care for our lives any more. That’s how tired we are.”

On 19 May came the news that Asmaa had long dreaded. Her grandfather had died the day before, aged 91. After being forced to move repeatedly, he and his wife had recently settled in a tent in al-Mawasi, a desperately overcrowded place of dismal conditions, where many Palestinians had fled after the Israeli army began an operation in Rafah at the start of the month.

Sheltering in his abandoned house, Asmaa felt bereft. She hadn’t seen her grandfather since just before the war, when she had persuaded him to pose for a selfie.

“I was so happy that I managed to take that memory.”

Israeli forces finally left Jabalia on 1 June. Four days later, the family trudged back through streets so ravaged they were barely recognisable, to find their home still standing but increasingly battle-scarred.

The whole process – of cleaning, repairing and planting – had to start again, made harder this time by the fact that a missile had destroyed the workshop where her father kept all his tools.

For months, Asmaa and I had only ever communicated by text. Finally, in early July, we spoke on the phone. Two long conversations in which Asmaa took me through her Gazan odyssey and described how it had changed her.

Each time, her voice faded in and out and the line crackled, creating the impression of enormous distance.

Each time, Israeli drones, ubiquitous since this war began, could be heard buzzing in the background.

Asmaa said survival was a mixed blessing. Everyone in the house was alive. But the war wasn’t over and the threat of death was constant.

“I feel anxious all the time, thinking that there will be one day in which I will lose something,” she said. “I mean, our turn will come.”

Gaza, where Asmaa had nurtured her dreams, had been devastated. But it wasn’t the physical changes that were absorbing her the most.

Society, she said, had been utterly transformed. The constant shocks of death, displacement and trauma leaving whole neighbourhoods teetering on the brink of disintegration.

Tight-knit communities had been blown apart, she said, with family members and neighbours scattered up and down the length of the Gaza Strip, and beyond.

Sometimes, in the struggle for survival, Gazans had turned on themselves. A total breakdown in law and order leaving gangs and rival families to battle it out for control of precious resources.

“It’s becoming really normal to see people even killing each other,” Asmaa said.

But if war had brought out the worst in people, it had also brought out the best.

In Jabalia, Asmaa said, people were sharing food and water, exchanging the latest news and information on where to charge mobile phones. With basic foodstuffs once again in short supply, women were swapping improvised recipes.

“Everyone is really taking care of each other.”

Asmaa said it would take decades for Gazans to recover the meagre, confined, life they knew before 7 October. Defiant talk of reconstruction and renewal, she said, felt delusional.

As for herself, Asmaa’s only dream now was to escape.

“I don’t have any hope in this place,” she told me. “I’m not the same person any more. I don’t think I’ll recover.”

For all those concerns about high prices and big crowds ahead of the Olympics, now might just be an unexpectedly good time to holiday in Paris.

Hotels and restaurants have told the BBC they have dropped their prices to entice customers – after what some call a “catastrophic” downturn in takings during the Games that have left them asking what the event has done for them.

The French capital might seem to be the centre of the world for those watching the sport on TV – but the city’s relatively quiet streets and empty dining tables tell a different story.

Earlier this week, local media ran reports of a “deserted” Disneyland and of Parisians’ bemusement as they managed to secure seats on metro trains at rush hour.

• How to get to Paris for the Olympics
• Parisians’ Olympic spirit not dampened – but grumbles remain

So, what is happening?

Analysts suggest that many Parisians have left the city in droves for the summer, as is their tradition. But also, some overseas visitors have been put off by concerns around price-gouging and overcrowding on an Olympic scale.

One of the locals who used the word “catastrophic” was a restaurateur called Lies in the usually bustling Latin Quarter, who said July had been his worst month for 25 years. During the height of Covid, at least people continued to order meal deliveries, he told the BBC.

Tourists had been put off coming to the area because of security blockades that were put in the place for the previous week’s opening ceremony, Lies suggested.

Another nearby restaurateur hovering in his doorway, Yarva, said would-be visitors had chosen not to pay hotel prices which multiplied several times ahead of the Games.

The event was “only for the rich”, he said, and used a hand gesture to indicate he thought the price inflation had been crazy.

Ahead of the Games, airlines warned there was a low appetite for journeys to Paris, with both Delta and the company that owns Air France predicting an impact on their business.

“Unless you’re going to the Olympics, people aren’t going to Paris,” the Delta boss told CNBC.

This was reflected in flight prices that were well below the usual asking price for this time of year, according to travel expert Simon Calder, writing this week for The Independent.

Next-day one-way flights from UK cities were as low as £31 (€36; $39) per adult (from Edinburgh) at the time of writing this article. However, tickets for the Eurostar trains, which were last week affected by a sabotage attack on the French railway network, were considerably higher.

June and July saw an “avoidance effect”, said Raphael Batko of hotel marketing firm Doyield, which represents about one in 20 of the city’s hotels. He also used the word “catastrophic” to describe the phenomenon, though he said visitor numbers had picked up and were now satisfactory.

A similar avoidance phenomenon has been noticed in previous Olympics, including in London in 2012, when businesses suggested that the Games had deterred visitors and shrunk their profits.

What remains to be seen is whether the emergency action taken by the hospitality industry will be enough to salvage the Olympic trade for many Parisian businesses.

With restaurants dropping their prices, it was now possible to get a meal for as little as €8 (£6.80, $8.70) in the Latin Quarter, claimed Riad, the proprietor of the Olympie diner, as he tried to entice diners.

Hotels, too have tried a similar trick – largely reversing the earlier rises which appear to have been so off-putting. Tourism authorities confirmed that average prices had returned to €258 (£219; $279) per night during the Games, following a massive hike that had previously seen them peak at €342 last month.

The BBC saw that a number of Airbnbs on offer were advertising price reductions, although the company said prices had remained stable since the start of the year, and more locals had been opening their homes in host cities.

Individual hoteliers in Paris spoke of mixed success.

One reception manager, Dino, said bookings had reached normal levels – but only after rates were slashed by half when things “looked bleak”.

Another, Isabelle, said her own price drop had been ineffective and lamented that “we didn’t gain anything from the Olympics”.

As well as the sport, there were plenty of good reasons to come to the French capital for the summer, said Christophe Decloux, head of the Choose Paris regional tourist board.

He cited the city’s rich cultural offering, plus smooth transportation and a “very joyful” atmosphere during the Games.

“Paris is usually very calm in late July and August because people leave for the holidays,” he said, “and right now it is just as calm as usual in August except in some areas around the venues where people are bonding over the sport.”

Organisers of Paris 2024 have trumpeted the positive effects of the Games on Paris following record ticket sales.

It remains possible to sign up to see events, as tickets are released each day. About 800,000 of them are still up for grabs, organisers told the BBC on Friday.

The sporting spectacle itself has already proven memorable – and with some disgruntled businesses doing everything they can to coax in visitors, last-minute bookers to Paris might find themselves in with a chance of scoring a bargain.

In a country where women still find it challenging to reach high office, the swing state of Michigan is an outlier.

Its three most senior elected officials are all women – nationally women fill only around a quarter of senior political roles.

With no woman having ever served as president, the state run by women could offer pointers for a route to the White House for Democrat Kamala Harris.

Opinion polling does not offer a clear answer on whether people are less willing to vote for a woman, but they certainly end up electing fewer overall.

And you don’t have to look far to find the perception that women still have to fight harder to get elected.

Robyn Kepplinger may be one of the few in her pro-gun, anti-abortion rural western Michigan town who is thrilled at the chance to vote for a Democratic woman for president.

The 33-year-old says she could not imagine a better candidate to lead the country “in the direction that we need to go”.

Ms Kepplinger, a resident of Jenison, has thrown her support behind Vice-President Harris. On Friday, the 59-year-old secured enough delegate votes to become Democratic nominee following President Joe Biden’s decision to drop out of the race on 21 July.

But even some Harris fans worry that being a woman could be a significant obstacle between her and the presidency. “For anyone to be doing something that has not been done before, it’s difficult,” Ms Kepplinger said. “I don’t think that most people are behind a change as drastic as a female leader.”

Such a change, however, has proven possible in the key battleground state of Michigan, where three female Democrats now hold the top positions: Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer, and Attorney General Dana Nessel. In fact, Michigan has had two female Democratic governors in the past 20 years, Jennifer Granholm and Ms Whitmer.

Only around a quarter of senators and state governors in the US are women. The figure for representatives is slightly higher at 29%.

“Women are still underestimated,” said Marcie Paul, the chair of Fems for Dems, an advocacy group for liberal women in Michigan. “It’s going to be no different for her [Ms Harris], I believe, than it was when they said three women on the top of the ticket cannot possibly win in Michigan.”

Ms Harris, however, shares some of the traits that made women in Michigan successful candidates, according to Kim Gates, Democratic chair of Kent County, Michigan.

Ms Harris, Ms Whitmer and Ms Granholm managed to strike a balance between compassion and strength as “straight-talking, strong women”, Ms Gates said.

“They have great speaking skills. They’re able to sound like they’re talking to the average person,” she said. “They’re compassionate.”

Combining straight-talking, strength and compassion is easier said than done, but if Ms Harris can, it may bode well for her.

Female candidates may also prove more adept than men at galvanising voters around the issue of reproductive rights after the fall of Roe v Wade.

Voters nationwide cite abortion rights among the most important election issues, with one recent poll from KFF finding 1 in 8 voters saw it as a top priority for November. The issue has been relevant at the polls, with anti-abortion advocates losing a series of contests in Republican states since the federal right to abortion was overturned in 2022. In the past two years, a handful of states have passed ballot measures protecting the right to abortion, including in the Republican strongholds of Kansas, Kentucky and Ohio.

The cause helped propel Ms Whitmer to victory in her race for re-election in Michigan in 2022, the same year Michigan residents voted to enshrine abortion rights in the state’s constitution. During Ms Harris’ tenure, she has shown a strong focus on reproductive rights, recently visiting a clinic that provides abortions.

It’s an area where her gender could prove an advantage, said Adrian Hemond, a political strategist in Michigan.

“Vice-President Harris is a much better messenger on that issue than Joe Biden,” he said.

As concerns grew around 81-year-old Mr Biden’s ability to beat Trump in November, some major donors paused funds when the president’s poll numbers were falling in swing states, including Michigan.

Meanwhile, Trump, 78, also saw a boost in personal ratings after a gunman attempted to assassinate him at a rally in Pennsylvania last month.

But after Mr Biden stepped down, Ms Harris received a record level of donations – $81m (£63m) within 24 hours. Since then, a Morning Consult poll released on Tuesday showed Harris’s approval rating at 50%, up from 43% a week previously, and a separate poll from Reuters/Ipsos found Ms Harris was supported by 43% of registered voters, and Trump supported by 42%.

Some Democratic campaigners in Michigan say that her background as a black woman has helped Ms Harris reach some voters. Her Indian heritage – and the fact she is significantly younger than both Mr Biden and Trump – are also said to boost her appeal to some of the electorate.

Greg Bowens, a member of the executive board of the NAACP in Grosse Pointe, said there is “excitement in the air” in Detroit. He added this hasn’t been seen in Detroit – Michigan’s largest majority African-American city – since Barack Obama, the first black president.

“She has electrified black and brown folks,” he said.

While an apparent wave of enthusiasm grows among some Democratic voters, Ms Harris has been subjected to attacks based on her gender and background.

A 2021 video of Trump’s running mate JD Vance resurfaced has resurfaced, with the Republican criticising the political left – including Ms Harris – for being full of “childless cat ladies with miserable lives”. The remark was criticised widely, including by actor Jennifer Aniston, but they were seized on by some conservative figures on social media, who argued that Ms Harris is less suitable to be president because she lacks a stake in the future. Ms Harris is step-mother to her husband’s two children.

More generally, female candidates face more superficial criticisms than male politicians about how they look, how they carry themselves and how they speak, said Ms Paul, the Fems for Dems leader who helps encourage women to vote and run for office.

It’s a point seemingly not lost on many voters – a Pew Research Center poll from September 2023 said 62% of Americans believed there was too much of a focus on female candidates’ appearances, versus 35% for male candidates.

Female politicians of colour are targeted more than their white male counterparts, said Nazita Lajevardi, a Michigan State University political science professor. “Women of colour politicians face attacks that are gendered and raced at the same time,” she said. “They report experiencing more verbal attacks, more online abuse.”

Female, black public figures can be subjected to scrutiny of their past sexual history, said Jamil Scott, an assistant professor of government at Georgetown University. Images have circulated on social media with criticisms of Ms Harris’ past romantic partners. Whatever the motivation for circulating these images, Ms Harris has been married to Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff for 10 years.

Ms Scott said that as a female politician, Ms Harris will also likely be forced to walk a tightrope where she is perceived as strong in attacking her Republican rival, but doesn’t risk being seen as angry.

“We want women to be tough as candidates, but then we don’t want them to be too tough,” she said.

Ms Scott pointed to Hillary Clinton – the first US major party female presidential candidate – who was perceived by some to be unlikeable and too aggressive in her attacks against Trump in 2016.

Trump attempted to exploit this sense, famously calling Ms Clinton a “nasty woman”.

While Ms Harris’s background and stance on abortion may appeal to some, they do not guarantee support among left-leaning voters.

Tressa Johnson, a 31-year-old liberal voter from Grand Rapids, believes Ms Harris’s policy stances are what make her undesirable – not her ethnicity or gender. She says the vice-president’s past as a tough-on-crime prosecutor and the Biden administration’s limited criticism of Israel’s actions in Gaza make her a poor candidate.

“People just want to go, ‘Look, she’s a woman of colour,’” said Ms Johnson, who plans to vote for Green Party candidate Jill Stein. “I just want a competent person that cares about the working class people in this country.”

What Ms Whitmer’s Michigan victory can’t help the Harris campaign with is how to beat a candidate as high profile as Trump. Mr Hemond, the political strategist, said that while Ms Whitmer defeated two “ill-equipped” Republican opponents, Ms Harris is up against a tougher candidate.

“It is very fair to say that Donald Trump is a much more potent electoral force,” he said.

The former president and his supporters have already started to attack Ms Harris based on her gender and ethnicity.

Echoing comments from Trump’s 2016 race, in which the former president accused Ms Clinton of playing the “woman card” to attract voters, Trump’s allies have claimed Ms Harris was picked solely for the purpose of “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” (DEI).

It’s the kind of attack that Ms Harris would do best to ignore, as Ms Whitmer has done, said Mr Hemond.

During Ms Whitmer’s run for governor and time in office, she has been subjected to a host of sexist remarks, including from Michigan’s former Republican Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey, who once said he had “spanked” Ms Whitmer “hard” while working with her on the state’s budget.

“Gov. Whitmer largely let others litigate the sexist comments that were made about her, which was smart,” Mr Hemond said. “There does seem to be a perceptual danger for female candidates in engaging directly with these types of comments.”

Mr Hemond added that ignoring these types of comments often makes for an effective strategy because a majority of voters are women themselves, many of whom can relate to having to handle “sexist comments gracefully”.

Some liberal residents in Michigan hope voters will see beyond the DEI attacks against Ms Harris.

“She is intelligent, she has deep experience governing and making policy,” said Brandy, a voter in Southeast Michigan.

The Morning Consult poll also showed that Ms Harris’ ratings are a significant improvement on Mr Biden’s in swing states, and that she has gained 5 points in Michigan.

But Trump has strong support here too. A week after the shooting, he spoke to a crowd of 12,000 in Grand Rapids in his first public rally since the attack.

It’s a state Trump won by 11,000 votes in 2016 when he beat Hillary Clinton. Mr Biden won it back in 2020 by over 100,000 votes.

In some respects, the political backdrop has changed since 2016, Ms Scott said.

Voters were “not excited about Hillary Clinton”, she said. “They didn’t see the power in the moment of having a woman run for president.’’

But another wave of women may have been inspired by Ms Clinton’s defeat, and Trump’s victory, Ms Scott said. After millions of women participated in marches across the US to protest Trump’s inauguration, the country saw a record number of female candidates running for office in 2018.

Meanwhile, the percentage of Americans who believe men better suited to politics than women fell from 19% in 2014 to 14% in 2018, according to data from the University of Chicago’s National Opinion Research Center. In 1975, 47% of Americans believed men made better politicians than women.

Ms Harris has already seen an outpouring of support, in particular among black women and on social media, where memes of the vice-president are ubiquitous.

She is framing the race in November as a choice between “freedom” and “chaos” under Trump who she points out has been convicted of 34 felonies.

But ultimately, it may be her diverse background and experience that pulls more voters into the race, experts said.

“So many people see themselves in her, especially in a state like Michigan, where many people are of immigrant backgrounds or are black or South Asian,” said Ms Lajevardi, the Michigan State professor. “It matters when someone knows your community’s interests and seeks to represent them.”

Technically, Ms Harris became the first female president in 2021 – when she was handed presidential powers for 85 minutes while Mr Biden underwent a health check. Now the challenge for her campaign is to see whether she can extend that to four years.

Michigan offers pointers as to how women can take the top jobs, and stay in them.

For all those concerns about high prices and big crowds ahead of the Olympics, now might just be an unexpectedly good time to holiday in Paris.

Hotels and restaurants have told the BBC they have dropped their prices to entice customers – after what some call a “catastrophic” downturn in takings during the Games that have left them asking what the event has done for them.

The French capital might seem to be the centre of the world for those watching the sport on TV – but the city’s relatively quiet streets and empty dining tables tell a different story.

Earlier this week, local media ran reports of a “deserted” Disneyland and of Parisians’ bemusement as they managed to secure seats on metro trains at rush hour.

• How to get to Paris for the Olympics
• Parisians’ Olympic spirit not dampened – but grumbles remain

So, what is happening?

Analysts suggest that many Parisians have left the city in droves for the summer, as is their tradition. But also, some overseas visitors have been put off by concerns around price-gouging and overcrowding on an Olympic scale.

One of the locals who used the word “catastrophic” was a restaurateur called Lies in the usually bustling Latin Quarter, who said July had been his worst month for 25 years. During the height of Covid, at least people continued to order meal deliveries, he told the BBC.

Tourists had been put off coming to the area because of security blockades that were put in the place for the previous week’s opening ceremony, Lies suggested.

Another nearby restaurateur hovering in his doorway, Yarva, said would-be visitors had chosen not to pay hotel prices which multiplied several times ahead of the Games.

The event was “only for the rich”, he said, and used a hand gesture to indicate he thought the price inflation had been crazy.

Ahead of the Games, airlines warned there was a low appetite for journeys to Paris, with both Delta and the company that owns Air France predicting an impact on their business.

“Unless you’re going to the Olympics, people aren’t going to Paris,” the Delta boss told CNBC.

This was reflected in flight prices that were well below the usual asking price for this time of year, according to travel expert Simon Calder, writing this week for The Independent.

Next-day one-way flights from UK cities were as low as £31 (€36; $39) per adult (from Edinburgh) at the time of writing this article. However, tickets for the Eurostar trains, which were last week affected by a sabotage attack on the French railway network, were considerably higher.

June and July saw an “avoidance effect”, said Raphael Batko of hotel marketing firm Doyield, which represents about one in 20 of the city’s hotels. He also used the word “catastrophic” to describe the phenomenon, though he said visitor numbers had picked up and were now satisfactory.

A similar avoidance phenomenon has been noticed in previous Olympics, including in London in 2012, when businesses suggested that the Games had deterred visitors and shrunk their profits.

What remains to be seen is whether the emergency action taken by the hospitality industry will be enough to salvage the Olympic trade for many Parisian businesses.

With restaurants dropping their prices, it was now possible to get a meal for as little as €8 (£6.80, $8.70) in the Latin Quarter, claimed Riad, the proprietor of the Olympie diner, as he tried to entice diners.

Hotels, too have tried a similar trick – largely reversing the earlier rises which appear to have been so off-putting. Tourism authorities confirmed that average prices had returned to €258 (£219; $279) per night during the Games, following a massive hike that had previously seen them peak at €342 last month.

The BBC saw that a number of Airbnbs on offer were advertising price reductions, although the company said prices had remained stable since the start of the year, and more locals had been opening their homes in host cities.

Individual hoteliers in Paris spoke of mixed success.

One reception manager, Dino, said bookings had reached normal levels – but only after rates were slashed by half when things “looked bleak”.

Another, Isabelle, said her own price drop had been ineffective and lamented that “we didn’t gain anything from the Olympics”.

As well as the sport, there were plenty of good reasons to come to the French capital for the summer, said Christophe Decloux, head of the Choose Paris regional tourist board.

He cited the city’s rich cultural offering, plus smooth transportation and a “very joyful” atmosphere during the Games.

“Paris is usually very calm in late July and August because people leave for the holidays,” he said, “and right now it is just as calm as usual in August except in some areas around the venues where people are bonding over the sport.”

Organisers of Paris 2024 have trumpeted the positive effects of the Games on Paris following record ticket sales.

It remains possible to sign up to see events, as tickets are released each day. About 800,000 of them are still up for grabs, organisers told the BBC on Friday.

The sporting spectacle itself has already proven memorable – and with some disgruntled businesses doing everything they can to coax in visitors, last-minute bookers to Paris might find themselves in with a chance of scoring a bargain.

On 9 July, Diana Cazacu, a 19-year-old hiker, was mauled to death by a young female bear in the Bucegi mountains north of Bucharest. In response, the government overturned a 2016 moratorium on bear hunting – and reignited a fierce debate about what to do with Romania’s growing bear population, the largest in Europe outside Russia.

The staff at the Salvamont headquarters, Romania’s mountain rescue service, radiate calm and efficiency.

When Diana and her boyfriend rang the emergency number, 112, in panic at 15:00 on 9 July, the call was transferred here.

Sergiu Frusinoiu, in charge that day, set out immediately with two teams. One approached the incident spot from above, the other from below. Bears rarely attack humans, except in self-defence – so Sergiu assumed this would be a simple rescue mission.

At the scene they found the woman’s distraught boyfriend. The bear had grabbed Diana, and thrown her down the ravine. They descended by rope, and found the bear standing over the victim.

The bear attacked the rescue team, who defended themselves with pepper spray, firecrackers and rocks, until a hunter arrived and shot the bear. It was too late for Diana, lying on her stomach, her head in the stream.

“Even if the fall or her injuries didn’t kill her, the water could have,” Sergiu told me.

He said Diana’s mistake had been to run away when faced with the bear. Sergiu grew up in these mountains, and has had hundreds of encounters with bears, without incident, he said.

The standard advice is to make noise in bear territory as you walk. If you encounter a bear, stand quiet and still, then back slowly away. As with a dog, the worst thing you can do is run away, as it is sure to follow.

At the base of the footpath which Diana climbed that day, it becomes clear why the bear was on the path. Three large municipal waste bins, the remains of a cage around one, stand open to the sky. One has been tipped over, and there is rotting food, tins and plastic strewn over a wide area.

Around 8,000 bears live in the arc of the Carpathian mountains, one of Europe’s last wilderness regions, their habitat constantly eroded by logging, the spread of towns, and tourism.

In the nearby town of Busteni, at seven in the evening, I get a bear alert on my phone, and rush to the scene, a residential street.

Angry locals say they’re afraid to walk home at night, because of the bears.

The police arrive, and the locals harangue them for doing too little. “But what do you want us to do?” asks a young officer. “Keep us safe!” shouts one man.

I get through to the hunter who shot the bear who killed Diana, but he says he will not speak until the inquest is over.

Former Environment Minister Barna Tanczos is the author of the new law, passed by the Chamber of Deputies and approved by President Klaus Iohannis in July, that allows people to kill up to 500 bears over the next 18 months .

“The bear population is increasing daily, monthly, yearly in Romania, so if we don’t do something we will have thousands, tens of thousands of bears, which is not good for humans, and not good for the bears,” Mr Tanczos said.

“So we have to establish control, we need a balance in human – bear relations, and conflicts, and contacts.”

According to Cristi Remus Papp, head of the large carnivore department of the Worldwide Fund for Nature, the new law will do nothing to improve the situation, and could make it worse.

There is a growing number of “troublesome” bears, he admits, but there are no accurate statistics for how many bears there are overall.

In any case, the number is not the point, he says: “We have to address the root causes of the conflicts, starting with the mass feeding of bears close to settlements, and along the roads in tourist areas.”

Since the communist era, hunters’ associations are obliged by law to feed the bears – a practice initially meant to make them easier to shoot, and keep them out of towns, but is now partly done for tour operators, who want to guarantee a sighting of bears to their clients.

Social media feeds are full of video clips of tourists feeding bears from their cars. A future change in the law could be to fine those who do so.

Other bear management methods have been tried with some success – like tranquillising and removing bears to wild areas of the mountains. But now that bears have got into the habit of raiding bins or begging for food, even conservationists say there may be no alternative to culling them.

One example of good practice is the town of Baile Tusnad.

“In 2021 we had 220 bear alerts. This year so far, only 3,” Zsolt Butyka, the mayor told me proudly. His municipality bought 14 neat, stainless steel bear-proof bins, cut down 50 fruit trees in the town, and ran regular bear awareness campaign for the public.

A poster near the town hall reads: “If you feed a bear, you kill a bear.”

The town is on a main migration route for bears, across the Olt river valley, but now they skirt round the edges. “They’ve learnt there’s nothing for them here,” the mayor tells me.

On a sultry summer evening, Janos Szin, a tour operator who runs a number of bear hides in the Tusnad area, sends me the map coordinates where to wait. A forest ranger in a four-wheel drive picks me up.

Once we’re installed behind a large glass window in a raised hide, he produces a sack and scatters maize. The bears arrive while he is still there – two females, one with three cubs. After a while, a large male ambles up, and the others scatter. He climbs onto the scales, disguised as a feeding trough, and we see his weight: 240 kg (37 stone).

In a phone conversation, Mr Szin tells me the law is bad.

The “wrong bears” will be killed – the large males, minding their business up in the mountains. These males help keep the population down, he says, because they kill the cubs, so they can mate with their mothers.

This is a common practice among lions in the wild, but experts disagree about its prevalence among bears.

Poachers, trying to steal bear cubs, are another problem, Mr Szin suggests.

He’s afraid that hunters from all over the world will now flock to Romania – the only place where they can bag a bear pelt and a skull, to hang on their walls.

When law student Chidimma Adetshina clinched a coveted spot as a Miss South Africa finalist, her triumph unleashed a vicious backlash, unearthing a seam of xenophobia that lies close to the surface for some in the country.

The 23-year-old’s name hints at her connection to Nigeria, but internet detectives wanted to know more and combed through every inch of her life. They found that her father is Nigerian and though her mother is South African, her family had come from neighbouring Mozambique.

“On behalf of South Africans, we don’t recognise her and that name! She better start packing and go home,” raged one commenter on X.

But where is home? Ms Adetshina is South African, as verified by the organisers of the pageant. She has said in interviews that she was born in Soweto – the township next to Johannesburg – and grew up in Cape Town.

However, the “go-home” sentiment, and even harsher attacks, flooded social media. There was also a petition demanding her removal from the high-profile televised competition that amassed more than 14,000 signatures before it was taken down.

The country’s Culture Minister Gayton McKenzie, the leader of the Patriotic Alliance party, which has joined a coalition government and made migration issues a key part of its platform, chimed in.

“We truly cannot have Nigerians compete in our Miss SA competition. I wanna get all facts before I comment but it gives funny vibes already,” he said on X.

The issue has touched a nerve in South Africa that goes beyond who will appear on stage at the final next weekend.

Ms Adetshina declined a BBC request for an interview but she did tell the Sowetan Live news site that the online hate she was facing made her think twice about competing.

“I am representing a country, but I don’t feel the love from the people I’m representing,” she said.

Ms Adetshina added that the whole situation felt like “black-on-black hate”, highlighting a particular strain of xenophobia in South Africa known as “afrophobia”, which targets other Africans.

She felt that she was not the only contestant among the last 16 women with a name that had origins from beyond the country’s shores – there are some with South Asian and European names – yet she was receiving the bulk of the criticism.

Asked to respond to the comments that Ms Adetshina has faced, a Miss South Africa spokesperson did not address them directly but simply said that she was eligible to take part in the competition.

This was not the first time that this has happened. For Melissa Nayimuli, a Miss South Africa contestant last year, it has brought up difficult memories.

The 28-year-old was the target of the same vitriol heaped on Ms Adetshina because her father is Ugandan.

She told the BBC she was unsurprised at the reaction she had received as she had experienced it for most of her life.

“It’s something I tried to run away from, but how do you run away from yourself?” she questioned.

Ms Nayimuli said that while growing up she would constantly speak Xhosa, her mother tongue and one of South Africa’s official languages, to “prove her South African-ness”.

Her voice cracked as she admitted that she felt shame at her Ugandan identity when she was younger because of the afrophobia that she experienced.

“I would not want to be seen with my father because of his darker skin and East African features were a dead giveaway,” she told the BBC.

“At home my father was my hero, but outside I saw him treated as an enemy.”

University of the Free State sociologist Dr Nombulelo Shange links this hostility to South Africa’s history of racism and the apartheid system – which imposed a strict hierarchy that privileged white people.

There is a “sad apartheid mentality that we are struggling to shake as a country”, she said.

“It shows the deep self-hate that we as black South Africans carry with us.”

Dr Shange added that South Africans had internalised oppressive racist reasoning such as colourism, where lighter skin tones are perceived as better.

After apartheid ended in 1994, the government led by Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress (ANC) welcomed African migrants and asylum seekers to the country in part to aid its reintegration into the continent after years of isolation.

But with many South Africans struggling financially, foreigners became the target for some frustrated by their situation.

Zimbabweans, Nigerians and Somalis, among others, have been accused of taking opportunities and resources from South Africans.

There is a “perception of outsiders as competitors for scarce jobs, resources, living space and services”, Michael Morris, head of media at the South African Institute of Race Relations, told the BBC.

He said the growing number of Africans succeeding in South Africa could “easily trigger resentment and violence”.

This climate of hostility has occasionally erupted into attacks. South Africa experienced its worst outbreak of violence against mostly African foreigners in 2008, when more than 60 people died.

“There are black South Africans who will argue that Africans from elsewhere in the continent don’t belong in South Africa,” Mr Morris said.

More than a decade ago, Ms Nayimuli felt this animosity acutely when her father was arrested.

“My dad is the most kind-hearted, gentle soul in the entire universe,” she said – yet he was treated like a criminal because, she believes, he looked like a foreigner.

When Ms Nayimuli’s mother reached the police station in the capital, Pretoria, where her husband was being held officers did not even have an explanation or a charge against him.

Her father was released and Ms Nayimuli’s family never spoke about it again.

They had often “tiptoed” around the xenophobia they faced but when it bubbled up during last year’s Miss South Africa it was a chance for them to address the issue directly and was, for Ms Nayimuli, part of a healing process.

Now, seeing Ms Adetshina experience the same level of abuse her heart goes out to her.

“She is not just a trending topic. She is a human being. She is a young woman getting bullied online – it’s wrong, hurtful and so dangerous,” she said.

But she emphasised that the xenophobes are a small minority and there are many South Africans who call for unity.

Leader of the opposition Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) party Julius Malema defended Ms Adetshina last week, saying: “Why do people want to say she’s from Nigeria or Mozambique? She was born here.”

This message of coming together is one that Ms Nayimuli ended her Miss South Africa journey on.

Last year, as the bright lights shone on her during the final round of the competition, she called for African unity in the face of hate.

“Let’s step into our power as Africa. We are one,” she said to a raucous auditorium who cheered on her message of togetherness.

But it seems it did not take root as the discrimination has resurfaced.

Next Saturday, Ms Adetshina will get her chance to take to the stage, but it is not yet clear if she will tackle the haters head on.

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• How common are xenophobic attacks in South Africa?
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• African beauty: How photography changed my way of seeing

When a notorious Russian assassin and an American newspaper correspondent boarded separate planes in Turkey on Thursday, it marked the culmination of a secretive, dramatic prisoner swap deal between Russia and the West that was years in the making.

The origins of this deal, which involved two dozen prisoners, can be traced back to 2022. But behind-the-scenes negotiations between Russia, the US and four European countries ramped up earlier this year before intensifying in recent weeks as a final agreement came into view for all sides.

Those negotiations were at times feverish and testing. They also came as US-Russia tensions soared over the Ukraine war. “It was the culmination of many rounds of complex, painstaking negotiations over many, many months,” Jake Sullivan, the US national security adviser who played a critical role in the deal, said shortly after the exchange.

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Senior White House officials provided a detailed timeline of events in a call with reporters, including from the BBC’s US partner CBS, on Thursday. They said the first hint that Moscow may have been open to a deal came in the autumn of 2022.

The US and Russia had been negotiating the release of Brittney Griner, the American basketball star who was arrested for possessing cannabis oil and sent to a Russian penal colony. Griner was eventually released later that year in a high-profile swap for the notorious Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout.

But during those conversations, the White House officials said, Russia made clear it also wanted to secure the release of the hitman Vadim Krasikov, who was serving a life sentence in Germany for shooting dead a man in a busy Berlin park on the direct orders of the Kremlin.

Mr Sullivan told his German counterpart that Russia was angling for Krasikov’s release, and asked whether Berlin would consider freeing him in exchange for Alexei Navalny, the vocal anti-Putin campaigner and opposition leader who was being held in Russia.

Germany, however, was reluctant to release a hitman who had committed such a brazen murder on its own soil.

While Mr Sullivan did not get a definitive answer from Berlin, the initial conversations in 2022, both between the US and Russia and the US and Germany, helped pave the way for the larger, more complex agreement struck in recent weeks that was completed on the sweltering runway of a Turkish airport.

That’s because both sides signalled, at least to some extent, what they wanted.

Russia made clear it wanted Krasikov. And Washington did not just want Navalny, it also wanted Paul Whelan, an ex-Marine who was jailed on espionage charges in Russia in 2018.

The early elements of a potential swap deal then began to take shape – but there was still a long, long way to go.

In late March 2023, a 31-year-old Wall Street Journal reporter from New Jersey was arrested by Russian intelligence agents while on a reporting trip. His detention raised a chorus of condemnation from the US and its allies.

A day later, President Biden instructed Mr Sullivan to pull together a deal that would bring him, and Mr Whelan, home.

The US directly contacted Russia. Communication then began in earnest, White House officials said, and their respective foreign ministers spoke on the phone.

But the conversations soon moved from these top diplomats to the secretive intelligence services, which the US was hesitant to do as Mr Gershkovich was accused of spying and Washington feared involving the CIA would only fuel those claims.

As the wheels of these tense negotiations were turning in late 2023, the US came to understand that the release of the hitman Krasikov was key to any successful deal, according to senior White House officials. Offers were made to Russia that did not include the 58-year-old assassin. They were always rebuffed.

Given Krasikov was in jail in Germany and not the US, Washington did not have the power to free him unilaterally. Mr Sullivan spoke to his German counterpart almost weekly in late 2023 and early January 2024 in an effort to convince him to exchange Krasikov and meet Russia’s key demand for this deal.

Any potential agreement, according to the White House officials, absolutely hinged on Germany releasing Krasikov.

Moscow’s position, they said, was ultimately that its jailed spies should be returned in exchange for the Americans it accused of spying.

With this in mind, the US worked to find more Russian spies held by its allies who could form part of a major deal. US officials, diplomats and CIA staff travelled the world looking for friendly governments willing to release prisoners fitting that description, according to the Wall Street Journal.

A sign of their success came on Thursday, when Russians were released from prisons in Poland, Slovenia and Norway.

In February of this year, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz met President Biden at the White House. And according to the account provided by the White House officials on Thursday, they discussed options for a swap that included all the key people – Krasikov, Navalny, Whelan, Gershkovich.

There were positive signals from Russia, too. In an interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson in early February, Vladimir Putin spoke about Mr Gershkovich. “I do not rule out that Mr Gershkovich may return to his homeland,” he said.

As the BBC’s Russia editor Steve Rosenberg writes, it was a very public and unsubtle hint: Moscow was open to doing a deal.

But on 16 February 2024, just days after that interview and the White House meeting between Chancellor Scholz and President Biden, and before any offer could put to the Russians, the potential deal collapsed in tragic circumstances.

Arguably the most high-profile prisoner who could have been included in the exchange, Alexei Navalny, died in his Siberian prison cell aged 47. Supporters and relatives, as well as many foreign leaders, blamed Mr Putin for his death. Russian authorities said he died of natural causes.

While almost nothing was known about the negotiations at the time of his death, Mr Navalny’s colleague Maria Pevchikh said publicly that he had been close to being freed in exchange for Krasikov.

BBC News was unable to independently verify her claims at the time. The Kremlin, meanwhile, publicly denied that a potential agreement had been close.

But on Thursday, the White House confirmed it had been working to include Mr Navalny in the deal, which ultimately saw three people who had worked with the opposition figure freed from Russian custody.

“The team felt like the wind had been taken out of our sails,” a visibly emotional Mr Sullivan said as he described the impact of Mr Navalny’s death.

Mr Gershkovich’s mother and father, in a dramatic coincidence, were meeting Mr Sullivan at the White House on the day Mr Navalny’s death was announced.

Recognising the significance of the news and the risk it posed to these negotiations, he told them it was “going to be a little bit more of a rocky path” going forward.

The potential deal had to be restructured and the US and Germany regrouped.

Vice-President Kamala Harris then held two important meetings to help keep a potential swap on track, a senior administration official told the BBC.

She attended the Munich Security Conference in mid-February where she stressed the importance of releasing Krasikov to Chancellor Scholz.

She also met the prime minister of Slovenia, where two Russian prisoners identified by the US as being of a high priority to Moscow were being held. They were both released on Thursday.

Then in the spring, the new deal which no longer included Mr Navalny took shape in the White House. And in June, Berlin agreed to exchange Krasikov.

“For you, I will do this,” Mr Scholz told President Biden, according to Mr Sullivan.

The deal was submitted to Russia.

Moscow responded several weeks ago, in mid-July, accepting the terms of the agreement and the release of those on the list held in Russian jails.

But as the negotiations were reaching their final stages, domestic politics intruded, with Mr Biden coming under immense pressure from within his own Democratic Party to end his bid for re-election in November after a poor debate performance.

According to Mr Sullivan, barely an hour before Mr Biden announced on 21July he would not seek re-election, he was on a call with his Slovenian counterpart finalising the prisoner swap.

As with any high-stakes prisoner swap, the deal was not guaranteed even as the aircraft were lined up and the prisoners’ routes home finalised.

“We held our breath and crossed our fingers until just a couple of hours ago,” Mr Sullivan said on Thursday afternoon.

President Biden later posted a picture of the released Americans together on a plane headed for US soil, along with a short caption. “[They] are safe, free, and have begun their journeys back into the arms of their families.”

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 Battisson 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.”

The transformation of Britain’s “ugliest” dog into a Hollywood star has been unexpected and “surreal”, her owner has said.

Peggy is appearing alongside Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman in the latest Marvel superhero film, Deadpool & Wolverine.

The five-year-old pugese – a pug and Chinese crested cross – was cast as “Dogpool” after finding fame last year when she was crowned the ugliest pooch in a national contest last year.

Recalling the past 18 months, Peggy’s owner Holly Middleton, from East Yorkshire, said: “Not in my wildest dreams did I think anything like that would have ever happened.”

“When we submitted her picture [to the ugly dog competition], I didn’t think it would get to the heights it did,” she added.

“I didn’t think that’d be as big a deal as it was.”

Peggy will make a homecoming appearance at a cinema in Hull later. She is due to meet fans at Cineworld, Kingswood, at 10:30 BST.

However, despite amassing “a massive fan base”, Mrs Middleton said Peggy was not displaying any “diva behaviour” at home.

On the contrary, the usually “reserved and lazy” pugese had gained “a bit more confidence” from the trainer who was tasked with looking after her during production of Deadpool & Wolverine.

“She’s still just plain old Peg,” said Mrs Middleton.

The 37-year-old make-up artist said the family had missed Peggy when she was away filming.

“It was really, really strange not to have her here,” her owner said. “I’ve got two boys and they missed her terribly.

“We didn’t tell them where she was. Everything had to be kept quiet.

“I’m glad she’s back. We missed her.”

Watching Peggy making her debut at a premiere in New York and being held on the red carpet by Hollywood A-listers was “surreal”, Mrs Middleton said.

“I loved it. Peggy looked really comfortable the entire time, as probably most people would being cuddled by Ryan Reynolds.

“They seem to really, really love her and they’re so gentle with her, and you can see… they’re giving her kisses and giving her little rubs on her head.

“I just loved every second of it. I loved seeing her up there doing her thing.

“She just looked so chilled and so happy.”

Mrs Middleton said there were no plans at present for future film roles and Peggy was content with chilling at home.

“First and foremost, she is a family pet,” she added. “There’s nothing she likes more than either cuddling with us on the couch, or snuggling in her bed.”

Despite Peggy’s global recognition, Mrs Middleton said she was “the same as every other dog that gets walked in the village” – though she “absolutely loves” attention and had become accustomed to turning people’s heads.

“When I read comments online, they’re all very positive and very much in favour of Peggy, saying how beautiful she is.

“Before all of this, just the way she looks she would get attention, but it was usually people sort of nudging each other and whispering, ‘Oh, what’s wrong with that dog’.

“So since everything’s happened, the public perception of Peggy, and whether she’s beautiful, ugly, or whatever has definitely changed for the better.”

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“Dead reyt”, “faff” and “keep gu’in” are words you don’t often see in video games.

But two pals from Yorkshire have changed all that.

God’s Own Country, as the locals call it, is the inspiration for Thank Goodness You’re Here!, a new game created by James Carbutt and Will Todd, from Barnsley.

The pair – aka development team Coal Supper – are the minds behind the fictional northern town of Barnsworth.

Players pilot a tiny, silent character through a series of surreal odd-jobs given to them by local residents.

It’s a deliberately weird experience, but it’s also been hailed as hilariously funny and “reyt proper Yorkshire”.

One of the first buildings players enter – the local pub, of course – has a blackboard outside advertising today’s special.

“Drinks.”

It’s little touches like this, along with a script full of regional slang delivered in Yorkshire accents, that have led people to call Thank Goodness “the most northern game ever”.

But how did it get made?

Will and James, who provide voices for many characters in the game, say the distinctive script came naturally as they developed it.

“The more we worked on it, the more we started drawing out characters that just sounded more and more like us, because we’re doing it in our voices,” says Will.

The video games industry has been criticised for becoming more risk-averse and leaning into sequels and remakes as the cost of making blockbuster titles has increased.

James and Will admit that a lot of publishers were “sceptical” when they pitched their unique project to them.

“I think part of that was we were obviously trying to shirk traditional game design,” says Will.

“Tropes and genres and stuff. And it wasn’t necessarily super-clear what the game was going to be.”

They say the Yorkshire setting was a bit of a hurdle too.

Some of the bigger indie game publishers are US-based and Will says there are “assumptions about what Britishness is when you’re pitching for funding”.

“Colin Firth and the rain British,” says James.

“This is more like flat caps and whippets,” adds Will.

They eventually signed a deal with Panic! – the publisher behind mega-hit Untitled Goose Game, which cast players as a wildfowl on a mission to cause havoc in a small village.

The publisher helped them to get IT Crowd and What We Do in the Shadows actor Matt Berry – known for his deadpan baritone – on board for a bit of star power.

And they have made some allowances for an international audience.

“There’s subtitles for people from Yorkshire and subtitles for proper English – translation options for Southerners,” says James.

“If we wrote the script in the dialect and then recorded everything, we had to go through and then put the proper English in,” says Will.

Thank Goodness isn’t the only high-profile game released this year to feature strong UK accents.

Horror game Still Wakes the Deep, set on a North Sea oil rig in 1975, employs a mostly Scottish voice cast.

Creative lead John McCormack says developers The Chinese Room agreed early on that they wanted the story of the ill-fated Beira D rig to feel “like it actually happened”.

And that meant no compromise on the way it sounded.

“To be authentic to the setting and the period there was only one way to do it,” he says.

“And that was to hire the right voices for the story.”

John admits it will be “hard to understand” in places for some, but the performances help to convey the mood of a scene even when the audience doesn’t understand every word.

“When you bring in realistic accents to double down on that authenticity, it just sort of solidifies the kind of sense of place,” says John.

“So when the horror kicks in, it feels more real.”

John feels audiences have “completely embraced” the performances in Still Wakes the Deep, even if conventional wisdom suggests otherwise.

“When it comes to funding, when you’re going to publishers and you’re trying to sell your idea, it’s generally looking for global appeal,” he says.

“And in the gaming space that tends to be a clean American accent or kind of posh English accents or something that can be fully understood.”

John says that Still Wakes the Deep is relatively unusual because it’s grounded in real-life, and many games are set in fantastical worlds where they aren’t tied to a geographical location.

But he hopes projects placing regional voices front and centre will inspire others.

“If you’ve got a story to tell, and you want it to feel authentic, be specific and own the place that it’s set,” he says.

“The audience is intelligent, the audience will, as we’ve seen, they’ll embrace that even more.”

So far Thank Goodness You’re Here! has had a positive response since its release on Thursday.

But Yorkshire lads Will and James are humble about their aspirations for it.

“It’s something that we always dreamed about as kids,” says Will.

“And I think other than massive financial success, I hope it finds an audience.

“It really is a love letter to the north and specifically our hometown.

“And we will be reaching as many of those people as possible.

“And then also an audience of 100,000 Americans.”

Listen to Newsbeat live at 12:45 and 17:45 weekdays – or listen back here.

A prisoner who has served almost five times his original sentence for a laptop robbery still has no prospect of being released.

Abdullahi Suleman, 41, from Cardiff, is still in prison after being handed an Imprisonment for Public Protection (IPP) sentence in 2005.

These were handed out between 2005 and 2012 to try and keep the most dangerous criminals behind bars, but scrapped after criticism, such as the fact less serious offenders were getting caught up in the provision.

Suleman is one of the 2,734 prisoners who remain incarcerated after receiving an IPP sentence – 1,132 of whom have never been released, according to the latest data.

BBC Wales spoke to the families of two men and one released prisoner who say their lives have been ruined by the sentences which still hang over them, despite the law since being scrapped.

Suleman was given a minimum of three years and 276 days in prison in 2005, when he was 22.

“He calls them the stolen years,” is how his wife Bernadette Emerson describes the time that has followed.

As well as missing his three children growing up, Suleman is also not getting treatment for bipolar disorder, which he was diagnosed with in 2004, and has played a major role in him remaining in jail.

A Ministry of Justice spokesperson said “it is right” the sentences were abolished, adding: “The Lord Chancellor is committed to working with organisations and campaign groups to ensure the appropriate course of action is taken to support those still serving IPP sentences.”

But Suleman, who fled war in Somalia as a child to build a new life, remains in prison.

The trained plasterer was first released in 2011, but suffered a mental health breakdown and was treated in hospital.

After being discharged, he was told that missing any hospital appointments or failing to take his medication would result in being recalled to prison.

Two-and-a-half years later he was recalled for four months, and since then he has been recalled another three times for not complying with his mental health treatment conditions.

In 2017, Suleman was recalled to prison for seven years for missing a hospital appointment and at his last three parole hearings he was denied release.

“He is not going to get treatment. He is going to get punishment,” Ms Emerson said, adding that his licence conditions have created a “cycle”.

“I feel suffocated by the thought of knowing there’s no end to it,” she added.

IPP prisoners have to complete rehabilitation courses to sit their parole hearing under the so-called IPP Action Plan.

Ms Emerson said the action plan “exploits” her husband’s mental health.

He continues to be denied release because of failure to complete a two-year treatment programme for people with personality disorder due to long waiting lists or “failure to engage”, she said.

Shaun Lloyd was also handed an IPP sentence, aged 18.

He was jailed for two years and nine months for stealing a mobile phone in the street in Cardiff and served nine years in prison before being released on licence.

Since 2014, Lloyd has been recalled to prison every 18 months and been detained for close to a year each time.

He is currently incarcerated.

“I don’t condone what he did. What he did was wrong and to go to prison was right,” his mother Shirley Debono said.

But his IPP sentence has also ended up being “a life sentence through the back door”, she said.

The continued detainment led to Lloyd becoming depressed and suicidal, Ms Debono said, and he became addicted to prescription opioids.

He has struggled with addiction and was recalled for lapses in drug use.

Michael Roberts received an IPP sentence in 2006, aged 33, for armed robbery and was told he had to serve a minimum of three and a half years in prison.

Roberts, from Barry, Vale of Glamorgan, said he already had 24 convictions for 134 offences prior to that, mainly for motoring offences.

He was released five years later.

He has been recalled to prison five times for spells lasting between seven and 14 months since.

The first recall happened two months after his release as a result of further allegations, for which he says he was found not guilty.

Now working as a roofer, he has been out of prison since May and was previously in the community for seven years without being recalled.

His two youngest children were put up for adoption aged 18 months and seven years a result of a recall, and he said he has had no contact with them since.

Another child is in foster care, while he is in contact with his older children and grandchildren.

Roberts recognises he committed a serious crime which warranted a big sentence, and already had a criminal background.

“What I did to those people was bad. We had no business, no right to be doing that to those people,” he said.

“I can never justify what I did. It was a stupid decision… but I’ve paid my price.”

He also said some IPP sentences were justified for individuals who pose a significant risk.

“There are some seriously dangerous people who warrant IPP sentences,” he said.

But he argued his IPP sentence had made it impossible for him to move on with his life.

“For me, it’s a very difficult pill to swallow right now,” Roberts said.

“I’m now a 51-year-old man. I’m a grandad. It’s destroying my children’s lives.

“I’d give anything to have them back.”

The IPP sentence was introduced that in 2005 to keep serious offenders in prison for as long as they posed a significant risk to society.

It imposed a minimum amount of time for offenders to serve, but no maximum or end date.

IPP prisoners can only be released, on licence, if the Parole Board believes they do not pose a risk to public safety.

The sentences were scrapped in 2012, but not cancelled retrospectively.

Around two-thirds (64%) of the “unreleased” IPP prisoners who have served their minimum tariff period have been held for at least ten years beyond the end of their tariff.

Criminal justice experts and campaigners have criticised the legislation and Labour peer Lord Blunkett, who introduced IPPs in 2005, has said “radical” reforms are needed.

A committee in 2022 recommended that all remaining IPP prisoners were resentenced, but said such a task would be “administratively complex” and that advice was needed on the practical implementation of the resentencing.

Ms Emerson and Ms Debono are campaigning for resentencing with the IPP Committee in Action, which was founded by Ms Debono.

“We need to manage Shaun in the community,” she said.

“He basically served 20 years – because you’re still an IPP prisoner on the outside.”

Ms Emerson said Suleman now has post-traumatic stress disorder.

“It psychologically really affects him that he has lost so much of his adult life to this sentence,” she said.

“It is really traumatising and torturous that I am helpless to help him.”

Ten thousand pairs of underwear which were used in Charli XCX and Billie Eilish’s latest music video have been donated to charity.

Guess, a remix of the Brat original, dropped on Thursday night and showed Billie smashing into a party on a bulldozer surrounded by thousands of bras and knickers.

During the video’s credits, a message appears saying all the unworn garments would be donated to I Support The Girls.

The US-based charity works internationally to distribute underwear and period products to women experiencing domestic violence, homelessness and hardship.

As the pair sing: more and more pairs surround them, strewn across the street and falling from the sky.

The charity says it has received 10,000 pairs which have “overtaken” its warehouse.

“We’re so lucky to be getting the formidable panty mountain,” the charity posted on X, referencing the huge pile of underwear Charli and Billie climb towards the end of the music video.

Its founder, Dana Marlowe, tells BBC Newsbeat the donations “feel very in line with Brat summer”.

“Charli XCX and Billie are both top of their game and they’re showing women empowering women,” she says.

“They’re on top of bra mountain and they’re on top of their industry and they’re not forgetting that there are charities that can do something with the excess props in a music video.

“It really becomes an incredible cyclical effect of women supporting women supporting women which is absolutely part of Brat summer.”

Importantly, she says, a lot of the underwear in the video that’s been donated is “sexy” too.

“At first glance, you might think, why would a nonprofit organisation want to receive that?,” Dana says.

But for I Support The Girls, an important part of their ethos is finding dignity and power in choice, she says.

“There’s people for every style. Just because somebody is experiencing homelessness doesn’t mean that they don’t prefer to wear a thong.”

Guess is Charli’s second collab remix on her critically acclaimed album Brat after releasing a version of Girl, So Confusing with Lorde last month.

But it’s a rare collaboration for Billie, who told Zane Lowe earlier this year that it was her first time working with another artist in about six years.

On Instagram, the Bad Guy artist thanked Charli for letting her work it out on the remix to which Charli responded: “tysm for being on this track I’m beyond honoured.

“Love and respect forever.”

Charli teased new music last week but speculation surrounded a potential collaboration with Chappell Roan after she posted a selfie on Instagram holding a Brat CD.

Brat has been nominated for this year’s Mercury Prize and Brat summer has taken off online, with even US presidential nominee Kamala Harris getting in on the trend.

It’s Charli’s sixth studio album and debuted in the top 10 on both the UK and US.

Billie’s also released new music this year with Hit Me Hard And Soft, which came out in May.

BBC Newsbeat has contacted representatives for Charli XCX and Billie Eilish for comment.

Listen to Newsbeat live at 12:45 and 17:45 weekdays – or listen back here.

The civil war in Sudan has pushed a camp housing about 500,000 displaced people near the besieged Darfur city of el-Fasher into famine, an independent group of food security experts says.

The 16-month conflict and restrictions on aid deliveries were to blame, the Famine Review Committee (FRC) concluded after looking at new data.

“The scale of devastation brought by the escalating violence in el-Fasher is profound and harrowing,” it said, explaining how Zamzam camp’s population had ballooned since April.

The war – a power struggle between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) – has created the world’s largest humanitarian crisis forcing 10 million people from their homes.

It comes as US-mediated talks, scheduled to begin in two weeks, appear to be in jeopardy.

The RSF has accepted the invitation to Geneva, but it is unclear whether the army will go following Wednesday’s alleged assassination attempt on military leader Gen Abdel Fattah al-Burhan.

“The main drivers of famine in Zamzam camp are conflict and lack of humanitarian access, both of which can immediately be rectified with the necessary political will,” the FRC said.

The committee, linked to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) – a global initiative by UN agencies, aid groups and governments which identifies famine conditions – analysed two reports:

• The IPC’s Sudan working group’s latest assessment, which says 25.6 million people, or 54% of the population, are in high levels of acute food insecurity with 14 areas at risk of famine and
• Data published on Thursday from a US agency, the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (Fews Net).

Fews Net said it was possible that famine was also ongoing in Abu Shouk and Al Salam camps, also near el-Fasher, but there was not enough evidence to conclusively say so.

The conditions for classifying an area to be in famine are that at least 20% of households must be facing an extreme lack of food, with 30% of children acutely malnourished and two people out of every 10,000 dying daily from starvation or from malnutrition and disease.

• What is famine and when is it declared?
• Sudan war: A simple guide to what is happening

Since April the RSF has been battling to take el-Fasher from the army, the only city still under military control in the western region of Darfur.

According to the FRC, around 320,000 people are believed to have fled the city, with around 150,000 to 200,000 moving to Zamzam camp “in search of security, basic services and food” in just a few weeks in May.

That month the UN expert on genocide prevention said many civilians in el-Fasher were being targeted based on their ethnicity – warning that there was a growing risk of genocide.

The violence in Darfur is similar to the ethnic cleansing unleashed by Arab Janjaweed militias on non-Arab communities two decades ago.

The main market in Zamzam camp was now only open intermittently and by June prices had rocketed – by 63% for cooking oil, 190% for sugar, 67% for millet and 75% for rice, the FRC said, giving a glimpse in its 47-page report into what conditions are like in the crowded camp.

Famine conditions prevailed in June and July and were likely to persist until October – the harvest season.

However, the experts fear that the hunger crisis will not ease much as war has prevented many farmers from planting.

The dire situation revealed by the reports about el-Fasher, particularly in Zamzam camp, was “merely the tip of the iceberg”, Barrett Alexander, from the aid agency Mercy Corps, warned.

“Drawing from our experience with previous famines, we know that widespread deaths have already occurred by the time a famine is officially declared.”

He added that a recent Mercy Corps assessment in Central and South Darfur had revealed that nine out of 10 children were suffering from life-threatening malnutrition.

One of the last aid groups operating in el-Fasher, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), said things were likely to get worse if an apparent blockade on humanitarian aid was not lifted urgently.

“Our trucks left N’Djamena in Chad over six weeks ago and they should have reached el-Fasher by now, but we have no idea when they will be released,” said MSF’s Stéphane Doyon, MSF’s head of emergencies in Sudan.

The warring sides have both been accused of blocking and looting aid and both deny the allegations.

The MSF lorries are carrying therapeutic food and medical supplies for children in Zamzam camp as well as surgical supplies for the last remaining hospital in el-Fasher that does surgery.

The Saudi Hospital was hit by shelling on Monday that killed three staff and injured at least 25 people – the 10th attack in under three months, the charity said.

“We do not know if hospitals are being intentionally targeted, but the incident on Monday shows that the belligerents are not taking any precautions to spare them,” Mr Doyon said.

• A photographer’s 11-day trek to flee war-torn Sudan
• The children living between starvation and death in Darfur
• I couldn’t bury my brother because of Sudan bombing
• Fear and prayers in Sudan city under siege

A selection of the week’s best photos from across the African continent and beyond:

• Kenya rolls out poison in bid to cull a million crows
• Frustrated Nigerians vow ‘days of rage’ as hardships mount
• The Kenyan enthralled by the healing power of plants
• My family went to help landslide victims and ended up dead

A salon owner says she has been left exhausted by a long-running legal battle with global cosmetics giant L’Oréal.

The French firm is opposing Rebecca Dowdeswell’s attempt to renew the trademark on the name of her business – nkd – in Leicester city centre.

L’Oréal has its own trademark on a series of beauty products called NAKED and has told the 48-year-old her use of the name nkd would cause “consumer confusion”.

Ms Dowdeswell said she had spent more than £30,000 contesting L’Oréal’s opposition to her trademark application.

The mother of two, from Radcliffe-on-Trent in Nottinghamshire, said the pressure caused by the dispute had been a factor in her downsizing her business and closing a salon she previously ran in Nottingham.

L’Oréal told the BBC it had made Ms Dowdeswell an offer “that supports her business aspirations”.

However she disputed that, claiming the firm had continued to oppose her trademark application to register nkd as a trademark for toiletries.

Mrs Dowdeswell registered nkd as a trademark when she launched her business in 2009, but said her problems began when that expired 10 years later.

She said she had a six-month window to renew it but forgot to.

“I should have renewed it straight away. I didn’t. That was a big mistake,” she said.

“That six-month window ran into the start of Covid and chaos ensued for all businesses – including beauty salons -and I missed the expiry.

“When I came to re-register the trademark, I was essentially starting from scratch, not renewing an existing one.

“L’Oréal objected on the basis they owned the Urban Decay make-up brand which has a range of eye shadow palettes called Naked.

“I was very surprised because we have never been Naked. We’re spelled NKD, we are pronounced N, K, D.”

Ms Dowdeswell added: “There has never been any evidence of consumer confusion. In 15 years of trading, no-one has ever said ‘are you the same brand as Naked by Urban Decay?’

“I’ve spent two years negotiating with them trying to come to a co-existence agreement where they can carry on trading as Naked with their make-up and we can carry on as nkd in our very tight sphere of waxing and hair removal.

“This is David versus Goliath and frankly it has been horrible, exhausting and really stressful.

“I’ve now racked up over £30,000 plus VAT in legal costs defending myself. I don’t know whether it was the right thing to do.

“What I do know is that I could not just have walked away from my brand when L’Oréal disputed it. I’d spent 13 years of my life pouring everything building up this brand.”

A spokesperson for L’Oréal said: “We are wholly committed to resolving any misunderstanding there might have been with Rebecca Dowdeswell.

“From the beginning of our exchanges with her lawyers in 2022, we have communicated an offer that supports her business aspirations whilst respecting our longstanding trademark rights.

“We look forward to resolving this matter in a mutually agreeable way.”

If the matter is not resolved, Ms Dowdeswell said it would be decided by a judgement from the government’s Intellectual Property Office.

Ms Dowdeswell said she believed that would happen in 2025.

US chip-maker Intel has said it plans to cut more than 15,000 job cuts as it seeks to revive the business and catch up with competitors.

Shares in the company plunged by up to 20% after it announced the measures, and also reported falling sales.

The news from Intel also hit other shares in other tech giants, and contributed to a sharp fall in Asian stock markets.

Japan’s Nikkei share index closed down 5.8%, the largest percentage fall since March 2020 at the start of the pandemic, with Japanese tech firms among the biggest losers.

The Nikkei ended the day down 2,216.63 points at 35,909.70, the second-biggest points drop in its history, with worries about the strength of the US economy also affecting stocks.

A downbeat survey of US manufacturing firms triggered fears the economy is weakening, and has increased interest in the latest US jobs figures that are due out later on Friday.

The three major share indexes in the US closed lower on Thursday, and shares in big names, including Amazon, continued to fall in after-hours trade.

Amazon shares dropped more than 4%, after the e-commerce giant reported a 10% rise in sales to $148bn.

That marked a slowdown from the prior quarter and it forecast further weakening in the months ahead, putting pressure on margins, even as the firm ramps up investments in areas such as artificial intelligence (AI).

Intel has been struggling as businesses turn to rivals such as Nvidia, known for its powerful AI chips.

The company said sales fell 1% year-on-year in the three months to June and warned that the second half of the year would be worse than expected.

“Our revenues have not grown as expected – and we’ve yet to fully benefit from powerful trends, like AI,” chief executive Pat Gelsinger wrote in a memo to staff.

He said the situation required “bolder actions” and the firm had to “fundamentally change the way we operate”.

Intel has slashed investment plans and also said it would suspend dividend payments.

“It’s really having to pull back on spending on its data centres and it’s struggling to take market from other providers, so it’s a real shock to the market,” Lucy Coutts, investment director at JM Finn, told the BBC.

There was better news from Apple, which saw sales rebound in spring, overcoming weakness in China and a dip in iPhone sales.

Revenues in the three months to June were $85.8bn (£67.3bn), up 5% year-on-year and marking a return to growth after a slump at the start of 2024.

Apple said it was well positioned to benefit from the increased use of AI, as AI-powered improvements to the company’s software convince customers to upgrade their devices.

The company recently released some of the new features, branded as “Apple Intelligence”, to developers in the US.

The new system makes it easier for iPhone users to record and transcribe phone conversations, generate personalised emojis while messaging and interact more conversationally with the company’s voice assistant, Siri, among other changes.

“We remain incredibly optimistic about the possibilities of AI and we will continue to make significant investments in this technology,” said Apple boss Tim Cook.

Over the April to June period, sales of iPhones slipped 1%, a drop outweighed by increased sales of Macs and iPads.

Apple also reported an all-time record in revenue from its services division, which includes offerings such as Apple Pay and Apple News.

A woman who says she was raped in 2017 has described the criminal justice system as “absolutely broken” after a series of problems and errors allowed the accused man to allegedly start stalking her.

Despite reporting the rape allegation to police the day after it happened, the case is not due to be tried in court until next May – eight years after the alleged assault.

In that time, delays and errors by police, mistakes by prosecutors and court backlogs have contributed to the woman having a mental breakdown.

“It’s shambolic, embarrassing, disgraceful and debilitating,” says the woman, who is legally entitled to anonymity. “I shouldn’t have felt abandoned and hopeless.”

The woman, who we are calling Samantha, says the rape was carried out in March 2017 by a man who was “prevalent in my life before and knew where I lived”.

After she reported it, the man was arrested and questioned before being released under investigation. Samantha says West Mercia Police initially updated her on developments but, after about six months, communication petered out and her efforts to make contact went unanswered.

“Being left like that – forgotten about – is exactly how you’re made to feel.”

Out of the blue, in 2019, two officers came to Samantha’s house. They handed her a letter – from the Crown Prosecution Service – saying it had decided not to proceed with the case because of a lack of evidence.

“It came as a complete surprise – I felt abandoned.”

By that time, Samantha says, the man had started stalking her. She says he would follow her to her children’s school, trail her on errands, or just appear at places she regularly visited – including her workplace.

She reported it to two police forces – West Mercia, where she lived, and Warwickshire, where she worked. Samantha was told to call the non-emergency number, 101, but gave up because of lack of support.

She was told “he hasn’t done anything yet” or “he’s only on the other side of the street”, she says.

Throughout this period, Samantha was receiving support from an Independent Sexual Violence Adviser, a role funded by the Ministry of Justice that supports complainants of sexual abuse.

She greatly credits her adviser with helping her to cope, both with the emotions of the case as well as chasing the police to take her allegations seriously.

However, three months after the CPS said the case would not be prosecuted, the adviser was withdrawn, a standard procedure. Feeling stressed and alone, Samantha had a mental breakdown.

“For many months, I was in and out of the GP surgery asking for help, because I found it very difficult to cope with day-to-day life. I was trying to work and be a mum to my kids, trying to just function.”

Samantha says she could go weeks without seeing the man and then there would be “multiple sightings and appearances just to remind me that he was still around”.

It all came to a head one morning when she could not get out of bed, she says.

“I consider myself a strong character but, on that day, I physically couldn’t do anything. I was processing the fact that it was so definitive – no-one was going to help me.”

Strangely, the pandemic made things easier. Samantha says the man stopped appearing, she was able to focus on her two children and keep her business going.

In 2022, an unexpected email arrived.

“May I take this opportunity to apologise on behalf of the CPS for any distress caused to you by the previous decision made not to prosecute this case,” wrote Nicola Haywood, the Deputy Chief Crown Prosecutor.

As part of a national review of rape cases, prosecutors had reconsidered the evidence in Samantha’s case and concluded they had made a mistake.

“Consequently, I have decided that a prosecution should now be brought… for offences of rape, assault by penetration, attempted rape and sexual assault.”

Samantha’s world was turned upside down.

“My mind went to how do I cope with that, having had a breakdown, [then] some element of recovery and not wanting to invite that back into my life.”

Around this time, the man moved his business closer to Samantha. After several months considering her options, she decided she had no choice but to pursue the case.

But the problems kept coming. Delays and an inexplicable back-and-forth between the CPS and West Mercia Police meant it was almost a year before the man was charged and then released on bail.

His first court appearance was scheduled for September 2023, 20 months after Samantha had been told by the CPS it was going to charge him.

West Mercia Police told us it could not comment while court proceedings are active.

• There are a record 2,786 adult rape cases waiting to go to court in England and Wales, part of a record 10,141 number of sexual offences awaiting a trial
• In 2023, 68,022 rapes were recorded by police in England and Wales, fewer than 3% resulted in someone being charged that same year
• In England and Wales in 2023, it took on average 777 days from a rape being reported to police to the case being completed in court. In West Mercia, it took 968 days

Source: Ministry of Justice, ONS, Home Office, UK Government

By the time the man had been charged, says Samantha, the stalking had restarted. On one occasion, officers from Warwickshire attended after he had been observing Samantha from a roadside food van. She says one of them dismissed her concerns: “I can’t arrest him for having his lunch, love.”

“I’ll never, ever forget those words – I just felt like being crushed inside,” she says.

At one point, the police told Samantha they were taking her repeated reports of stalking seriously and that the man’s bail conditions would include a clause stipulating that if he was to go anywhere near her, he would risk arrest.

But an admin error meant West Mercia forgot to put the restrictions in place, and Samantha says the stalking continued.

She says she believes if the bail conditions had been administered correctly, the man would have been arrested.

She is still regularly reporting stalking incidents to the police – “I’m becoming their administrator for all the stalking that’s taking place,” she says, but adding there is “absolutely no action” being taken.

Warwickshire Police said it was investigating and “always aims to put measures in place to protect and support” victims of domestic abuse. “It is always concerning when a victim is not satisfied with the service they have received,” added Detective Inspector Ruth Morris.

Samantha’s case was finally due to go to court in May 2024. But in February, a member of the police’s witness care team rang Samantha to say it would have to be postponed.

She was told one of the contributing factors was the roof collapse at Hereford Crown Court in 2020. Cases that should have been heard there are now being spread around the West Mercia courts system.

Samantha’s area has some of the longest court delays in England and her case isn’t due to be heard until May 2025.

“I don’t care that there’s not enough courtrooms. I care what I’m going through. I care that I’m an example of thousands of people in a system that is absolutely shameful,” she told us.

The Labour government has acknowledged the problem and announced plans to fast-track rape cases, with specialist courts in every Crown Court.

The Crown Prosecution Service told us it recognises the profound effect delays have on victims and says it is working with police to build strong cases and improve timeliness.

It says latest figures indicate the time between the CPS receiving evidence and making charging decisions is “coming down sharply”.

“We are consistently charging around seven in 10 rape cases referred to us by police,” it added. However, in 2023, only 2.1% of rape cases, resulted in the suspect being charged or summoned to court.

Unsurprisingly, there have been moments when Samantha has wished she had never reported the rape: “It doesn’t encourage you to come forward.”

But she has stuck with the case – and will go to court – because, she insists, “it’s the right thing to do”.

The BBC director general has defended the decision not to sack Huw Edwards, despite knowing that the presenter had been arrested in November over the most serious category of indecent images of children.

In an interview with BBC News on Thursday, Tim Davie said the corporation had taken “difficult decisions in a fair and judicious manner”.

Asked about how much BBC managers were told in November, he said: “We knew it was serious, we knew no specifics, apart from the category of the potential offences.”

Meanwhile, the Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy raised a number of concerns with the BBC over its handling of their internal investigation, including the use of licence fee payers’ money, a spokesperson for her department said.

Edwards, formerly the BBC’s most high-profile newsreader, pleaded guilty on Wednesday to three counts of making indecent images of children.

Although the BBC knew of the severity of the alleged offences, Mr Davie said the police had not told the corporation the details.

BBC bosses were not aware of the ages of the children in the images.

When the charges ultimately came to light earlier this week, Mr Davie said: “We were very shocked. No-one knew about the specifics of what we heard over the last few days, which have been deeply disturbing.”

Asked by the BBC’s David Sillito why Edwards could not have been sacked at the time of his arrest, Mr Davie replied: “Because the police came to us and said they need to do their work in total confidence, [and said], ‘please keep this confidential’.”

Edwards had not been charged at that point and it was still possible he would be cleared, Mr Davie noted.

“We thought long and hard about this. This wasn’t a kneejerk decision. When you think about this in terms of precedent, people do get arrested, and then we’ve had situations where [there are] no charges, and there’s nothing there to be followed up on.”

He said the corporation also had to consider its duty of care to Edwards.

“When it comes to the decision we made in November, we were obviously faced with a difficult decision, and we considered it very carefully,” Mr Davie said.

“The police… wanted to be assured of total confidence, and the reason they rung us at that point, it’s a technical process to ensure employees are protected and there’s no risk.”

He added: “Another factor at this point was very significant duty of care considerations. I think it was right for us to say we’d let the police do their business, and then when charges happen, we will act.”

Edwards received a £40,000 pay rise in the last financial year, despite being off air for most of it.

The director general said the pay rise dated from before any allegations.

“There was a [small] inflationary increase, which was standard stuff, but in terms of the big pay rise you saw in the annual report, that related to his work at the BBC, extending the scope of his work at the BBC, and that relates to February [2023], way before any allegations.”

Asked whether Edwards would still receive his pension, Mr Davie said it was “very difficult to claw back, nigh on impossible”, adding: “These are unfortunately the specifics of how it works.

“When it comes to pay, again, [it’s] legally challenging [to recover], but we’ll look at all options.”

Mr Davie was also challenged on the BBC’s own investigation into Edwards, which has not been published.

The director general said the BBC was “not sitting on anything that I think we need to share with the police, or is of a serious nature that would make me feel that we hadn’t followed up properly”.

He continued: “I can categorically say that when it comes to the offences we’ve seen, which are truly horrendous, any evidence that is out there is not in the hands of the BBC. If I saw evidence of that, that is not a complicated decision [to hand it over].”

The Metropolitan Police confirmed that it told the BBC in “strict confidence” about the arrest of Edwards on 8 November.

“Common law police disclosure (CLPD) is the established legal mechanism through which the police can inform an individual’s employer when they are arrested or alleged to have committed an offence,” a Met spokesman said.

“It is often used where the individual holds a position of trust/responsibility with the public.

“The information is provided in strict confidence in order to enable the individual’s employer to consider what risk mitigation measures might be necessary.”

On Thursday, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said he was “shocked and appalled” by the charges against Edwards.

Later, a spokesperson for the Department for Culture, Media & Sport said Culture Secretary Ms Nandy was shocked by Edwards’ “abhorrent actions”.

The statement continued: “The Secretary of State has spoken to the BBC to raise concerns on a number of points regarding the handling of their own investigations into Huw Edwards, what safeguards and processes had been followed in this case, and additionally, what further action may be taken, especially with regard to the handling of licence fee payers’ money.”

Ms Nandy is said to be concerned the incident could damage public trust and has asked to be kept updated on its progress.

Edwards admitted having 41 indecent images of children, which had been sent to him by a convicted paedophile, Alex Williams, on WhatsApp.

They included seven category A images, the most serious classification – two of which showed a child aged between about seven and nine.

After being arrested last November, Edwards was charged in June. He had been off air since July 2023, when he was suspended after being named as the star at the centre of different allegations involving an explicit photo.

Edwards resigned this April, which the BBC said at the time was on “medical advice”.

In a statement on Wednesday, the BBC said he would have been dismissed had he been charged while still employed.

Asked whether any figures in BBC News knew about the allegations before this week, Mr Davie confirmed CEO Deborah Turness was aware of an arrest at the time.

It was “a very small group of people at the centre” and “we had a very restricted list of names”, he said.

“When it comes to news, there was one name on it, the CEO of news, Deborah Turness. She isn’t involved editorially in the reporting of the story.”

Apart from Ms Turness, BBC News was not aware of the arrest nor charges against Edwards until they were made public on Monday. BBC News is editorially independent when reporting on the BBC.

The United States will deploy additional warships and fighter jets to the Middle East to help defend Israel from possible attacks by Iran and its proxies, the Pentagon said.

Tensions remain high in the region over the assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Iran and a key commander of the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.

Missile defence forces were placed on a state of increased readiness to deploy, the Pentagon said, adding that its commitment to defend Israel was “ironclad”.

Iran’s leader Ayatollah Khamenei has vowed “harsh punishment” against Israel for the assassination of Haniyeh, and declared three days of national mourning.

The Hamas leader was killed in Tehran on Wednesday. Iran and its proxy in Gaza blamed the attack on Israel, which has not commented.

Haniyeh, 62, was widely considered Hamas’s overall leader and played a key role in negotiations aimed at reaching a ceasefire in the Gaza war.

His death came just hours after Israel claimed it killed Fuad Shukr, the top military commander of Iran’s proxy in Lebanon, Hezbollah.

A Pentagon statement said the new deployments would “improve US force protection… increase support for the defence of Israel, and … ensure the US is prepared to respond to various contingencies”.

The deployments would include additional ballistic missile defense-capable cruisers and destroyers, it said.

The US military had also intensified deployments before 13 April, when Iran launched an attack on Israel with drones and missiles. Israel and its allies shot down almost all of roughly 300 drones and missiles that were fired.

Israel has not commented directly on the strike which killed Haniyeh. But Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his country had delivered “crushing blows” to its enemies in recent days, including the killing of Shukr in Beirut.

He warned Israelis that “challenging days lie ahead… we have heard threats from all sides. We are prepared for any scenario”.

Earlier, Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh said the US did not believe escalation was inevitable.

“I think we are being very direct in our messaging that certainly we don’t want to see heightened tensions and we do believe there is an off-ramp here and that is that ceasefire deal,” Singh said.

An Israeli delegation will travel to Cairo in coming days for negotiations to reach a Gaza ceasefire and hostage release deal, Mr Netanyahu said on Friday.

Hamas sparked the war with its 7 October attack on Israel, which killed 1,200 people. Israel responded with an ongoing military operation in Gaza that has killed almost 40,000 people, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.

US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has revoked a pre-trial agreement reached with men accused of plotting the 11 September terrorist attacks.

In a memo on Friday, Mr Austin also said he was revoking the authority of the officer overseeing the military court who signed the agreement on Wednesday.

The original deal, which would reportedly have spared the alleged attackers the death penalty, was criticised by some families of victims.

The memo named five defendants including the alleged ringleader of the plot, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, all of whom are held in Guantánamo Bay. The original deal named three men.

“I have determined that, in light of the significance of the decision to enter into pre-trial agreements with the accused… responsibility for such a decision should rest with me as the superior authority,” Mr Austin wrote to Brig Gen Susan Escallier.

“I hereby withdraw your authority. Effective immediately, in the exercise of my authority, I hereby withdraw from the three pre-trial agreements.”

The White House said on Wednesday that it had played no role in the plea deal.

The five men named in the memo were: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, often referred to as KSM, Walid Muhammad Salih Mubarak bin Attash, Mustafa Ahmed Adam al-Hawsawi; and two others not mentioned in the original plea: Ramzi bin al-Shibh and Ali Abdul Aziz Ali.

The men have been in custody for decades without trial. All have alleged they were tortured – KSM was subjected to simulated drowning, so-called “waterboarding”, 183 times before it was banned by the US government.

All have already faced more than a decade of pre-trial hearings, complicated by the allegations and evidence of torture against them.

Several family members of victims had criticised the terms of the deal struck on Wednesday as too lenient.

Brett Eagleson, the president of 9/11 Justice, which represents survivors and relatives of victims, had told the BBC earlier this week that the families were “deeply troubled by these plea deals”.

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.”

A lawyer at Guantanamo representing Mr Mohammed told The New York Times that he was shocked by the sudden u-turn.

“If the secretary of defence issued such an order, I am respectfully and profoundly disappointed that after all of these years the government still has not learned the lessons of this case,” said lawyer Gary Sowards.

“And the mischief that results from disregarding due process and fair play.”

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

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.

KSM is alleged to have brought the idea of hijacking and flying planes into buildings to al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. He was captured in Pakistan in 2003 along with Hawsawi, a Saudi who was an alleged fundraiser.

Ali, a computer scientist and nephew of KSM, is accused of providing technical support to the 9/11 operation.

Bin al-Shibh, a Yemeni, allegedly co-ordinated the attacks and had planned to be a hijacker but could not secure a US visa.

Bin Attash, also a Yemeni, is accused of bombing the USS Cole in Yemen in 2000, which killed 17 sailors, and involvement in the 11 September attacks.

Several Republicans applauded the defence secretary for revoking the deal.

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson said the “Biden-Harris Administration is correct to reverse course”, which he said followed Republicans “launching investigations into this terrible plea deal”.

“Now deliver long awaited justice for 9/11 families,” he said.

South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham said the decision “exercised good command judgement”.

“The previous plea deal would have sent absolutely the wrong signal to terrorists throughout the world,” he added.

Earlier on Friday, Republican Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee Mike Rogers demanded answers from Mr Austin on how the deal was struck.

“This deal signals willingness to negotiate with terrorists who deliberately harm Americans,” he wrote in a letter to the defence secretary.

The 9/11 attacks in New York, Virginia and Pennsylvania sparked the “War on Terror” and the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.

They were the deadliest assault on US soil since the 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, where 2,400 people were killed.

Mystery surrounds an American woman who was found chained to a tree “screaming” in a forest in the western Indian state of Maharashtra.

Lalita Kayi, 50, was discovered a week ago in the dense forests of Sindhudurg district after her cries for help were heard by shepherds. They alerted the police who sawed off the chain and rescued her.

Ms Kayi, who appeared completely emaciated, was taken to hospital. Her physical health has since improved and, on Friday, she was moved to a psychiatric facility for further treatment, doctors treating her told the BBC.

In a written statement to the police, she has alleged that her husband “chained her and left her in the forest to die without food or water”.

Police say they are looking for her husband in the southern state of Tamil Nadu on the basis of information she provided them.

But seven days after Ms Kayi was rescued, there is still no clarity on who she is, how she came to be in the forest, who tied her to the tree, and why.

Pandurang Gawkar, a cow herder who found her last Saturday, told BBC Marathi that he had taken his cattle to graze in the forest when he heard “a woman screaming loudly”.

“The sound was coming from the forest on the side of the mountain. When I went there, I saw that one of her legs was tied to a tree. She was screaming like an animal. I called other villagers and the local police.”

Police said that on her they found a copy of her passport, which stated that she was an American citizen, and her Aadhaar card – a unique ID for Indians – with her home address in Tamil Nadu.

They said she also had a mobile phone, a tablet and 31,000 rupees ($370; £290) in her possession – which allowed them to rule out theft as a motive.

Locals say that it was the woman’s good fortune that the shepherd picked a spot near her to graze his flock that day. The forest she was discovered in is vast and she otherwise could have gone for days without anyone hearing her cries for help.

Police initially took her to a local hospital before moving her to a hospital in the neighbouring state of Goa.

Dr Shivanand Bandekar, dean of Goa Medical College, told The Indian Express newspaper that she had some wounds on her leg and that she appeared to be suffering from a mental health condition.

“We do not know for how long she did not eat, but her vital signs are stable,” Dr Bandekar said.

On Friday, the woman’s physical health had improved enough to be moved to a psychiatric hospital in Ratnagiri district of Maharashtra state.

“Currently, her health is stable,” hospital superintendent Dr Sanghamitra Phule told BBC Marathi.

“She is taking medication, eating, and interacting with people. If she wants something, she can communicate it. She only knows English.”

According to the police, Ms Kayi was a ballet dancer and yoga practitioner in America – some reports say specifically Massachusetts – and moved to India about 10 years ago to study yoga and meditation in Tamil Nadu.

It was there that she met her husband – in some media reports, police have called him Satish. Police say they believe at some point she fell out with her husband.

Some reports say that she stayed in a hotel in Goa for two days and then travelled to Mumbai city, India’s financial capital.

But there is no clarity surrounding when or how she then ended up in the forest where she was discovered last week.

Ms Kayi, who was initially unable to speak, communicated with the police and doctors by scribbling notes on a pad. Through them she blamed her husband for tying her to the tree and claimed that she had gone without food and water for 40 days.

She also claimed that she had been given an “injection for extreme psychosis” which locked her jaw and prevented her from drinking water, and that she had to be provided nutrition intravenously.

“I am a victim and survived. But he ran away from here,” she alleged.

Police say they have been unable to verify these claims and believe it is unlikely that someone would survive without food or water for so long.

They have registered a case of attempted murder against her husband and have dispatched teams to Tamil Nadu, Goa and Maharashtra to investigate the matter further. Her husband is yet to be traced by the police and hasn’t made any statements to the media.

Police say they are also looking for clues in the mobile phone and the tablet they found on the woman.

The US embassy in Delhi – which media reports say has been “exerting pressure on the police to speed up the investigation” – has refused to comment on the case.

A spokesperson told the BBC that it could not respond to inquiries “due to the US Privacy Act”, which governs the dissemination of private information.

US Vice-President Kamala Harris has passed the threshold to clinch the Democratic presidential nomination in a vote of party delegates.

Speaking by telephone, Ms Harris said she was “honoured to be the presumptive nominee” as the virtual roll call continues ahead of the Democratic National Convention (DNC) in Chicago later this month.

Ms Harris is the first black woman and first South Asian woman to become the White House standard-bearer for a major US political party.

If she defeats Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, in November she would be America’s first female president.

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She ran unopposed in the virtual roll call after President Joe Biden stepped aside last month and quickly endorsed her. Several potential rivals followed his lead.

On Friday afternoon, Ms Harris formally became the nominee after securing the support of 2,350 delegates, the threshold required to earn the nomination.

“We believe in the promise of America and that’s what this campaign is about,” she said in brief remarks by phone as she crossed the benchmark.

“We are in this, we are on the road and it’s not going to be easy, but we’re going to get this done.”

In total, Democrats have said 3,923 delegates – or 99% of the participants – plan to vote for her.

The rollcall began on Thursday and ends on Monday.

Presidential and vice-presidential nominees are typically anointed at their party conventions, but the relatively late date of the 2024 DNC risks falling afoul of state ballot access laws.

Ms Harris, 59, was born in Oakland, California, and is the first Democratic nominee in the party’s nearly 200-year history to hail from a western state.

She rose through the ranks of state politics from San Francisco district attorney to California attorney general and then US senator.

Before dropping out of the race, Mr Biden had easily won the Democratic primary. He did not face stiff opposition despite voter concerns about his age and had won backing from 99% of pledged DNC delegates.

But the 81-year-old faced escalating pressure from within the party to withdraw after a poor June debate performance against Trump.

The decision to hold a virtual nominating process ahead of the 19-22 August convention was made while Mr Biden was still the presumptive candidate.

It came in response to rules for ballot access in the state of Ohio, which requires that candidates for the November ballot be formally selected 90 days before the election – or by 7 August.

Republican leaders in the state had warned they would enforce the law and, though lawmakers eventually created an exemption as they have done in the past, Democrats said an early rollcall would pre-empt further risks of their candidates being excluded from the ballot.

Delegates do not need to vote on the vice-presidential pick.

Ms Harris is expected to name her running mate by Monday.

The Trump campaign and some Republicans have criticised the replacement of Mr Biden with Ms Harris, arguing she is the first major party candidate to secure the nomination without holding a press conference or a sit-down interview. Some have referred to the substitution as a “coup”.

But Ms Harris has hit the campaign trail hard since Mr Biden’s endorsement, making the case against Trump in multiple campaign rallies and fundraisers across battleground states.

On Friday, the campaign announced it had raised more than $310m (£242m) in the month of July, with more than two-thirds of people donating money for the first time.

That figure is more than double the $138m raised by the Trump campaign last month and marks the biggest haul of the 2024 election cycle so far.

A police office building has been attacked and the property next to it set alight during clashes between rioters and police in Sunderland.

Three injured officers were taken to hospital and eight people arrested, Northumbria Police said.

Beer cans and stones were thrown at police officers in riot gear outside a mosque and at least one car was set alight during the disorder on Friday night.

Unrest has broken out in towns and cities across England following the killing of three young girls in Southport on Monday.

Northumbria Police Ch Supt Helena Barron said officers had been met with “serious and sustained” levels of violence, which was “utterly deplorable”.

She said a full investigation was under way to identify those responsible for any criminal behaviour.

“I want to make it absolutely clear that the disorder, violence and damage which has occurred will not be tolerated,” Ch Supt Barron added.

Of the three injured police officers, one has been discharged and two remain in hospital for further treatment, she said.

Some members of the crowd could be heard shouting Islamophobic slurs and chanting in support of far-right activist Stephen Yaxley-Lennon – who uses the alias Tommy Robinson.

Mr Yaxley-Lennon’s X account has promoted false claims that the alleged Southport attacker had been an asylum seeker who recently arrived in the UK by boat.

Mounted police were deployed to Sunderland’s city centre to push back demonstrators, some of whom were in masks.

Officers also had beer barrels thrown at them, as young men shouted: “Whose streets? Our streets”.

Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said criminals attacking the police would “pay the price for their violence and thuggery”.

Tyne and Wear Fire and Rescue Service confirmed it had been called out to the fire near the Sunderland Central Police office.

Rail and bus services were halted with Tyne and Wear Metro operator Nexus saying it had been asked by British Transport Police to close Sunderland Rail Station at around 22:15 BST.

The Omniplex cinema in the city was also forced to close during the evening in the interest of public and staff safety, it said.

Residents said they could still hear police helicopters in the sky past midnight.

North East Mayor Kim McGuinness said she was “appalled” by the scenes in Sunderland.

“Make no mistake, if your response to tragedy is to use it to commit violence, to abuse others, attack the police and damage property you stand for nothing except thuggery,” she said.

“You don’t speak for Sunderland. You don’t speak for this region.”

Sunderland AFC posted on social media: “Tonight’s shameful scenes do not represent our culture, our history, or our people.

“Our great city is built on togetherness and acceptance, and Sunderland will forever be for all. We are stronger as one community.”

Sunderland Central MP Lewis Atkinson said the police had his full support in response to the criminal “thuggery”.

A crowd of about 200 anti-racist protesters also gathered outside the Abdullah Quilliam Mosque in Liverpool on Friday night after rumours of a far-right protest there.

The group chanted: “Say it loud, say it clear, refugees are welcome here”.

Director of Public Prosecutions Stephen Parkinson said extra prosecutors had been called into work this weekend to deal with the disorder.

“We have deployed dozens of extra prosecutors who are working round the clock this weekend, supporting the police, and ready to make immediate charging decisions so that justice is swiftly delivered,” he said.

Towns and cities including London, Hartlepool, Manchester, and Aldershot have seen protests descend into violence following the Southport knife attack.

In response, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer announced a new national violent disorder programme to help clamp down on violent groups by allowing police forces to share intelligence.

In a televised speech on Thursday, Sir Keir said: “These thugs are mobile, they move from community to community, and we must have a police response that can do the same.”

He also condemned “violent disorder, clearly whipped up online”.

“We will take all necessary action to keep our streets safe”, the PM said.

The BBC has identified at least 30 demonstrations being planned by far-right activists around the UK over the weekend, including a new protest in Southport.

X (formerly Twitter)

When law student Chidimma Adetshina clinched a coveted spot as a Miss South Africa finalist, her triumph unleashed a vicious backlash, unearthing a seam of xenophobia that lies close to the surface for some in the country.

The 23-year-old’s name hints at her connection to Nigeria, but internet detectives wanted to know more and combed through every inch of her life. They found that her father is Nigerian and though her mother is South African, her family had come from neighbouring Mozambique.

“On behalf of South Africans, we don’t recognise her and that name! She better start packing and go home,” raged one commenter on X.

But where is home? Ms Adetshina is South African, as verified by the organisers of the pageant. She has said in interviews that she was born in Soweto – the township next to Johannesburg – and grew up in Cape Town.

However, the “go-home” sentiment, and even harsher attacks, flooded social media. There was also a petition demanding her removal from the high-profile televised competition that amassed more than 14,000 signatures before it was taken down.

The country’s Culture Minister Gayton McKenzie, the leader of the Patriotic Alliance party, which has joined a coalition government and made migration issues a key part of its platform, chimed in.

“We truly cannot have Nigerians compete in our Miss SA competition. I wanna get all facts before I comment but it gives funny vibes already,” he said on X.

The issue has touched a nerve in South Africa that goes beyond who will appear on stage at the final next weekend.

Ms Adetshina declined a BBC request for an interview but she did tell the Sowetan Live news site that the online hate she was facing made her think twice about competing.

“I am representing a country, but I don’t feel the love from the people I’m representing,” she said.

Ms Adetshina added that the whole situation felt like “black-on-black hate”, highlighting a particular strain of xenophobia in South Africa known as “afrophobia”, which targets other Africans.

She felt that she was not the only contestant among the last 16 women with a name that had origins from beyond the country’s shores – there are some with South Asian and European names – yet she was receiving the bulk of the criticism.

Asked to respond to the comments that Ms Adetshina has faced, a Miss South Africa spokesperson did not address them directly but simply said that she was eligible to take part in the competition.

This was not the first time that this has happened. For Melissa Nayimuli, a Miss South Africa contestant last year, it has brought up difficult memories.

The 28-year-old was the target of the same vitriol heaped on Ms Adetshina because her father is Ugandan.

She told the BBC she was unsurprised at the reaction she had received as she had experienced it for most of her life.

“It’s something I tried to run away from, but how do you run away from yourself?” she questioned.

Ms Nayimuli said that while growing up she would constantly speak Xhosa, her mother tongue and one of South Africa’s official languages, to “prove her South African-ness”.

Her voice cracked as she admitted that she felt shame at her Ugandan identity when she was younger because of the afrophobia that she experienced.

“I would not want to be seen with my father because of his darker skin and East African features were a dead giveaway,” she told the BBC.

“At home my father was my hero, but outside I saw him treated as an enemy.”

University of the Free State sociologist Dr Nombulelo Shange links this hostility to South Africa’s history of racism and the apartheid system – which imposed a strict hierarchy that privileged white people.

There is a “sad apartheid mentality that we are struggling to shake as a country”, she said.

“It shows the deep self-hate that we as black South Africans carry with us.”

Dr Shange added that South Africans had internalised oppressive racist reasoning such as colourism, where lighter skin tones are perceived as better.

After apartheid ended in 1994, the government led by Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress (ANC) welcomed African migrants and asylum seekers to the country in part to aid its reintegration into the continent after years of isolation.

But with many South Africans struggling financially, foreigners became the target for some frustrated by their situation.

Zimbabweans, Nigerians and Somalis, among others, have been accused of taking opportunities and resources from South Africans.

There is a “perception of outsiders as competitors for scarce jobs, resources, living space and services”, Michael Morris, head of media at the South African Institute of Race Relations, told the BBC.

He said the growing number of Africans succeeding in South Africa could “easily trigger resentment and violence”.

This climate of hostility has occasionally erupted into attacks. South Africa experienced its worst outbreak of violence against mostly African foreigners in 2008, when more than 60 people died.

“There are black South Africans who will argue that Africans from elsewhere in the continent don’t belong in South Africa,” Mr Morris said.

More than a decade ago, Ms Nayimuli felt this animosity acutely when her father was arrested.

“My dad is the most kind-hearted, gentle soul in the entire universe,” she said – yet he was treated like a criminal because, she believes, he looked like a foreigner.

When Ms Nayimuli’s mother reached the police station in the capital, Pretoria, where her husband was being held officers did not even have an explanation or a charge against him.

Her father was released and Ms Nayimuli’s family never spoke about it again.

They had often “tiptoed” around the xenophobia they faced but when it bubbled up during last year’s Miss South Africa it was a chance for them to address the issue directly and was, for Ms Nayimuli, part of a healing process.

Now, seeing Ms Adetshina experience the same level of abuse her heart goes out to her.

“She is not just a trending topic. She is a human being. She is a young woman getting bullied online – it’s wrong, hurtful and so dangerous,” she said.

But she emphasised that the xenophobes are a small minority and there are many South Africans who call for unity.

Leader of the opposition Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) party Julius Malema defended Ms Adetshina last week, saying: “Why do people want to say she’s from Nigeria or Mozambique? She was born here.”

This message of coming together is one that Ms Nayimuli ended her Miss South Africa journey on.

Last year, as the bright lights shone on her during the final round of the competition, she called for African unity in the face of hate.

“Let’s step into our power as Africa. We are one,” she said to a raucous auditorium who cheered on her message of togetherness.

But it seems it did not take root as the discrimination has resurfaced.

Next Saturday, Ms Adetshina will get her chance to take to the stage, but it is not yet clear if she will tackle the haters head on.

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Two Russian dissidents released in a prisoner swap on Thursday have said they refused to sign a petition for mercy to be sent to Russian President Vladimir Putin as requested by prison officials.

During a news conference in Germany, Vladimir Kara-Murza and Ilya Yashin said they did not admit guilt nor give Russian officials their consent to be removed, and vowed to return home one day.

Mr Kara-Murza said the deal had saved “16 human lives” and that he had been convinced he would die in prison.

He added that many Russians were “opposed to Putin’s war in Ukraine”.

The two men were released as part of the exchange, which saw 24 people jailed in seven different countries exchanged.

Those released by Russia included US journalist Evan Gerschkovich and former Marine Paul Whelan.

The Russians released by Western nations included convicted assassin Vadim Krasikov, who had been serving a life sentence in Germany for killing a Georgian-born Chechen dissident in a Berlin park.

On Friday, Mr Kara-Murza and Mr Yashin – along with a third dissident, Andrei Pivovarov – pledged to continue working towards a “free” Russia and advocating on behalf of political prisoners still being held there.

Mr Yashin said he had “conflicting feelings” about the swap. While he expressed gratitude for those who worked to free him, he said his first desire when he arrived in Germany was to buy a ticket to return to Russia.

Mr Yashin told the BBC that it was “much more comfortable” for Mr Putin to have an exiled opposition “because the voice of opposition in prison always has much more weight than the voice in emigration”.

“I never imagined myself outside Russia,” he said. “I am eternally grateful for their help. But I am a guest here – and my main wish is to return to Russia.”

He added: “I’m not the only one who demanded not to be sent into exile… but no-one asked our opinion.”

However, he acknowledged that his return to Russia would make it more difficult to negotiate the exchange of other political prisoners and could intensify criticism of the German government, which he said had faced an “ethical dilemma” in releasing Krasikov.

Russian rights group Memorial says hundreds of political prisoners are currently held in prison.

While Mr Pivovarov argued the latest swap was a “sign of light” for them that release was possible, Mr Kara-Murza said the exchange was a “drop in the ocean, because so many innocent people who’ve never committed a crime in their life are being held in torturous conditions”.

Mr Kara-Murza, a dual Russian and British citizen, said he was held in solitary confinement for more than 10 months – and was only able to talk to his wife over the phone once during two-and-a-half years of imprisonment.

“I did not believe I would ever see my wife again,” he recalled. “I did not believe I’d ever see my family again and this feels really surreal. This feels like a film.”

The political activist said he thought he might be shot on the day of his release – only realising what was happening when he saw the other imprisoned dissidents.

He recounted how, sitting on the plane out of Russia, a man he identified as a government agent told him it was the last time he would see his homeland.

Mr Kara-Murza said he responded: “I know that I will be back in my home country.”

Sasha Skochilenko, another Russian dissident and artist among those freed told BBC Newshour that she also believed she was going to be killed on the day of her release.

Ms Skochilenko said she was in “shock” and “on adrenaline” as a now-free woman.

“I’m so glad, I’m so happy and I’m so grateful”, she continued. “I’m finally with my beloved family, with my girlfriend, my fiancée. We’re going to marry. We finally can do it in Germany… This is the happiest day of my life”.

The freed dissidents also paid tribute to Alexei Navalny, a leading critic of Mr Putin who died in prison in February after Russian officials said he became unwell.

The White House said on Thursday that Mr Navalny had been due to be included in a deal.

Mr Yashin said: “The fact that Alexei Navalny is not with us is a crime committed by Putin, who bears direct responsibility for his murder.”

Mr Kara-Murza said he wanted “to remind people in democratic countries that Russia and Putin are not the same thing”.

“I will absolutely carry on,” he told the BBC following the news conference.

“I care about my country – and I think Russia deserves better than a corrupt KGB dictator. I want to make sure that Russia becomes… a normal, modern, democratic country.”

Connie Converse failed to find fame as a singer-songwriter in the 1950s, then mysteriously disappeared without a trace. On the 100th anniversary of her birth – and approaching the 50th anniversary of her disappearance – she’s now remembered as a great lost talent.

In January 1961, an unknown Bob Dylan arrived in Greenwich Village with a guitar in his hand and $12 in his pocket, on his way to revolutionising popular music with his poetic, personal songs.

Maybe he brushed past Connie Converse as she went the other way. She moved out of the hip New York neighbourhood that same month, after a decade of struggling to get significant attention for her own intimate, sophisticated and beautiful songs.

There is a parallel universe where Converse was the one who got the big break, and she is a household name.

At least, that’s the theory put forward in a recent book called How To Become Famous – not a manual, but about why some talented people become successful and others stay in the shadows.

It imagines a world where Converse is “widely known” as “the most original, and perhaps the greatest, of the folk singers of the 1950s and 1960s”, who influenced everyone from Dylan to Taylor Swift, and for whom “a Nobel Prize is not out of the question”.

Musician and author Howard Fishman, who published Converse’s biography, To Anyone Who Ever Asks, last year, also thinks Converse could have made it big.

“I love to think about an alternate reality in which Connie Converse’s music did receive the recognition it deserved in its own time, and she became a recognised for the musical genius that she was,” he says.

“I almost think a better version of American cultural history could have happened, had that been the case.”

But How To Become Famous author Cass Sunstein concedes that Converse wasn’t better than Dylan. She also faced barriers because she was a woman. And perhaps her clever, melodic and mostly melancholic songs just never quite had mass appeal.

They dealt with subjects like loneliness, promiscuity, quarrelling lovers, and frequenting saloons in the afternoons. It’s certainly hard to imagine them really catching on in the early 50s, an age dominated by schmaltzy crooners, folk purists and show tunes.

“She didn’t sound like anybody else that was making music in her own day,” says Fishman. “And she doesn’t sound like anybody else making music now, to my ears.”

British singer Vashti Bunyan became a Connie Converse convert after a recommendation from US DJ David Garland, the first person to play her songs in 2004.

“I couldn’t believe that they were [recorded] so long ago, it was the 1950s,” Bunyan says. “And just to hear her speaking in a way that I would have always wanted to speak was very moving.

“She was completely ahead of her time, and it must have been very hard for her. She must have felt isolated.

“If she had any ambition for her songs, she must have known how good they were, how clever and funny and wonderful they were, and poetic. But other people didn’t seem to recognise that kind of genius writing at the time.”

Bunyan knows what it’s like to have her music “rediscovered” decades later. She released an album in 1970, which has gained cult status in more recent years. She says their stories are very different, but agrees there is an allure to the idea of “the discovery of something from so long ago”.

“And how lucky that she was recorded,” she says. “Connie was recorded by her friends, and none of those recordings were supposed to be commercially released.

“But it’s so wonderful that they have been, that they have been found. And it makes you wonder about all the other people that weren’t.”

Converse was recorded bat the home of one of her friends and champions, Gene Deitch, but she never released any music in her time. She performed for small groups of supporters, but never played a proper concert. She made one TV appearance, but that led nowhere.

Ellen Stekert, a folk historian who was also performing in the 1950s, believes Converse was just “too different” to have “made it”.

“I think she was wonderful. I think she was totally out of sequence of any kind of cultural impulse,” she says.

“She was self-contained, and also self-isolated. It was too bad somebody could not break through that.”

Converse did have her supporters, but any female singer at that time needed to be backed by a man with the right connections, Stekert says. And Converse was socially awkward, and not good at self-promotion.

“Unfortunately, she didn’t have much social understanding of things. She did not have a very good rapport, I think, with people.

“Evidently, she had very bad teeth and her body odour also was fairly prominent. And those are two factors in middle-class America that will make sure you don’t make it any place.”

Converse worked for a printing company and then for the Institute of Pacific Relations. After leaving New York in 1961, she became editor of the Journal for Conflict Resolution in Michigan, and her intellectual activities, and peace and anti-racism activism, were highly regarded.

But then, her life seemed to lose purpose and direction. On 10 August 1974, a week after her 50th birthday, she posted letters to family and friends, telling some she was returning to New York.

She drove out of Ann Arbor and has not been heard from since. Neither her body nor her car was found.

“As far as we know, she never made it to New York,” Fishman says. “As far as we know, she never made it anywhere.

“I’d love to think that she started a new life somewhere else, and that she lived more years. But who knows?”

On Saturday 3 August, exactly 100 years after Converse’s birth, Fishman is in her home town – Concord, New Hampshire – for a ceremony to give the singer her first official recognition.

Her music has gradually spread over the past 20 years. So, too, has her story, and the mystery of her disappearance is often the first thing that gets people’s attention.

“The unfortunate and darkly poetic thing is that she needed to disappear in order for us to see her,” Fishman says. “That was the hook that was needed for us to pay attention to her.

“But what I always say is, don’t focus on how she disappeared, focus on how she lived, because her life is so much more fascinating and meaningful, and has so much more to teach us than the fact that at age 50, she felt that she had to vanish.”

It’s something Vladimir Putin does rarely: go to the airport to meet people off a plane. Personally.

But he was there last night: on the tarmac at Moscow’s Vnukovo Airport to meet and greet those Russians whose release he’d secured from foreign jails; part of the largest prisoner swap between Russia and the West since the Cold War.

Out of the plane and down the steps came 10 people, including spies, sleeper agents and a convicted assassin.

“Congratulations on your return to the Motherland!” he told them.

You could tell that the Kremlin believes it has something to celebrate.

For the returning Russians there was a red carpet reception and a guard of honour. There were bouquets of flowers and – for some – hugs from the president. Mr Putin embraced Vadim Krasikov, the FSB hitman who’d been serving a life sentence in Germany for assassinating a Georgian-born Chechen dissident.

President Putin promised them all state awards.

“I would like to address those of you who have a direct connection to military service,” he continued. “Thank you for your loyalty to your oath and your duty to your Motherland, which has never forgotten you for a moment.”

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There’s another message the pro-Kremlin press is putting out right now: good riddance to those Russia has freed from its prisons and who’ve been flown abroad.

“Eight Russians who’d been jailed in Nato countries have returned to the Motherland in exchange for individuals who had been acting to the detriment of Russia’s national security,” says the government paper.

Referring to the dissidents released by Moscow, Komsomolskaya Pravda claims “they have ditched their former Motherland and flown to those who hired them.”

Attempts to discredit critics and opponents; lavish praise for loyal supporters who are portrayed as true patriots. All this helps the authorities make the case with the Russian people that the prisoner swap was a success for the Kremlin.

There is little doubt that the Kremlin views the prisoner swap as a victory for Moscow. It got what it wanted… it got its agents back, including the man who was No.1 on its wish list, Krasikov. The German authorities had initially been unwilling to release a convicted assassin, who a German court had concluded had acted on behalf of the Russian authorities.

That reluctance softened as a wider deal took shape.

But why was it so important for the Kremlin to secure Vadim Krasikov’s release and to bring him home?

Today’s Russian newspapers provide a clue.

“We’re returning our guys” is the headline in the government paper Rossiyskaya Gazeta,

“We don’t abandon our own!” declares the pro-Putin tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda.

That is precisely the message the Kremlin wants to send to its agents and spies: if we send you on missions abroad, and things go wrong, we’ll find a way of getting you home.

Donald Trump returning to the White House would be “a once-in-a-thousand-year opportunity” for North Korea, according to a man in a unique position to know.

Ri Il Kyu is the highest-ranking defector to escape North Korea since 2016 and has been face to face with Kim Jong Un on seven separate occasions.

The former diplomat, who was working in Cuba when he fled with his family to South Korea last November, admits to “shivering with nerves” the first time he met Kim Jong Un.

But during each meeting, he found the leader to be “smiling and in a good mood”.

“He praised people often and laughed. He seems like an ordinary person,” Mr Ri tells the BBC. But he is in no doubt Mr Kim would do anything to guarantee his survival, even if it meant killing all 25 million of his people: “He could have been a wonderful person and father, but turning him into a god has made him a monstrous being.”

In his first interview with an international broadcaster, Mr Ri provides a rare understanding of what one of the world’s most secretive and repressive states is hoping to achieve.

He says that North Korea still views Mr Trump as someone it can negotiate with over its nuclear weapons programme, despite talks between him and Kim Jong Un breaking down in 2019.

Mr Trump has previously hailed the relationship with Kim as a key achievement of his presidency. He famously said the two “fell in love” exchanging letters. Just last month, he told a rally Mr Kim would like to see him back in office: “I think he misses me, if you want to know the truth.”

North Korea is hoping it can use this close personal relationship to its advantage, says Mr Ri, contradicting an official statement from Pyongyang last month that it “did not care” who became president.

The nuclear state will never get rid of its weapons, Mr Ri says, and would probably seek a deal to freeze its nuclear programme in return for the US lifting sanctions.

But he says Pyongyang would not negotiate in good faith. Agreeing to freeze its nuclear programme “would be a ploy, 100% deception”, he says, adding that this was therefore a “dangerous approach” which would “only lead to the strengthening of North Korea”.

Eight months after his defection, Ri Il Kyu is living with his family in South Korea. Accompanied by a police bodyguard and two intelligence agents, he explains his decision to abandon his government.

After years of being ground down by the corruption, bribery and lack of freedom he faced, Mr Ri says he was finally tipped over the edge when his request to travel to Mexico to get an operation on a slipped disc in his neck was denied. “I lived the life of the top 1% in North Korea, but that is still worse than a middle-class family in the South.”

As a diplomat in Cuba, Mr Ri made just $500 (£294) a month and so would sell Cuban cigars illegally in China to make enough to support his family.

When he first told his wife about his desire to defect, she was so disturbed she ended up in hospital with heart problems. After that, he kept his plans secret, only sharing them with her and his child six hours before their plane was due to depart.

He describes it as a “life-or-death gamble”. Regular North Koreans who are caught defecting would typically be tortured for a few months, then released, he says. “But for elites like us, there are only two outcomes – life in a political prison camp or being executed by a firing squad.”

“The fear and terror were overwhelming. I could accept my own death, but I could not bear the thought of my family being dragged to a gulag,” he says. Although Mr Ri had never believed in God, as he waited nervously at the airport gate in the middle of the night, he began to pray.

The last known high-profile defection to the South was that of Tae Yong-ho in 2016. A former deputy ambassador to the UK, he was recently named the new leader of South Korea’s presidential advisory council on unification.

Turning to North Korea’s recent closer ties with Russia, Mr Ri says the Ukraine war had been a stroke of luck for Pyongyang. The US and South Korea estimate the North has sold Moscow millions of rounds of ammunition to support its invasion, in return for food, fuel and possibly even military technology.

Mr Ri says the main benefit of this deal for Pyongyang was the ability to continue developing its nuclear weapons.

With the deal, Russia created a “loophole” in the stringent international sanctions on North Korea, he says, which has allowed it “to freely develop its nuclear weapons and missiles and strengthen its defence, while bypassing the need to appeal to the US for sanctions relief”.

But Mr Ri says Kim Jong Un understands this relationship is temporary and that after the war, Russia is likely to sever relations. For this reason, Mr Kim has not given up on the US, Mr Ri says.

“North Korea understands that the only path to its survival, the only way to eliminate the threat of invasion and develop its economy, is to normalise relations with the United States.”

While Russia might have given North Korea a temporary respite from its economic pain, Mr Ri says the complete closure of North Korea’s borders during the pandemic “severely devastated the country’s economy and people’s lives”.

When the borders reopened in 2023 and diplomats were preparing to return, Mr Ri says families back home had asked them to “bring anything and everything you have, even your used toothbrushes, because there is nothing left in North Korea”.

The North Korean leader demands total loyalty from his citizens and the mere whiff of dissent can result in imprisonment. But Mr Ri says years of hardship had eroded people’s loyalty, as no-one now expected to receive anything from their “Supreme Leader” Kim Jong Un.

“There is no genuine loyalty to the regime or to Kim Jong Un anymore, it is a forced loyalty, where one must be loyal or face death,” he says.

Recent change has largely been driven by an influx of South Korean films, dramas and music, which have been smuggled into the North and are illegal to watch and listen to.

“People don’t watch South Korean content because they have capitalist beliefs, they are simply trying to pass the time in their monotonous and bleak lives,” Mr Ri says, but then they begin to ask, “Why do those in the South live the life of a first-world country while we are impoverished?”

But Mr Ri says that although South Korean content was changing North Korea, it would not bring about its collapse, because of the systems of control in place. “Kim Jong Un is very aware that loyalty is waning, that people are evolving, and that’s why he is intensifying his reign of terror,” he says.

The government has introduced laws to harshly punish those who consume and distribute South Korean content. The BBC spoke to one defector last year who said he had witnessed someone be executed after sharing South Korean music and TV shows.

North Korea’s decision, at the end of last year, to abandon a decades-old policy of eventually reunifying with the South, was a further attempt to isolate people from the South, Mr Ri says.

He describes this as Kim Jong Un’s “most evil act”, because all North Koreans dream of reunification. He says that while North Korea’s past leaders had “stolen people’s freedom, money and human rights, Kim Jong Un has robbed what was left of them: hope”.

Outside North Korea, much attention is paid to Kim Jong Un’s health, with some believing that his premature death could trigger the collapse of the regime. Earlier this week, South Korea’s intelligence agency estimated that Mr Kim weighed 140kg, putting him at risk of cardiovascular disease.

But Mr Ri believes the system of surveillance and control is now too well established for Kim’s death to threaten the dictatorship. “Another evil leader will merely take his place,” he says.

It has been widely speculated that Mr Kim is grooming his young daughter, thought to be called Ju Ae, to be his successor, but Mr Ri dismisses the notion.

Ju Ae, he says, lacks the legitimacy and popularity to become the leader of North Korea, especially as the sacred Paektu bloodline, which the Kims use to justify their rule, is believed to run only through the men of the family.

At first, people were fascinated by Ju Ae, Mr Ri says, but not any more. They question why she was attending missile tests rather than going to school, and wearing luxury, designer clothes instead of her school uniform, like other children.

Rather than waiting for Mr Kim to become ill or die, Mr Ri says the international community has to come together, including North Korea’s allies China and Russia, to “persistently persuade it to change”.

“This is the only thing that will bring about the end of the North Korean dictatorship,” he adds.

Mr Ri is hoping that his defection inspires his peers, not to defect themselves, but to push for small changes from the inside. He does not have lofty ambitions, that North Koreans will be able to vote or travel, merely that they can choose what jobs to work, have enough food to eat and be able to share their opinions freely among friends.

For now, though, his priority is helping his family settle into their new life in South Korea and for his child to assimilate into society.

At the end of our interview, he poses a scenario. “Imagine I offer you a venture and tell you, if we succeed we win big, but if we fail it means death.

“You wouldn’t agree, would you? Well that is the choice I forced upon my family, and they silently agreed and followed me,” he says.

“This is now a debt I must repay for the rest of my life.”