At least 76 people have been killed in Bangladesh amid worsening clashes between police and anti-government protesters.

The unrest comes as student leaders have declared a campaign of civil disobedience to demand that Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina step down.

Thirteen police officers were killed when thousands of people attacked a police station in the district of Sirajganj, police said.

The student protest started with a demand to abolish quotas in civil service jobs last month, but has now turned into a wider anti-government movement.

Both police and supporters of the governing party were seen shooting at anti-government protesters with live ammunition. Police also used tear gas and rubber bullets.

The total death toll since the protest movement began in July now stands at over 270.

A nationwide overnight curfew has been in place since 18:00 (12:00 GMT).

On Sunday Law and Justice Minister Anisul Huq told the BBC’s Newshour programme that authorities were showing “restraint”.

“If we had not shown restraint there would have been a bloodbath. I guess our patience has limits,” he added.

In the capital, Dhaka, access to internet on mobile devices has been suspended.

Without 4G and 3G people cannot communicate using the internet on their mobile devices. The source did not say when internet services would return to normal.

Deaths and injuries have been reported across the country, including the northern districts of Bogra, Pabna and Rangpur.

Thousands of people gathered in a main square in Dhaka and there have been violent incidents in other parts of the city.

“The whole city has turned into a battleground,” a policeman, who asked not to be named, told AFP news agency. He said a crowd of several thousand protesters had set fire to cars and motorcycles outside a hospital.

Students Against Discrimination, a group behind the anti-government demonstrations, said the nationwide disobedience movement would start from Sunday.

It urged people not to pay taxes or any utility bills.

The students have also called for a shutdown of all factories and public transport.

Around 10,000 people have been reportedly detained in a major crackdown by security forces in the past two weeks. Those arrested included opposition supporters and students.

The next few days are seen as crucial for both camps.

The protests pose a momentous challenge to Ms Hasina, who was elected for a fourth consecutive term in January elections, boycotted by the main opposition.

Students took to the streets last month over the reservation of many civil service jobs for relatives of the veterans of Bangladesh’s independence war with Pakistan in 1971.

Most of the quota has now been scaled back by the government following a government ruling, but students have continued to protest, demanding justice for those killed and injured. Now they want Ms Hasina to step down.

Supporters of Ms Hasina have ruled out her resignation.

Earlier, Ms Hasina offered unconditional dialogue with the student leaders, saying she wanted the violence to end.

“I want to sit with the agitating students of the movement and listen to them. I want no conflict,” she said.

But the student protesters have rejected her offer.

Ms Hasina called in the military last month to restore order after several police stations and state buildings were set on fire during the protests.

The Bangladeshi army chief, General Waker-Uz-Zaman, held a meeting with junior officers in Dhaka to assess the security situation.

“Bangladesh Army has always stood by the people and will continue to do so for the interest of people and in any need of the state,” Gen Zaman said, according to a release by the Inter Services Public Relation Directorate.

Bangladeshi media says most of those killed in last month’s protests were shot dead by police. Thousands were injured.

The government argues that police opened fire only in self-defence and to protect state properties.

As the Paris gymnastics arena roared on American Simone Biles for her third gold medal of the 2024 Olympics, one of those applauding was none other than An Chang-ok, a rival from North Korea.

Saturday’s women’s vault final saw the North share a stage with its foes South Korea and the US.

An, 21, grinned and waved for TV cameras and hugged at least one fellow finalist – rare interactions with foreigners by a young woman required to perform diplomatic gymnastics while being carefully chaperoned on her trip away from home.

Pyongyang’s decision to send athletes to these Games – two of whom even posed for a selfie with rivals from the South – has raised hopes that the secretive state could be partially reopening after a particularly deep period of isolation.

After all, this comes after a heated period that has seen the North sending waste-filled balloons at the South.

• Biles takes vault title in emphatic fashion
• Other big stories from day eight of the Games
• Who’s leading the medals table in Paris?

The North’s participation in these Games signalled a “remarkable” return to the international fold, suggested Jean H Lee, a former Associated Press journalist who opened the US news agency’s first bureau in the North Korean capital, Pyongyang.

It did not send any athletes to the Tokyo Olympics, held in 2021, after the country shut itself off from the world even more sternly than usual due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

But in Paris, it was “making the effort to rejoin the international community”, Lee said, “regardless of what’s happening with their nuclear programme, which is always the elephant in the room”.

The North’s nuclear ambitions are an enduring cause of tension with the South and the US. But there was no sign of animosity between the three nations’ gymnasts on Saturday.

This new generation of North Korean athletes have claimed two silvers in Paris, and occasionally surprised sport commentators who did not know what to expect from them.

Winning medals was not the country’s only aim, according to Prof Ramon Pacheco Pardo of King’s College London, who has written extensively on the two Koreas.

The age-old North Korean art of “sports diplomacy” involved limited participation in a global forum to prove the country was normal, Prod Pacheco Pardo said. Athletes were some of the “few actors that North Korea has who won’t be viewed suspiciously” by the world, he explained.

The contrasting support for An and Biles could not have been starker. In an earlier competition during the Games in Paris, Biles was memorably cheered on by a host of celebrity supporters in the stands, including Lady Gaga, Ariana Grande, Tom Cruise and Snoop Dogg. Thousands of punters yelled her name on Saturday, too.

An, meanwhile, received only polite appreciation from the neutrals. She had no compatriots in the room, since ordinary North Koreans are prevented from leaving their country.

It is unlikely that anyone was watching at home, either, as the Games are not being televised live in North Korea, according to Radio Free Asia (RFA). And BBC Monitoring has only been able to find a handful of text reports in the tightly-controlled state media.

Nonetheless, “the chattering class of Pyongyang certainly will, from one source or another” know the Olympic results as they come in, said John Everard, the UK’s ambassador to North Korea from 2006 to 2008.

An is among 16 North Korean who athletes have come to an opulent host city that could hardly be more different to the austere Pyongyang airport in which they were filmed setting off last month.

Top North Korean athletes were likely to have some awareness of the outside world, said Everard, but there was still likely to be a “shock factor”.

One of the viral moments of the Games so far was a rare encounter that seemed to break the boundaries: when a bronze-winning South Korean table-tennis player took a selfie that showed his mixed-doubles partner posing alongside the silver-winning North Korean duo.

Would the leadership in Pyongyang have anticipated – or relished – this brief symbol of unity between two nations who are still technically at war?

Agreeing to the selfie was “a message” from the North, said Prof Pachedo Pardo, who speculated that the move would have had Pyongyang’s consent. “North Korea is indicating that it doesn’t have a problem with South Korean people – that the issue it has is with the South Korean government.”

At any rate, the moment was not totally unexpected, after something similar in 2016. And two years later, North and South fielded a joint women’s ice hockey team at the Winter Games in the South.

The selfie represents one of the North’s few visible interactions with the outside world during the Games, including a perfunctory press conference by the two table-tennis stars.

Away from the stadiums, unverified footage has appeared to show An holding a collection of pin-badges, which are reported to be an item popularly traded by international gymnasts.

After so much exposure to the Western world, the athletes will probably undergo a gruelling “debrief” after returning home to ensure they stay on-message, said Lee, who is also the co-host of the BBC World Service’s Lazarus Heist podcast.

Contrary to the myth, any athlete deemed to have “failed” would probably not be punished, the analysts agreed. But they could face gruelling “self-criticism” sessions.

“The big hit for not winning a medal isn’t so much the punishment, it’s that you don’t gain all the benefits that you could have gained,” said Everard. Victorious athletes may be given higher status in society and even prizes such as a new home.

It remains to be seen whether this latest sporting diplomacy will translate into meaningful new talks between the two Koreas. The relative bonhomie in Paris was briefly imperilled at the outset by a furore when organisers mixed up the two nations’ names in the opening ceremony, for which they apologised.

Outside the Bercy Arena after Saturday’s gymnastics, one fan from the Seoul side was not convinced the politics would change much.

But she said the sight of sportspeople sharing a stage was at least a reminder that all Koreans were united by something “human”.

Two plain-clothed UK police officers were waiting for Dmitry Gudkov as he arrived at London’s Luton Airport last summer. The Russian opposition politician, who lives in exile in an EU country, was flying to the UK to attend a friend’s birthday.

“They were there to intercept me immediately after I exited the plane,” Dmitry says. “That had never happened to me before.”

But the police weren’t arresting him – instead, they wanted to warn him.

“They told me I’m on a list of people who are in danger. They asked where I’ll be staying and what phone I’ll be using.”

Dmitry Gudkov is the co-founder of the Anti-War Committee, an organisation that co-ordinates efforts to oppose the war in Ukraine. He is wanted in Russia for “spreading fakes” about the Russian army.

The start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 led to a wide-ranging crackdown against opponents inside Russia. Almost all activists and independent journalists fled the country.

Now, a number of Kremlin critics living in Europe have told the BBC that Russia is stepping up its efforts to silence, threaten and persecute opponents abroad. Some were unwilling to share their stories publicly. The Russian embassy in London didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Analyst Mark Galeotti, who studies the Russian security services, agrees that the campaign against Russia’s “enemies” abroad is intensifying. “I think it reflects the growing paranoia of the Kremlin,” he says, “that it is involved in an existential political struggle.”

With all dissent snuffed out at home, Russia is turning its attention to opponents who have sought refuge in the West. Dmitry Medvedev, a former Russian president who is now deputy head of Russia’s Security Council, described them as “traitors who have gone over to the enemy and want their Fatherland to perish”.

Another anti-Kremlin activist was also contacted by British police. “They said they needed to discuss the safety of me and my family,” Ksenia Maximova tells me.

The founder of the Russian Democratic Society in London says the police advised her not to travel to certain countries where Russian agents operate more freely.

“[The Kremlin is] stepping up the campaign against ‘enemies’, that’s absolutely true,” she says, “They’re tightening the screws.”

She and her fellow campaigners have noticed an uptick in cyber attacks and attempts to infiltrate the group online.

In a statement to the BBC, a spokesperson for UK Counter Terrorism Policing said, “We have been open for some time now about the growing demand within our casework relating to countering state threats… We have been actively increasing resources dedicated to countering the activity of hostile states.”

In December, new UK legislation came into effect, giving police more powers to tackle threats from hostile states such as Russia.

“Parasites can’t sleep in peace…” was one of the messages that investigative journalist Alesya Marokhovskaya received last year.

The threats were accompanied by the name of the street in Prague where she lived. “I moved house to make it harder for them,” says Alesya.

“We thought it may just be some crazy Czech guy who was pro-Putin and had recognised me on the street.”

But then the messages became more sinister – calling her a “scumbag” and promising to find her “wherever she walks her wheezing dog”.

Alesya’s dog really does wheeze when it walks. She informed the Czech police.

Later, Alesya was due to fly to Sweden to attend a conference. The sender then sent even more specific threats: details of her flight, seat number and the hotel she had booked. “It was clear they had high-level access to documents,” Alesya says. “It looks like the behaviour of the Russian state.”

Alesya had been branded a ‘foreign agent’ years before by the Russian government, due to her work at independent Russian news website iStories.

“When I left Russia and came to Prague, I had this illusion of security,” says Alesya. “Now I realise that [Russian intelligence services] can get their hands on people almost anywhere in Europe. I can’t say I’m not afraid, because I am.”

But why is this happening now? Experts suggest the Russian security services are beginning to activate operations abroad after a period of turmoil. Hundreds of Russian diplomats believed to be intelligence agents operating under diplomatic cover were expelled from Western countries following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

“There was a period of confusion after 2022,” says Andrei Soldatov, a Russian journalist who writes about the intelligence services. “In 2023, the agencies regrouped and found a new sense of purpose. They got resources and began increasing pressure.”

Mark Galeotti says the authorities are increasingly turning to proxies to do their dirty work – criminal gangs: “If you want someone beaten up or even killed, they’re a lot easier to engage,” says Mr Galeotti, who has been writing about the links between the Russian state and organised crime for years.

“They’re going to be some thug – maybe someone whom the Russian-based organised crime groups have at some point dealt with.”

The Polish government believes that’s what happened in the case of Leonid Volkov, a prominent activist and associate of the late Alexei Navalny. He was brutally attacked with a hammer in Lithuania four months ago, but survived.

The Polish Prime Minister, Donald Tusk, said a Belarusian man working for Russian intelligence had paid two Polish football hooligans to carry out the assault. All three have been arrested.

“Intimidation is the intent,” suggests Mark Galeotti. “The idea that you’d better keep your head down. It’s a way of deterring the emergence of some kind of coherent political opposition [to the Kremlin].”

The Russian authorities also try to make day-to-day life as difficult as possible for opponents abroad.

Activist Olesya Krivtsova, 21, escaped from Russia after being arrested and threatened with jail for anti-war posts on social media. She now lives in Norway, but recently discovered her Russian passport had been cancelled, meaning she can’t apply for travel documents.

“I think this is a new [method] of repression,” Olesya says. “They’re always thinking, how can we do more, how can we pressure them?”

Several other activists living abroad have also had their passports cancelled without warning. Many have criminal cases open against them in Russia – without a valid passport, they cannot hire lawyers or make payments back home. The only way to resolve the issue is to return to Russia.

For Olesya, returning would mean arrest and prison. She has now applied for a temporary Norwegian ID for refugees.

“In Russia, now I only have one right – the right to go to prison. My passport is cancelled. This shows the essence of their cruelty,” says the young activist.

“They’ve already completely destroyed my life and the life of my family…They’re never going to stop.”

Several countries have urged their nationals to leave Lebanon, as fears grow of a wider conflict in the Middle East.

Iran has vowed “severe” retaliation against Israel, which it blames for the death of Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran on Wednesday. Israel has not commented.

His assassination came hours after Israel killed Hezbollah senior commander Fuad Shukr in Beirut.

Western officials fear that Hezbollah, an Iran-backed militia and political movement based in Lebanon, could play a key role in any such retaliation, which in turn could spark a serious Israeli response.

Diplomatic efforts by the US and other Western countries continue to try to de-escalate tensions across the region.

A growing number of flights have been cancelled or suspended at the country’s only commercial airport in Beirut.

The US, the UK, Australia, Sweden, France, Italy, Canada, South Korea, Saudi Arabia and Jordan are among the countries to have urged their citizens to leave Lebanon as soon as possible.

Fears of an escalation of hostilities that could engulf Lebanon are at their highest since Hezbollah started its attacks on Israel, a day after the deadly Hamas attacks on southern Israel on 7 October, in support for Palestinians in Gaza.

Most of the violence has been contained to border areas, with both sides indicating not being interested in a wider conflict.

Hezbollah, however, has vowed to respond to Shukr’s assassination, which happened in Dahiyeh, the group’s stronghold in Beirut’s southern suburbs.

On Sunday, Hezbollah launched dozens of rockets at the town of Beit Hillel in northern Israel at around 00:25 local time (21:25 GMT Saturday).

Footage posted on social media showed Israel’s Iron Dome air defence system intercepting the rockets. There have been no reports of casualties.

Israel’s air force responded by striking targets in southern Lebanon.

In a separate development on Sunday morning, two people were killed in a stabbing attack in the Israeli city of Holon. The attacker was later “neutralised”, police said.

Also on Sunday, officials from the Hamas-run ministry of health in Gaza said an Israeli air strike had hit a tent inside a hospital, killing at least five people. The officials said 19 Palestinians had been killed on Sunday.

In a statement on Saturday, the US embassy in Beirut said those who chose to stay in Lebanon should “prepare contingency plans” and be prepared to “shelter in place for an extended period of time”.

The Pentagon has said it is deploying additional warships and fighter jets to the region to help defend Israel from possible attacks by Iran and its proxies, a strategy similar to the one adopted in April, when Iran launched more than 300 missiles and drones at Israel in retaliation to an attack on its diplomatic compound in Syria.

It blamed Israel for that strike.

Many fear Iran’s retaliation on this occasion could take a similar form.

The UK says it is sending extra military personnel, consular staff and border force officials to help with any evacuations.

It has urged UK citizens to leave Lebanon while commercial flights are running.

Two British military ships are already in the region and the Royal Air Force has put transport helicopters on standby.

UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy said the regional situation “could deteriorate rapidly”.

In a phone call with EU Foreign Policy Chief Josep Borrell on Friday, Iran’s Acting Foreign Minister Ali Baqeri Kani said Iran would “undoubtedly use its inherent and legitimate right” to “punish” Israel.

On Friday, an announcer on Iran’s state TV warned “the world would witness extraordinary scenes”.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has warned Israelis that “challenging days lie ahead… We have heard threats from all sides. We are prepared for any scenario”.

Tensions between Israel and Iran initially escalated with the killing of 12 children and teenagers in a strike on the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

Israel accused Hezbollah and vowed “severe” retaliation, though Hezbollah denied it was involved.

Days later, Shukr, who was a close adviser to the Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, was killed in a targeted Israeli air strike in Beirut. Four others, including two children, were also killed.

Hours after that, Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh was assassinated in Iran, Hamas’s main backer. He was visiting to attend the inauguration of Iran’s new president, Masoud Pezeshkian.

Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has said Israel will suffer a “harsh punishment” for the killing.

Haniyeh’s assassination dealt a blow to the negotiations for a ceasefire and hostage release deal in Gaza, the main hope to defuse tensions along the Lebanon-Israel border.

The war began in October when Hamas carried out an unprecedented attack on Israel, killing about 1,200 people and taking 251 others back to Gaza as hostages.

The attack triggered a massive Israeli military response, which has killed at least 39,480 Palestinians in Gaza, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.

Ukraine has received its first American-made F-16 fighter jets, President Volodymyr Zelensky has said.

“F-16 in Ukraine. We did it,” President Zelensky said at a ceremony at an unnamed airbase – though he added that more were needed.

Ukraine’s leader thanked allies for what they were once very hesitant to provide.

The arrival of the jets marks a crucial milestone in boosting the capabilities of Ukraine’s air force, which largely relies on old Soviet-era jets.

• What is Nato, which countries are members and when might Ukraine join?
• Zelensky: Trump would be hard work, but we are hard workers
• Ukraine thrown into war’s bleak future as drones open new battlefront

More F-16s are expected and hoped in the months ahead, though Mr Zelensky admitted that Ukraine does not yet have enough trained pilots to fly them all.

He did not specify how many aircraft had arrived in Ukraine – or whether they had all been sent by Denmark, the Netherlands and the US, which he specifically thanked.

Around 65 F-16s have been pledged by Nato countries since US President Joe Biden first authorised willing European allies to send them to Ukraine in August 2023.

The F-16 was introduced in 1978. Many Western militaries are in the process of retiring the ageing fighters, replacing them with the US-made F-35, introduced in 2015.

The UK does not have any F-16s in its air force, though it is supplying long-range Storm Shadow missiles which can be fitted to the jets.

Ukraine’s F-16s will work alongside a limited number of Western-supplied surface-to-air missile systems such as Patriot and Nasams which are already on the ground.

With their capacity to carry rockets, bombs and missiles, F-16s should in theory allow the air force to carry out more strikes deep inside occupied territory, and possibly on targets close to the border inside Russia.

They may also help defend against Russian glide bombs – dumb munitions fitted with pop-out wing kits and guidance modules to deliver precision strike stand-off capabilities, similar to the JDAM munitions from the United States.

Around 3,000 were dropped in March alone, mostly from Su-34 fighter-bombers.

If Ukraine can protect its F-16s on the ground, the hope is that they could play an important part in pushing back Russian aircraft to a point where they can no longer target Ukrainian ground forces with glide bombs.

Kyiv had suggested that it could keep some F-16s at foreign military bases, but that suggestion prompted President Vladimir Putin to warn that any Western bases storing Ukrainian jets would be a legitimate military target for Russia.

Experts also say the fighters could provide much needed air support to Ukrainian ground forces, who have faced relentless attacks in recent months, especially in the eastern Donbas region.

Kremlin press secretary Dmitry Peskov previously vowed that Western-made F-16s flying for Ukraine would be “shot down”.

“But of course, these deliveries will not have any significant impact on the development of events on the front,” he added.

French prosecutors have opened an investigation into death threats made against the organisers of the Paris Olympics opening ceremony.

On Saturday artistic director Thomas Jolly, ceremonies director Thierry Reboul and Alexandre Billard of events agency Ubi Bene, filed a complaint for death threats.

Last month, French DJ Barbara Butch, who performed in the opening ceremony’s drag queen sequence, lodged a complaint after receiving abuse online.

That sequence sparked controversy as some religious officials and conservative politicians in France and abroad saw an offensive reference to The Last Supper.

Mr Jolly has said that he was not inspired by the famous Leonardo da Vinci painting showing Jesus Christ and his apostles.

Instead, he said the sequence, titled Festivity, was inspired by Greek mythology and intended to be a celebration of diversity, adding his intention was not to “be subversive, nor to mock or to shock”.

French prosecutors opened the investigation after Mr Jolly, who is openly gay, complained of death threats and cyberbullying.

Some emails received by Mr Jolly and the head of a production company quoted a verse from the Quran, stating that “Allah’s punishment will befall the organisers in Saint-Denis” (one of the Olympic sites), Le Parisien newspaper reports.

Prosecutors are also investigating insults directed at drag queen Nicky Doll, who also featured in the controversial scene.

DJ Barbara Butch told France Inter radio on Sunday that she had received messages “inviting me to burn in hell in every language and swastikas”.

On Friday, French President Emmanuel Macron said he was “outraged” by the cyberbullying directed at Jolly, adding that “nothing justifies threatening an artist”.

“The French were very proud of this ceremony,” he said. “France showed appropriate boldness with artistic freedom.”

Vice-President Kamala Harris is interviewing potential contenders to be her running mate on Sunday, ahead of a battleground tour next week.

Among those travelling to Washington, DC, to meet Ms Harris are Governor Josh Shapiro, Senator Mark Kelly and Governor Tim Walz.

The choices for the Democratic vice-president has been narrowed to a group of five, according to CBS, the BBC’s US partner.

A decision is required before the Democratic National Convention, which starts on 19 August in Chicago.

It is unclear whether other potential candidates, including Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear or Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, were scheduled to meet with Ms Harris.

Harris officially became the Democratic presidential nominee on Friday in a vote of party delegates.

Once Ms Harris’s running mate is announced, the two are expected to tour the battleground states.

Mr Shapiro has seen high approval ratings since he was elected in 2022 and could help Ms Harris capture Pennsylvania – a must-win state in the race for the White House.

Arizona Senator Mark Kelly, a former Navy pilot and Nasa astronaut, has become a leading voices on gun safety and his strong border stance and occasional criticisms of the Biden administration could help appeal to independent and conservative voters.

Mr Walz, who served 12 years in Congress before becoming governor of Minnesota in 2019, gained national attention for his strategy calling Donald Trump and JD Vance “weird”.

On Friday President Joe Biden said he had spoken to Ms Harris about her search for a running mate. Asked what qualities she should look for in a vice-presidential candidate, he said: “I’ll let her work that out.”

Potential partners to join Ms Harris on the Democratic ticket for November’s election face an exhaustive vetting process, having to answer up to 200 questions before being seriously considered.

• Who could be Kamala Harris’ running mate?
• JD Vance was once ‘never Trump’. Now he’s his running mate
• Kamala Harris formally chosen as Democratic nominee

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

The United Automobile Workers, a major US union representing more than 400,000 people, said its preferred vice-presidential pick was Mr Beshear, who “stood with us on the picket line and has been there for workers”.

Speaking to CBS’ Face the Nation, UAW’s Shawn Fain added that Mr Walz was also “100% behind labour”, while he criticised Mr Shapiro’s support of private school vouchers in Pennsylvania – a Republican-backed proposal to send $100m to families for private school tuition and school supplies.

• SIMPLE GUIDE: Everything you need to know about the vote
• ANALYSIS: Three ways Trump will try to end Harris honeymoon
• SWING STATES: Where the election could be won and lost
• EXPLAINER: RFK Jr and others running for president
• VOTERS: US workers in debt to buy groceries

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.”

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex have discussed the online threats facing children in their first formal broadcast interview since their conversation with Oprah Winfrey three years ago.

Speaking on CBS News Sunday Morning, the couple drew on their own experience as parents, saying all they wanted to do was “protect” their son Archie and daughter Lilibet.

Prince Harry added that “one of the scariest things” was knowing that any parent could lose a child to suicide as a result of exposure to harmful content.

The pair recently launched a new programme called The Parents Network, which aims to support parents and guardians who have been affected by the issue.

In their interview with Oprah, Prince Harry and Meghan covered issues from racism to life in the Royal Family.

This interview solely focused on their ambitions to tackle online harm.

“Our kids are young, they are three and five, they’re amazing, but all you want to do as parents is protect them,” Meghan said.

“And so as we can see what’s happening in the online space, we know that there’s a lot of work to be done there and we’re just happy to be a part of change for good.”

• Why did Harry and Meghan leave the Royal Family?
• Press battle ‘central’ to Royal Family rift – Harry
• Prince Harry remembers pain of bereavement

Prince Harry said that in the “olden days” parents always knew what their children were up to, as long as they were at home.

“At least they were safe, right?” he said.

“And now, they could be in the next door room on a tablet or on a phone, and can be going down these rabbit holes. And before you know it, within 24 hours, they could be taking their life.”

Alongside the sit-down interview, clips showed the couple meeting with bereaved parents near Santa Barbara, most of whom had lost a child due to harmful social media content or online bullying.

Prince Harry said that it has reached a point where almost every parent has to be “a first responder”.

“And even the best first responders in the world wouldn’t be able to tell the signs of possible suicide,” he said.

“That is the terrifying piece of this.”

Prince Harry, whose mother, Diana, Princess of Wales, died when he was 12, has been open about the impact grief had – and continues to have – on his mental health.

In her interview with Oprah, Meghan also spoke about her battles with poor mental health.

She said there was “a through-line” which connected her experience to those families who had lost a child.

“When you’ve been through any level of pain or trauma, I believe part of our healing journey – certainly part of mine – is being able to be really open about it,” she said.

Meghan said that she hadn’t really “scraped the surface” on her own experience, but she never wanted anyone else to feel the way she had.

She said: “If me voicing what I have overcome will save someone or encourage someone in their life to really genuinely check in on them, and not assume the appearance is good so everything is OK, then that’s worth it. I’ll take a hit for that.”

The couple are expected to highlight the importance of safeguarding young people online during their official visit to Colombia later this month. The trip follows their visit to Nigeria in May.

Speaking about their new initiative, The Parents Network, Meghan said that it was important to “start somewhere”.

She urged people watching the interview to look at it through the lens of it being their own child who was impacted.

“What if it was my daughter, what if it was my son,” she said. “My son or my daughter who comes home, who are joyful, who I love, and one day, right under my roof, our entire lives change because of something that was completely out of our control.

“And if you look at it through the lens as a parent, there is no way to see that any other way than to try and find a solution.”

The Sussexes moved to California in June 2020 with their son Archie. Their daughter Lilibet was born there in 2021.

The couple do not mention any other members of the Royal Family in their CBS interview.

They are not expected to visit Prince Harry’s father, King Charles III, in Scotland during his summer break.

Last week, the Duke of Sussex said his decision to fight against intrusion from the tabloid press was a “central piece” behind the breakdown of his relationship with the rest of his family.

Something remarkable has happened to A23a, the world’s biggest iceberg.

For months now it has been spinning on the spot just north of Antarctica when really it should be racing along with Earth’s most powerful ocean current.

Scientists say the frozen block, which is more than twice the size of Greater London, has been captured on top of a huge rotating cylinder of water.

It’s a phenomenon oceanographers call a Taylor Column – and it’s possible A23a might not escape its jailer for years.

“Usually you think of icebergs as being transient things; they fragment and melt away. But not this one,” observed polar expert Prof Mark Brandon.

“A23a is the iceberg that just refuses to die,” the Open University researcher told BBC News.

The berg’s longevity is well documented. It broke free from the Antarctic coastline way back in 1986, but then almost immediately got stuck in the bottom-muds of the Weddell Sea.

For three decades it was a static “ice island”. It didn’t budge. It wasn’t until 2020 that it re-floated and started to drift again, slowly at first, before then charging north towards warmer air and waters.

In early April this year, A23a stepped into the Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC) – a juggernaut that moves a hundred times as much water around the globe as all Earth’s rivers combined.

This was meant to put boosters on the near-trillion-tonne berg, rifling it up into the South Atlantic and certain oblivion.

Instead, A23a went precisely nowhere. It remains in place just north of South Orkney Islands, turning in an anti-clockwise direction by about 15 degrees a day. And as long as it does this, its decay and eventual demise will be delayed.

A23a has not grounded again; there is at least a thousand metres of water between its underside and the seafloor.

It’s been stopped in its tracks by a type of vortex first described in the 1920s by a brilliant physicist, Sir G.I. (Geoffrey Ingram) Taylor.

The Cambridge academic was a pioneer in the field of fluid dynamics, and was even brought into the Manhattan Project to model the likely stability of the world’s first atomic bomb test.

Prof Taylor showed how a current that meets an obstruction on the seafloor can – under the right circumstances – separate into two distinct flows, generating a full-depth mass of rotating water between them.

In this instance, the obstruction is a 100km-wide bump on the ocean bottom known as Pirie Bank. The vortex sits on top of the bank, and for now A23a is its prisoner.

“The ocean is full of surprises, and this dynamical feature is one of the cutest you’ll ever see,” said Prof Mike Meredith from the British Antarctic Survey.

“Taylor Columns can also form in the air; you see them in the movement of clouds above mountains. They can be just a few centimetres across in an experimental laboratory tank or absolutely enormous as in this case where the column has a giant iceberg slap-bang in the middle of it.”

How long might A23a continue to perform its spinning-top routine?

Who knows, but when Prof Meredith placed a scientific buoy in a Taylor Column above another bump to the east of Pirie Bank, the floating instrument was still rotating in place four years later.

A23a is a perfect illustration once again of the importance of understanding the shape of the seafloor.

Submarine mountains, canyons and slopes have a profound influence on the direction and mixing of waters, and on the distribution of the nutrients that drive biological activity in the ocean.

And this influence extends also to the climate system: it’s the mass movement of water that helps disperse heat energy around the globe.

A23a’s behaviour can be explained because the ocean bottom just north of South Orkney is reasonably well surveyed.

That’s not the case for much of the rest of the world.

Currently, only a quarter of Earth’s seafloor has been mapped to the best modern standard.

As the Paris gymnastics arena roared on American Simone Biles for her third gold medal of the 2024 Olympics, one of those applauding was none other than An Chang-ok, a rival from North Korea.

Saturday’s women’s vault final saw the North share a stage with its foes South Korea and the US.

An, 21, grinned and waved for TV cameras and hugged at least one fellow finalist – rare interactions with foreigners by a young woman required to perform diplomatic gymnastics while being carefully chaperoned on her trip away from home.

Pyongyang’s decision to send athletes to these Games – two of whom even posed for a selfie with rivals from the South – has raised hopes that the secretive state could be partially reopening after a particularly deep period of isolation.

After all, this comes after a heated period that has seen the North sending waste-filled balloons at the South.

• Biles takes vault title in emphatic fashion
• Other big stories from day eight of the Games
• Who’s leading the medals table in Paris?

The North’s participation in these Games signalled a “remarkable” return to the international fold, suggested Jean H Lee, a former Associated Press journalist who opened the US news agency’s first bureau in the North Korean capital, Pyongyang.

It did not send any athletes to the Tokyo Olympics, held in 2021, after the country shut itself off from the world even more sternly than usual due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

But in Paris, it was “making the effort to rejoin the international community”, Lee said, “regardless of what’s happening with their nuclear programme, which is always the elephant in the room”.

The North’s nuclear ambitions are an enduring cause of tension with the South and the US. But there was no sign of animosity between the three nations’ gymnasts on Saturday.

This new generation of North Korean athletes have claimed two silvers in Paris, and occasionally surprised sport commentators who did not know what to expect from them.

Winning medals was not the country’s only aim, according to Prof Ramon Pacheco Pardo of King’s College London, who has written extensively on the two Koreas.

The age-old North Korean art of “sports diplomacy” involved limited participation in a global forum to prove the country was normal, Prod Pacheco Pardo said. Athletes were some of the “few actors that North Korea has who won’t be viewed suspiciously” by the world, he explained.

The contrasting support for An and Biles could not have been starker. In an earlier competition during the Games in Paris, Biles was memorably cheered on by a host of celebrity supporters in the stands, including Lady Gaga, Ariana Grande, Tom Cruise and Snoop Dogg. Thousands of punters yelled her name on Saturday, too.

An, meanwhile, received only polite appreciation from the neutrals. She had no compatriots in the room, since ordinary North Koreans are prevented from leaving their country.

It is unlikely that anyone was watching at home, either, as the Games are not being televised live in North Korea, according to Radio Free Asia (RFA). And BBC Monitoring has only been able to find a handful of text reports in the tightly-controlled state media.

Nonetheless, “the chattering class of Pyongyang certainly will, from one source or another” know the Olympic results as they come in, said John Everard, the UK’s ambassador to North Korea from 2006 to 2008.

An is among 16 North Korean who athletes have come to an opulent host city that could hardly be more different to the austere Pyongyang airport in which they were filmed setting off last month.

Top North Korean athletes were likely to have some awareness of the outside world, said Everard, but there was still likely to be a “shock factor”.

One of the viral moments of the Games so far was a rare encounter that seemed to break the boundaries: when a bronze-winning South Korean table-tennis player took a selfie that showed his mixed-doubles partner posing alongside the silver-winning North Korean duo.

Would the leadership in Pyongyang have anticipated – or relished – this brief symbol of unity between two nations who are still technically at war?

Agreeing to the selfie was “a message” from the North, said Prof Pachedo Pardo, who speculated that the move would have had Pyongyang’s consent. “North Korea is indicating that it doesn’t have a problem with South Korean people – that the issue it has is with the South Korean government.”

At any rate, the moment was not totally unexpected, after something similar in 2016. And two years later, North and South fielded a joint women’s ice hockey team at the Winter Games in the South.

The selfie represents one of the North’s few visible interactions with the outside world during the Games, including a perfunctory press conference by the two table-tennis stars.

Away from the stadiums, unverified footage has appeared to show An holding a collection of pin-badges, which are reported to be an item popularly traded by international gymnasts.

After so much exposure to the Western world, the athletes will probably undergo a gruelling “debrief” after returning home to ensure they stay on-message, said Lee, who is also the co-host of the BBC World Service’s Lazarus Heist podcast.

Contrary to the myth, any athlete deemed to have “failed” would probably not be punished, the analysts agreed. But they could face gruelling “self-criticism” sessions.

“The big hit for not winning a medal isn’t so much the punishment, it’s that you don’t gain all the benefits that you could have gained,” said Everard. Victorious athletes may be given higher status in society and even prizes such as a new home.

It remains to be seen whether this latest sporting diplomacy will translate into meaningful new talks between the two Koreas. The relative bonhomie in Paris was briefly imperilled at the outset by a furore when organisers mixed up the two nations’ names in the opening ceremony, for which they apologised.

Outside the Bercy Arena after Saturday’s gymnastics, one fan from the Seoul side was not convinced the politics would change much.

But she said the sight of sportspeople sharing a stage was at least a reminder that all Koreans were united by something “human”.

“Mercury retrograde is coming back, my darlings.”

Sadicka, an astrologer and spiritual life coach, is telling her 5,000 Instagram followers to watch out for technology issues, trouble communicating with people and even car accidents, ahead of the planet Mercury going into retrograde from 4 August.

A few times a year, Instagram and TikTok are flooded with cautionary posts like this one – as well as more tongue-in-cheek content (think: “POV: you blame all of your problems on Mercury being in retrograde instead of actually dealing with them”).

Mercury is the closest planet to the Sun and Mercury retrograde is an optical illusion which occurs three or four times a year, making the planet appear to move in the opposite direction than it usually does.

It is a similar effect to when one car overtakes another and, to those in the faster car, the slower vehicle appears to be moving backwards. All planets appear this way from Earth at various points, as they orbit the Sun at different speeds.

People have observed Mercury going into retrograde for thousands of years, and many believers in astrology (the influence of stars and planets on interpersonal events) link it to an increase in personal problems.

• Why is astrology so popular now?
• ‘My astrology obsession stopped me leaving the house’

Lina Sahhab, a 42-year-old who works for a non-profit, tells the BBC that she once believed superstitions surrounding Mercury were just that.

“Then I started noticing that the obstacles in my life really happen when there is a Mercury retrograde,” she says.

“My laptop would suddenly stop working, or I would buy something that has to do with technology that would not function properly.”

The lack of evidence for astrology doesn’t harm its popularity, especially on social media.

In an era where we can both predict the weather and find answers to most of our questions on Google, astrology enthusiasts often look to horoscopes for guidance on things most humans still feel they have little control over – like romance, friendship or even technology.

Perhaps it is no coincidence that, according to Google Trends, searches for “birth chart” and “astrology” both hit five-year peaks in 2020, during the Covid-19 pandemic, a time of immense uncertainty.

While astrology is now considered a pseudoscience, in the ancient civilisations in which it was first conceived, people needed ways to help them predict things like the timing of rainfall, temperature, wind and sunlight – and doing so was a survival skill.

Astrology can be traced back to between 3000BC and 2001BC to a region of West Asia then known as Mesopotamia. From there, it spread to India, and it eventually started to look more like it does now during the Hellenistic period (323BC to 31BC) in Ancient Greece.

According to Dr Nicholas Campion, professor of cosmology and culture at University of Wales Trinity Saint David, the Mercury retrograde phenomenon was discovered during the final century BC – but it wasn’t always interpreted as it is today.

Dr Campion says that in medieval times, if someone was trying to answer a question by plotting an astrological chart, Mercury being in retrograde was taken as a sign the answer was negative, or that something was “unlikely to happen”.

“It is only in the 20th century, in the astrology of the English-speaking world, that it came to mean ‘delays’ in particular,” says the astrology expert, adding that this interpretation took over in the 1980s.

Dr Campion says modern astrologists who subscribe to the influence of Mercury retrograde believe it means plans are going to be put on hold, or it is a bad time to start a new job or begin something new.

“It is very much a feature of a particular strand of western astrology,” he says. “Western astrology now spreads all over the world through social media and apps, so it is becoming global.”

Dr Campion says Mercury retrograde didn’t always have the same prominence that is does today: “It was always a very minor phenomenon in astrology.”

“Whilst astronomy and astrology may have been more closely rooted in the past, the general scientific consensus at present is that astronomical phenomena like retrogrades don’t have any predictable effect on people’s lives,” says Dhara Patel, of the National Space Centre in Leicester.

If science suggests Mercury retrograde may not have any bearing on our lives, why do so many people still turn to the stars for answers?

Some studies have linked belief in horoscopes and zodiac signs to “confirmation bias”, the tendency to believe or remember information that aligns with our pre-existing beliefs, and interpret it selectively to support them.

Zeinab Ajami, a clinical psychologist undertaking humanitarian mental health work in Ukraine, tells the BBC that “people tend to believe things that make them feel relieved or comfortable, and that do not require the brain to constantly analyse and reassess”.

She says astrology may provide a “fast and easy explanation” for difficult events, without the need for people to look at the “multiple layers to their problems”.

But many find star signs a gateway to inspiration, entertainment or some spiritual solace.

Mireille Hammal, a Beirut-based specialist in Reiki (a complementary therapy and form of energy healing), says clients who believe in the influence of the Mercury retrograde “usually avoid purchasing electronics during that period, or postpone signing contracts, moving to a new home or taking the step of getting married or engaged”.

Ms Hammal acknowledges that “a lot of people consider astrology to be just nonsense” but believes that it can be helpful to people as long as they avoid “reaching the point of obsession”.

Dr Campion, who runs an MA in Cultural Astronomy and Astrology, believes Mercury retrograde found popularity due to its simplicity – but says this can undermine how professional astrology is perceived.

“[Mercury retrograde] almost does not need any interpretation,” he says. “It’s not complicated or complex, and it applies to everybody.

“This idea that this is either a good or bad time for making plans really undermines the idea that astrology can be complex and nuanced,” he continues. “Because the fact is lots of things happen very well when Mercury is in retrograde.”

At the age of 23, Nigerian musician Udoh Ebaide Joy survived a traumatic car accident.

It damaged her spinal cord and for months she could not get around without a wheelchair.

But alongside the pain, Ms Joy felt an overwhelming sense of clarity.

“It made me decide that I will live my life to the fullest,” she told the BBC’s Africa Daily podcast.

In the time since she recovered, Ms Joy has put her energy – and all her savings – into travelling, even converting a 1980s Nissan van into a home on wheels.

But Ms Joy’s greatest adventure took place this year when, at the age of 32, she became the first documented black African woman to travel solo from East to West Africa on a motorcycle.

The Afrobeats singer did a 9,000km (5,600 miles) trip from the Kenyan city of Mombasa to Lagos in Nigeria, and she spent more than three months travelling.

Along the way she experienced gorgeous scenery, visa problems, an underground community of African bikers, lone rides through “scary” forests and an epic, tear-jerking homecoming celebration.

“Being alone and travelling on those roads, not understanding the language, I was always travelling with fear, which was good because my fears keep me alive,” she says.

The journey began earlier this year when Ms Joy flew to Kenya and bought a 250cc motorbike, which she named Rory.

Having never even ridden a standard bicycle, let alone a motorbike, she took a one-week training course in the capital, Nairobi, to prepare for her adventure.

Then, on 8 March, Ms Joy embarked on her odyssey through Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Tanzania, Zambia, Angola, the Republic of Congo, Cameroon and Nigeria.

She opted to avoid the Democratic Republic of Congo because of conflict in the east and other safety issues, as well as the poor condition of the roads.

Kenya was the perfect starting point – “the people, the friendliness” were second to none, she says.

The “crazy” roads of Kampala, Uganda’s capital, naturally threw her a few challenges.

However after this experience, she rode to her next destination – Rwanda, and was very impressed by its “seamless” border crossing.

When entering numerous other countries Ms Joy faced extra costs, bureaucracy and hours-long delays.

But Rwanda is one of the few nations on the continent with visa-free travel for all Africans.

It was also “a motorcyclist’s dream” – its mountainous terrain was perfect for practising how to lean from side to side while riding. This was something Ms Joy truly embraced and enjoyed.

Tanzania provided the most memorable meal of Ms Joy’s trip.

After riding for several hours without seeing a single person, she encountered a village in the middle of a forest. Local women at an eatery served a hungry Ms Joy some soup, a huge platter of roasted chicken, and a bowl of fluffy white rice.

“They were fascinated by a girl on a motorcycle and interested in my bad Swahili,” she laughs. “The conversation was so sweet, it just felt good to eat and to see people.”

Along with curious locals, Ms Joy encountered many sites of cultural significance and natural beauty on her trip. She was enthralled by the Victoria Falls on the Zambia-Zimbabwe border.

“It felt great! I’d heard about Victoria Falls forever – for heaven’s sake, it’s one of the seven [natural] wonders in our own universe,” she says.

She met bikers from various countries on her trip, and they joined her for short legs of her journey, recommending where to stay or eat.

An app for bikers also proved invaluable, allowing her to get tips and other advice.

When she started out Ms Joy had intended to camp at night by the roadsides, but soon gave up on the idea as unsafe – and half-way through her journey sent her tent and other camping equipment back home to reduce her baggage.

From Kampala onwards she stayed in cheap hotels – sometimes staying a few days in one place to explore.

“On days I rode, I did at least 300km,” she said, explaining she would often ride overnight.

In Angola, bikers threw her a party – to celebrate the journey she had taken so far.

“It’s a small community,” she says. “No matter where you are, if you get the right connection, you can meet any biker anywhere.”

Those without the ability – or inclination – to jump on a bike and ride alongside Ms Joy, were able to travel with her virtually.

She posted dozens of slick mini-vlogs on social media, captivating viewers across the world with her humour and honesty.

When she had an internet connection, she would send her recordings to someone back home, who would edit the footage and post videos for her.

By the end of the trip, she had reached more than 100,000 followers on Instagram.

Many of these supporters were women, who were proud to see Ms Joy overcoming gender-based stereotypes.

She showed the world she was a woman on a bike, fulfilling her own adventure, doing something for herself.

“Thank you for showing the WORLD how amazing women can be!” one commented.

Ms Joy did not face any discrimination whilst meeting people on her journey.

“People ask about the negativities, but I have not experienced the negatives,” she says.

“Yes, people are fascinated about a girl on a bike, but I’ve not had any bad experiences.”

The positivity she encountered throughout the journey peaked when she reached her final destination – Lagos, the main city in Nigeria.

Fellow bikers and other members of the public crowded the street to give her a hero’s welcome in an event organised by Nigeria’s arts and culture ministry.

“When I arrived, I couldn’t hold back my tears. People were dancing and cheering. I couldn’t contain my excitement,” Ms Joy remembers.

After sleeping “non-stop for three days”, she concludes that the trek changed her outlook on life.

“The trip taught me that I am resilient and tenacious enough to overcome any challenge that life throws at me,” she says.

“I had the best time of my life.”

She has no plans to hang up her leathers though. In just over a month, she will set off on a journey from Nigeria to Morocco.

Biking is a “lifetime lesson”, she explains – it has taken her to the most sublime places and introduced her to the most wonderful people.

• LISTEN: Udoh Ebaide Joy talks to Africa Daily
• Trekking 10,000km across Africa for a football match
• ‘Born to be wild’: Kenya’s female biker gang

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, many questions remain unanswered.

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.

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.”

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”.

Listen to Madeline read this article

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.

Milla Magee was crowned Miss England in May with some reports calling her the first plus size Miss England.

The 23-year-old said whatever your size “it doesn’t matter” and she wants to use her reign to spread the message.

She lives in Newquay in Cornwall, but grew up in London where she was surrounded by rock ‘n’ roll, with a mum who worked at Creation Records, the label of Oasis and Primal Scream.

Her godmother is Noel Gallagher’s ex-wife Meg Matthews, and Milla was “trying to conform to the lifestyle”.

“I went to an all-girls school and I think that’s where the struggle started,” she said.

“A lot of the other girls were petite and small.

“It’s not in my bone structure to look like that but I tried to conform to that because it’s what society told me I had to look like.”

What followed was body dysmorphia, a condition which causes people to believe they are extremely ugly.

She said: “And then I just it dawned on me, I thought, ‘no, I will make it my style’.”

Looking back to curvy beauties of the past such as Marilyn Monroe was her inspiration.

“We had role models of women back in the day, like the gorgeous Marilyn Monroe, who was curvaceous, or models like Naomi Campbell, who are very tall and athletically built,” she said.

“And they’re so beautiful, and embrace their looks.

“It’s about embracing whatever we’ve been born with and it’s still beautiful.”

Now, winning the Miss England title as the only size 16 in the line-up, she wants to be “that representative that I wish I had”.

What also helped her shun the demands of the body perfect was surfing on trips down from London and in Newquay where she has lived since she was 16.

“Surfing saved my life because at that time living in London I struggled a lot mentally and that was trying to conform to the lifestyle that I was born into,” she said.

“It was a very different lifestyle to the way I live now.

“I was trying to conform to my surroundings because we’ve got this image of what men and women should look like.

“But if you’re passionate and stay true to yourself, if you’re kind and humble that’s all that matters.”

She took this body positive message all the way to the podium when she was crowned Miss England in May.

She accepted there was still a tension between what was perceived by many as a beauty contest and shunning body stereotypes, but urges a different outlook on the contest.

She said rather than being a beauty contest the ethos of Miss England is now “beauty with a purpose”.

“I wanted to be part of the movement to change perspective on these so-called pageants,” she said.

“It’s evolved so much with women from all walks of life coming together.

“We’ve had firefighters, we’ve had lawyers, we’ve had doctors, myself as the first surfer and lifeguard to represent.

“You can’t not be inspired by the women around you. It’s not about the physical on the outside, it’s about beauty from the inside.”

Did she mention lifeguard?

Yes, she trained at Fistral in Newquay and is taking it further with her campaign Go Far with CPR – which calls for the teaching of the resuscitation technique CPR to be compulsory in schools.

“It’s a skill that you can do wherever you are in the world, but it is the difference between life and death,” she said.

“Both of my grandfathers passed away before I was born due to heart attacks.”

Back at Fistral, she is on a mission to spread the word all the way to the Miss World event next year.

“I feel like if I can use my voice and use this opportunity, not only to represent… represent our beautiful country, but also use my voice for positive change and for good, that is what my purpose is,” she said.

“If I can be a representative to all those young girls who look at me and think that they can relate to that, then I’ve done my job,” she said.

X (formerly Twitter)

There are few people who have become more synonymous with the 2024 Olympics than Snoop Dogg.

When there is an American athlete vying for a medal in Paris, there is a camera ready to pan to the American rapper cheering in the stands.

He has been seen dancing alongside the US women’s gymnastics team, dressing up in equestrian gear to support American horseback riders and even trying out judo skills.

Snoop Dogg’s enthusiasm for the games has injected a new energy into the Olympics that is captivating viewers in Paris and the internet alike, and making for a highly watched summer games, according to NBC viewership numbers.

After multiple clips went viral from Snoop Dogg’s time hosting a highlight show with comedian Kevin Hart on NBC’s streaming platform Peacock during the Tokyo Olympics in 2021 – the network gave the rapper an even bigger role in 2024: special correspondent.

But Snoop Dogg has seemingly taken the role to the next level becoming a cheerleader for American athletes regardless of the sport.

He started his games with an integral role: he was among the final torchbearers of the Olympic flame before the game’s opening ceremony last week.

The 52-year-old, whose full name is Calvin Cordozar Broadus Jr, carried the torch through the streets of Saint-Denis in the north of Paris, home to the Stade de France Olympic Stadium.

And while the role of special correspondent and his torch-bearing job were announced ahead of time, Snoop Dogg’s consistent presence and high energy for the American athletes has been a special surprise for viewers.

“We’ve been pleasantly surprised by his popularity, but you never ever underestimate Snoop Dogg,” Molly Solomon, NBC’s executive producer of the Olympics, told reporters this week.

She described him an “ambassador of happiness”.

When the US women’s gymnastics team competed earlier this week, Snoop Dogg was dancing in the stands and sporting a t-shirt with Simone Biles’ face on it.

Elsewhere in Paris, he has cheered on tennis star Coco Gauff and volleyball star Kelly Cheng, among countless others.

On Saturday, he joined American celebrity chef Martha Stewart in watching the equestrian events, while decked out in horse riding gear.

He participated in promotional judo event during the games where he was awarded an honorary black belt and got a swimming lesson from American-swimming great Michael Phelps.

Some have suggested the rapper’s presence has been a defining factor in better ratings.

Beginning on 26 July, the day of the opening ceremony, the five-day total audience average was 34 million viewers when combining daytime and primetime coverage, an NBC Sports release said.

That is up 79% from the 2021 Tokyo Olympics where viewership suffered because of the pandemic.

But beyond the ratings and the internet coalescing, Snoop Dogg said he is just enjoying himself.

Never “in his wildest dreams” did he expect to play this role in the Olympics, he told NBC Nightly News’ Lester Holt in an interview recalling watching the Olympics on TV when he was younger.

“I’m the biggest kid in the crowd,” Snoop Dogg said.

The BBC has begun to remove Huw Edwards from some of its archive footage after the former broadcaster pleaded guilty to making indecent images of children.

It is starting with family and entertainment content on iPlayer, according to the Observer which first reported on the move.

Until last year, Edwards was one of the main presenters on BBC One’s News at Ten and often fronted coverage of major national events.

“As you would expect we are actively considering the availability of our archive,” a BBC spokesperson said.

“While we don’t routinely delete content from the BBC archive as it is a matter of historical record, we do consider the continued use and re-use of material on a case-by-case basis.”

Edwards resigned from the BBC in April citing medical advice. On Wednesday, he admitted having 41 indecent images of children, which had been sent to him by another man on WhatsApp.

The Observer claimed that the removal of certain content was aimed at “protecting audiences from repeats of Edwards’ most visible work in news and on state occasions”, including the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II.

A Doctor Who episode featuring Edwards’ voice has already been removed from iPlayer.

The episode from 2006 features David Tennant and Billie Piper as the Doctor and his companion Rose Tyler. The pair travel to the future to the London 2012 Olympics where Edwards’ voice is heard as part of a televised BBC news report.

A mural of the former newsreader in the presenter’s home village of Llangennech, Carmarthenshire has also been removed.

Artist Steve Jenkins, 50, painted over the portrait on Tuesday after it was announced Edwards had been charged.

Cardiff council has also removed a plaque honouring Edwards at Cardiff Castle.

In a separate development, The Sunday Times has revealed that a woman who complained to the BBC about Edwards twice is having therapy paid for by the corporation.

The newspaper says the woman, a member of the public called Rachel, struck up a friendship with Huw Edwards in 2018 over social media.

In 2021, Rachel complained about Edwards, alleging the relationship was becoming “toxic”. She complained about him again the following year.

She retracted both her complaints. Nevertheless, the newspaper reports that the BBC warned Edwards about his behaviour and told him to stop contacting her, but he did not.

After an investigation into its handling of Rachel’s complaints, the BBC admitted shortcomings in its processes. It is still paying for Rachel’s therapy.

A BBC Spokesperson said: “If a complaint is made, or concern raised, about how the BBC handles such a complaint then we always investigate thoroughly, provide support to those involved and be as transparent as possible in relation to our work, findings and any resolution.”

It has also emerged that the BBC board, which oversees the running of the corporation, has asked executives for two briefing papers covering their response to Edwards’ arrest in November and the internal disciplinary process he faced.

Imagine memorising lines, lyrics and dance moves for the lead role in one of the world’s biggest plays.

For the cast of Hamilton, it’s what you sign up for.

The musical, created by Lin-Manuel Miranda, has been a huge hit with audiences and critics since its Broadway debut in 2015.

It retells America’s early political history through jam-packed raps and musical numbers that hurtle through genres including hip-hop, pop and R&B.

Praised for its clever, complex lyrics, cast members sings and dance their way through an estimated 144 words per minute during each show.

Actor Jonathan Hermosa-Lopez says this is why Hamilton is regarded as the “boss level” of musical theatre.

“It’s every single element of theatre at the highest level, put together,” he says.

“The music is so demanding and so relentless in pace.”

And Jonathan should know – he’s had to memorise not one, but four different parts.

The British-Colombian actor is a member of the theatre company currently performing Hamilton on a UK and Ireland tour.

But his road to the show actually started with crushing disappointment.

He was working graveyard shifts in hospitality while trying to find acting work, and was rejected when he first auditioned for Hamilton.

“It was this weird feeling of my life falling apart,” he says. “What else is there for me to do?”

But the following week he got a call, asking him to be an “alternate Hamilton”.

Alternates, or understudies, are the people on standby to step in if a lead actor falls ill or is otherwise unable to perform.

Rather than feel intimated by the scale of the challenge, Jonathan says he embraced the opportunity.

“I sat down for 12 hours in one day, learning it word for word, note for note,” he says.

“It got filmed and sent to the American producers who have the final say on things, and I got the part.”

There’s always a chance Jonathan, who grew up in south London, could have to swap a dressing room for centre stage.

When BBC Newsbeat meets him, it’s hours before he covers the lead role in front of a full house at Birmingham’s Hippodrome.

On this occasion, he knew he’d be needed in advance, but he isn’t always given that luxury.

“I just have to jump into the show,” he says.

Jonathan recalls getting a call from Hamilton’s tour manager during its Manchester run, moments before he was about to take a shower.

He says they asked him to come down from his room immediately as lead actor Shaq Taylor, who plays Alexander Hamilton, might need to come off-stage.

“My whole body flipped,” says Jonathan.

“So I went downstairs and the heads of every department were waiting for me – ready to do my hair, my costume.

“Sound were ready to put my mic on.

“In my mind, I was like, ‘this is the job I signed up for’.

“When Shaq came off there was an announcement and, when the next song started, I was on stage starting the show again.

“It takes a village to run the show but in that moment, it’s me that has to come in and fill those shoes.”

Hamilton’s cast is mostly made up of performers from minority backgrounds playing white historical figures, many of whom forced black people to be slaves.

Others who’ve performed in the show have spoken about it giving them a platform, and Jonathan says getting on stage felt particularly significant for him.

“Living in a single-parent household, I wanted to achieve something to make my mum proud,” he says.

But although his mum was desperate to see Hamilton, Jonathan had to say “no” when she asked to go with him.

He wanted her first time to be one when he was on-stage.

“I debuted in Manchester and she finally got to watch Hamilton live with me playing Hamilton,” he says.

There is also pride in being able to provide a positive reflection of the place he grew up in – a council estate in Brixton.

“This beautiful, vibrant community, full of so much diversity.

“I wanted to do something so out of the norm for Brixton, to go into musical theatre,” he says.

He adds there are many talented people in the area “who don’t get recognised” because of a lack of opportunity to do so in south London.

And while the motto for a job tends to be to “leave everything personal outside the building”, he doesn’t subscribe to that.

“The beauty of this show is you don’t have to do that,” he says.

“You get to come in with your own energy, your own baggage and say how can I take what I have today and use it.”

At least 32 people were killed in a suicide attack carried out by al-Shabab militants at a popular beachfront location in the Somali capital, a police spokesman said on Saturday.

Abdifatah Adan Hassan said around 63 people were also wounded, some of them critically.

Video footage showed a number of bodies and wounded people in Mogadishu’s Abdiaziz district.

Al-Shabab controls large parts of southern and central Somalia. The group is affiliated to al-Qaeda and has waged a brutal insurgency for nearly 20 years against the UN-backed government in Somalia.

In a statement claiming the attack, al-Shabab said “politicians, [security] forces and employees from various ministries and offices” were among those killed.

The group says the death toll and injuries are much higher than figures released by the police.

One eyewitness told AFP news agency people were in a state of panic, as “it was hard to know what was happening because shooting started soon after the blast”.

Abdilatif Ali said some people attempted to take cover on Lido beach, while others tried to flee the location.

“I saw wounded people at the beachside. People were screaming in panic and it was hard to notice who was dead and who was still alive,” he added.

At least five people were responsible for the attack, as Mr Hasan said one attacker blew himself up while three others were killed.

One attacker was captured alive, the police spokesman told reporters in Mogadishu.

Moussa Faki Mahamat, chair of the African Union Commission, described the attack as “horrific”.

The Somali Disaster Management Agency urged people to donate blood to support injured victims.

US presidential candidates Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are at odds over their first head-to-head debate, with each in favour of a different broadcaster and date.

The Harris campaign is pushing for a debate to take place on ABC News on 10 September, in a slot previously scheduled for a debate between President Joe Biden and Mr Trump.

But Mr Trump says the ABC debate has been “terminated” by Mr Biden leaving the race – and has instead pushed for himself and Ms Harris to debate on Fox News on 4 September.

The pair will face off for the presidency when the US goes to the polls on 5 November.

The disagreement began after President Biden dropped out of the race on 21 July, with Ms Harris immediately becoming favourite to secure the Democratic nomination.

• Project 2025 – a wishlist for a Trump presidency
• A guide to Donald Trump’s four criminal cases
• Who could be Harris’s running mate?

US TV networks have been negotiating with both campaigns to arrange new dates.

On Friday night, Mr Trump wrote on his social network Truth Social that he had accepted Fox News’ proposal for a debate on 4 September, which is pencilled to take place in Pennsylvania – a key battleground state.

He wrote that the moderators would be Fox News’ Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum – and that the rules would be similar to his debate with Mr Biden.

“If for any reason Kamala is unwilling or unable to debate on that date, I have agreed with Fox to do a major Town Hall on the same September 4th evening,” he wrote.

Mr Trump added that the prior agreement has been terminated because Joe Biden is no longer taking part and because his defamation case against the broadcaster would mean there is a conflict of interest.

The Harris campaign has responded saying the former president is “running scared” and is trying to back out of the agreed debate. They said he’s looking to Fox News – a conservative cable network – to “bail him out”.

“He needs to stop playing games and show up to the debate he already committed to on Sept 10,” Michael Tyler, Harris Campaign communications director said.

Ms Harris followed up on social media, saying it is interesting how “any time, any place” becomes “one specific time, one specific safe space”.

“I’ll be there on September 10th, like he agreed to,” she wrote.

Ms Harris’ team said they are open to discussing further debates but only after the agreed one takes place.

If and when the next debate does happen it will be keenly watched to see how the two contenders match up.

Ms Harris secured enough pledges to become the Democratic nominee on Friday.

During a campaign rally in Atlanta on Wednesday, Ms Harris challenged Mr Trump to debate her, saying “if you got something to say, say it to my face”.

The debate news comes just hours after a report by the Homeland Security Department revealed that the US Secret Service made mistakes in their response to the 6 January attack on the US Capitol.

Ms Harris, who was then vice-president-elect, came within 20ft (6m) of a “viable” pipe bomb planted outside the Democratic National Committee’s headquarters in Washington.

That bomb – and a similar one found at the Republican National Committee headquarters – were placed near the buildings the night before Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol. It remains unclear who planted both pipe bombs.

• SIMPLE GUIDE: Everything you need to know about the vote
• ANALYSIS: Three ways Trump will try to end Harris honeymoon
• SWING STATES: Where the election could be won and lost
• EXPLAINER: RFK Jr and others running for president
• VOTERS: US workers in debt to buy groceries

A man who was punished for writing left-handed in school developed a stammer as a result.

Robert Erskine, 70, is a sculptor and automotive broadcaster based in Suffolk.

During primary school, teachers punished him by hitting him with a ruler when he attempted to use his left hand to write.

He told BBC Radio Suffolk he then developed a stammer which worsened in secondary school when he had to read aloud in class.

“I was left-handed at that time so I picked up the pen, started writing and no sooner than I had started to attempt to write, the teacher came up to me with her brown wooden ruler,” Mr Erskine said of his first writing lesson.

“She thwacked the back of my left hand and she thrust the pen in my right hand and said, ‘That’s how you write’. Of course, I couldn’t do it.”

Mr Erskine, of Wortham, near Diss, said he was left crying and “absolutely terrified”.

Once home, he hid his left hand which had been “quite bruised”.

Shortly afterwards, Mr Erskine developed a stammer which he now understands was a sign of trauma.

Once in secondary school, his English lessons required reading in front of classmates, which was a huge challenge for him.

“I remember I just wanted to run to the bathroom – any excuse to get out of the classroom,” he explained.

“But, no, my turn came around. I went up to the front of the class. I was shaking, sweating. I was an absolute state.

“I couldn’t read the first word of this book which was The Wind in the Willows.

“It was terrible and, of course, everyone burst out laughing, and that made it even worse.”

Fortunately, a teacher worked with Mr Erskine on his stammer and he pushed himself to keep reading in front of the class.

“Weirdly, if you put yourself deliberately in these situations and work at it, it really helps,” he said.

“It can be sorted out, there is no question.”

Mr Erskine was keen to share his advice that people needed to be patient with those who had stammers.

“The more you try to hurry, the more they get flustered,” he said.

“The bottom line is that it’s nothing to be ashamed of… Luckily today, unlike in my time, there is professional help.”

Several countries have urged their nationals to leave Lebanon, as fears grow of a wider conflict in the Middle East.

Iran has vowed “severe” retaliation against Israel, which it blames for the death of Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran on Wednesday. Israel has not commented.

His assassination came hours after Israel killed Hezbollah senior commander Fuad Shukr in Beirut.

Western officials fear that Hezbollah, an Iran-backed militia and political movement based in Lebanon, could play a key role in any such retaliation, which in turn could spark a serious Israeli response.

Diplomatic efforts by the US and other Western countries continue to try to de-escalate tensions across the region.

A growing number of flights have been cancelled or suspended at the country’s only commercial airport in Beirut.

The US, the UK, Australia, Sweden, France, Italy, Canada, South Korea, Saudi Arabia and Jordan are among the countries to have urged their citizens to leave Lebanon as soon as possible.

Fears of an escalation of hostilities that could engulf Lebanon are at their highest since Hezbollah started its attacks on Israel, a day after the deadly Hamas attacks on southern Israel on 7 October, in support for Palestinians in Gaza.

Most of the violence has been contained to border areas, with both sides indicating not being interested in a wider conflict.

Hezbollah, however, has vowed to respond to Shukr’s assassination, which happened in Dahiyeh, the group’s stronghold in Beirut’s southern suburbs.

On Sunday, Hezbollah launched dozens of rockets at the town of Beit Hillel in northern Israel at around 00:25 local time (21:25 GMT Saturday).

Footage posted on social media showed Israel’s Iron Dome air defence system intercepting the rockets. There have been no reports of casualties.

Israel’s air force responded by striking targets in southern Lebanon.

In a separate development on Sunday morning, two people were killed in a stabbing attack in the Israeli city of Holon. The attacker was later “neutralised”, police said.

Also on Sunday, officials from the Hamas-run ministry of health in Gaza said an Israeli air strike had hit a tent inside a hospital, killing at least five people. The officials said 19 Palestinians had been killed on Sunday.

In a statement on Saturday, the US embassy in Beirut said those who chose to stay in Lebanon should “prepare contingency plans” and be prepared to “shelter in place for an extended period of time”.

The Pentagon has said it is deploying additional warships and fighter jets to the region to help defend Israel from possible attacks by Iran and its proxies, a strategy similar to the one adopted in April, when Iran launched more than 300 missiles and drones at Israel in retaliation to an attack on its diplomatic compound in Syria.

It blamed Israel for that strike.

Many fear Iran’s retaliation on this occasion could take a similar form.

The UK says it is sending extra military personnel, consular staff and border force officials to help with any evacuations.

It has urged UK citizens to leave Lebanon while commercial flights are running.

Two British military ships are already in the region and the Royal Air Force has put transport helicopters on standby.

UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy said the regional situation “could deteriorate rapidly”.

In a phone call with EU Foreign Policy Chief Josep Borrell on Friday, Iran’s Acting Foreign Minister Ali Baqeri Kani said Iran would “undoubtedly use its inherent and legitimate right” to “punish” Israel.

On Friday, an announcer on Iran’s state TV warned “the world would witness extraordinary scenes”.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has warned Israelis that “challenging days lie ahead… We have heard threats from all sides. We are prepared for any scenario”.

Tensions between Israel and Iran initially escalated with the killing of 12 children and teenagers in a strike on the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

Israel accused Hezbollah and vowed “severe” retaliation, though Hezbollah denied it was involved.

Days later, Shukr, who was a close adviser to the Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, was killed in a targeted Israeli air strike in Beirut. Four others, including two children, were also killed.

Hours after that, Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh was assassinated in Iran, Hamas’s main backer. He was visiting to attend the inauguration of Iran’s new president, Masoud Pezeshkian.

Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has said Israel will suffer a “harsh punishment” for the killing.

Haniyeh’s assassination dealt a blow to the negotiations for a ceasefire and hostage release deal in Gaza, the main hope to defuse tensions along the Lebanon-Israel border.

The war began in October when Hamas carried out an unprecedented attack on Israel, killing about 1,200 people and taking 251 others back to Gaza as hostages.

The attack triggered a massive Israeli military response, which has killed at least 39,480 Palestinians in Gaza, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.

At least 76 people have been killed in Bangladesh amid worsening clashes between police and anti-government protesters.

The unrest comes as student leaders have declared a campaign of civil disobedience to demand that Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina step down.

Thirteen police officers were killed when thousands of people attacked a police station in the district of Sirajganj, police said.

The student protest started with a demand to abolish quotas in civil service jobs last month, but has now turned into a wider anti-government movement.

Both police and supporters of the governing party were seen shooting at anti-government protesters with live ammunition. Police also used tear gas and rubber bullets.

The total death toll since the protest movement began in July now stands at over 270.

A nationwide overnight curfew has been in place since 18:00 (12:00 GMT).

On Sunday Law and Justice Minister Anisul Huq told the BBC’s Newshour programme that authorities were showing “restraint”.

“If we had not shown restraint there would have been a bloodbath. I guess our patience has limits,” he added.

In the capital, Dhaka, access to internet on mobile devices has been suspended.

Without 4G and 3G people cannot communicate using the internet on their mobile devices. The source did not say when internet services would return to normal.

Deaths and injuries have been reported across the country, including the northern districts of Bogra, Pabna and Rangpur.

Thousands of people gathered in a main square in Dhaka and there have been violent incidents in other parts of the city.

“The whole city has turned into a battleground,” a policeman, who asked not to be named, told AFP news agency. He said a crowd of several thousand protesters had set fire to cars and motorcycles outside a hospital.

Students Against Discrimination, a group behind the anti-government demonstrations, said the nationwide disobedience movement would start from Sunday.

It urged people not to pay taxes or any utility bills.

The students have also called for a shutdown of all factories and public transport.

Around 10,000 people have been reportedly detained in a major crackdown by security forces in the past two weeks. Those arrested included opposition supporters and students.

The next few days are seen as crucial for both camps.

The protests pose a momentous challenge to Ms Hasina, who was elected for a fourth consecutive term in January elections, boycotted by the main opposition.

Students took to the streets last month over the reservation of many civil service jobs for relatives of the veterans of Bangladesh’s independence war with Pakistan in 1971.

Most of the quota has now been scaled back by the government following a government ruling, but students have continued to protest, demanding justice for those killed and injured. Now they want Ms Hasina to step down.

Supporters of Ms Hasina have ruled out her resignation.

Earlier, Ms Hasina offered unconditional dialogue with the student leaders, saying she wanted the violence to end.

“I want to sit with the agitating students of the movement and listen to them. I want no conflict,” she said.

But the student protesters have rejected her offer.

Ms Hasina called in the military last month to restore order after several police stations and state buildings were set on fire during the protests.

The Bangladeshi army chief, General Waker-Uz-Zaman, held a meeting with junior officers in Dhaka to assess the security situation.

“Bangladesh Army has always stood by the people and will continue to do so for the interest of people and in any need of the state,” Gen Zaman said, according to a release by the Inter Services Public Relation Directorate.

Bangladeshi media says most of those killed in last month’s protests were shot dead by police. Thousands were injured.

The government argues that police opened fire only in self-defence and to protect state properties.

Something remarkable has happened to A23a, the world’s biggest iceberg.

For months now it has been spinning on the spot just north of Antarctica when really it should be racing along with Earth’s most powerful ocean current.

Scientists say the frozen block, which is more than twice the size of Greater London, has been captured on top of a huge rotating cylinder of water.

It’s a phenomenon oceanographers call a Taylor Column – and it’s possible A23a might not escape its jailer for years.

“Usually you think of icebergs as being transient things; they fragment and melt away. But not this one,” observed polar expert Prof Mark Brandon.

“A23a is the iceberg that just refuses to die,” the Open University researcher told BBC News.

The berg’s longevity is well documented. It broke free from the Antarctic coastline way back in 1986, but then almost immediately got stuck in the bottom-muds of the Weddell Sea.

For three decades it was a static “ice island”. It didn’t budge. It wasn’t until 2020 that it re-floated and started to drift again, slowly at first, before then charging north towards warmer air and waters.

In early April this year, A23a stepped into the Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC) – a juggernaut that moves a hundred times as much water around the globe as all Earth’s rivers combined.

This was meant to put boosters on the near-trillion-tonne berg, rifling it up into the South Atlantic and certain oblivion.

Instead, A23a went precisely nowhere. It remains in place just north of South Orkney Islands, turning in an anti-clockwise direction by about 15 degrees a day. And as long as it does this, its decay and eventual demise will be delayed.

A23a has not grounded again; there is at least a thousand metres of water between its underside and the seafloor.

It’s been stopped in its tracks by a type of vortex first described in the 1920s by a brilliant physicist, Sir G.I. (Geoffrey Ingram) Taylor.

The Cambridge academic was a pioneer in the field of fluid dynamics, and was even brought into the Manhattan Project to model the likely stability of the world’s first atomic bomb test.

Prof Taylor showed how a current that meets an obstruction on the seafloor can – under the right circumstances – separate into two distinct flows, generating a full-depth mass of rotating water between them.

In this instance, the obstruction is a 100km-wide bump on the ocean bottom known as Pirie Bank. The vortex sits on top of the bank, and for now A23a is its prisoner.

“The ocean is full of surprises, and this dynamical feature is one of the cutest you’ll ever see,” said Prof Mike Meredith from the British Antarctic Survey.

“Taylor Columns can also form in the air; you see them in the movement of clouds above mountains. They can be just a few centimetres across in an experimental laboratory tank or absolutely enormous as in this case where the column has a giant iceberg slap-bang in the middle of it.”

How long might A23a continue to perform its spinning-top routine?

Who knows, but when Prof Meredith placed a scientific buoy in a Taylor Column above another bump to the east of Pirie Bank, the floating instrument was still rotating in place four years later.

A23a is a perfect illustration once again of the importance of understanding the shape of the seafloor.

Submarine mountains, canyons and slopes have a profound influence on the direction and mixing of waters, and on the distribution of the nutrients that drive biological activity in the ocean.

And this influence extends also to the climate system: it’s the mass movement of water that helps disperse heat energy around the globe.

A23a’s behaviour can be explained because the ocean bottom just north of South Orkney is reasonably well surveyed.

That’s not the case for much of the rest of the world.

Currently, only a quarter of Earth’s seafloor has been mapped to the best modern standard.

Ukraine has received its first American-made F-16 fighter jets, President Volodymyr Zelensky has said.

“F-16 in Ukraine. We did it,” President Zelensky said at a ceremony at an unnamed airbase – though he added that more were needed.

Ukraine’s leader thanked allies for what they were once very hesitant to provide.

The arrival of the jets marks a crucial milestone in boosting the capabilities of Ukraine’s air force, which largely relies on old Soviet-era jets.

• What is Nato, which countries are members and when might Ukraine join?
• Zelensky: Trump would be hard work, but we are hard workers
• Ukraine thrown into war’s bleak future as drones open new battlefront

More F-16s are expected and hoped in the months ahead, though Mr Zelensky admitted that Ukraine does not yet have enough trained pilots to fly them all.

He did not specify how many aircraft had arrived in Ukraine – or whether they had all been sent by Denmark, the Netherlands and the US, which he specifically thanked.

Around 65 F-16s have been pledged by Nato countries since US President Joe Biden first authorised willing European allies to send them to Ukraine in August 2023.

The F-16 was introduced in 1978. Many Western militaries are in the process of retiring the ageing fighters, replacing them with the US-made F-35, introduced in 2015.

The UK does not have any F-16s in its air force, though it is supplying long-range Storm Shadow missiles which can be fitted to the jets.

Ukraine’s F-16s will work alongside a limited number of Western-supplied surface-to-air missile systems such as Patriot and Nasams which are already on the ground.

With their capacity to carry rockets, bombs and missiles, F-16s should in theory allow the air force to carry out more strikes deep inside occupied territory, and possibly on targets close to the border inside Russia.

They may also help defend against Russian glide bombs – dumb munitions fitted with pop-out wing kits and guidance modules to deliver precision strike stand-off capabilities, similar to the JDAM munitions from the United States.

Around 3,000 were dropped in March alone, mostly from Su-34 fighter-bombers.

If Ukraine can protect its F-16s on the ground, the hope is that they could play an important part in pushing back Russian aircraft to a point where they can no longer target Ukrainian ground forces with glide bombs.

Kyiv had suggested that it could keep some F-16s at foreign military bases, but that suggestion prompted President Vladimir Putin to warn that any Western bases storing Ukrainian jets would be a legitimate military target for Russia.

Experts also say the fighters could provide much needed air support to Ukrainian ground forces, who have faced relentless attacks in recent months, especially in the eastern Donbas region.

Kremlin press secretary Dmitry Peskov previously vowed that Western-made F-16s flying for Ukraine would be “shot down”.

“But of course, these deliveries will not have any significant impact on the development of events on the front,” he added.

As the Paris gymnastics arena roared on American Simone Biles for her third gold medal of the 2024 Olympics, one of those applauding was none other than An Chang-ok, a rival from North Korea.

Saturday’s women’s vault final saw the North share a stage with its foes South Korea and the US.

An, 21, grinned and waved for TV cameras and hugged at least one fellow finalist – rare interactions with foreigners by a young woman required to perform diplomatic gymnastics while being carefully chaperoned on her trip away from home.

Pyongyang’s decision to send athletes to these Games – two of whom even posed for a selfie with rivals from the South – has raised hopes that the secretive state could be partially reopening after a particularly deep period of isolation.

After all, this comes after a heated period that has seen the North sending waste-filled balloons at the South.

• Biles takes vault title in emphatic fashion
• Other big stories from day eight of the Games
• Who’s leading the medals table in Paris?

The North’s participation in these Games signalled a “remarkable” return to the international fold, suggested Jean H Lee, a former Associated Press journalist who opened the US news agency’s first bureau in the North Korean capital, Pyongyang.

It did not send any athletes to the Tokyo Olympics, held in 2021, after the country shut itself off from the world even more sternly than usual due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

But in Paris, it was “making the effort to rejoin the international community”, Lee said, “regardless of what’s happening with their nuclear programme, which is always the elephant in the room”.

The North’s nuclear ambitions are an enduring cause of tension with the South and the US. But there was no sign of animosity between the three nations’ gymnasts on Saturday.

This new generation of North Korean athletes have claimed two silvers in Paris, and occasionally surprised sport commentators who did not know what to expect from them.

Winning medals was not the country’s only aim, according to Prof Ramon Pacheco Pardo of King’s College London, who has written extensively on the two Koreas.

The age-old North Korean art of “sports diplomacy” involved limited participation in a global forum to prove the country was normal, Prod Pacheco Pardo said. Athletes were some of the “few actors that North Korea has who won’t be viewed suspiciously” by the world, he explained.

The contrasting support for An and Biles could not have been starker. In an earlier competition during the Games in Paris, Biles was memorably cheered on by a host of celebrity supporters in the stands, including Lady Gaga, Ariana Grande, Tom Cruise and Snoop Dogg. Thousands of punters yelled her name on Saturday, too.

An, meanwhile, received only polite appreciation from the neutrals. She had no compatriots in the room, since ordinary North Koreans are prevented from leaving their country.

It is unlikely that anyone was watching at home, either, as the Games are not being televised live in North Korea, according to Radio Free Asia (RFA). And BBC Monitoring has only been able to find a handful of text reports in the tightly-controlled state media.

Nonetheless, “the chattering class of Pyongyang certainly will, from one source or another” know the Olympic results as they come in, said John Everard, the UK’s ambassador to North Korea from 2006 to 2008.

An is among 16 North Korean who athletes have come to an opulent host city that could hardly be more different to the austere Pyongyang airport in which they were filmed setting off last month.

Top North Korean athletes were likely to have some awareness of the outside world, said Everard, but there was still likely to be a “shock factor”.

One of the viral moments of the Games so far was a rare encounter that seemed to break the boundaries: when a bronze-winning South Korean table-tennis player took a selfie that showed his mixed-doubles partner posing alongside the silver-winning North Korean duo.

Would the leadership in Pyongyang have anticipated – or relished – this brief symbol of unity between two nations who are still technically at war?

Agreeing to the selfie was “a message” from the North, said Prof Pachedo Pardo, who speculated that the move would have had Pyongyang’s consent. “North Korea is indicating that it doesn’t have a problem with South Korean people – that the issue it has is with the South Korean government.”

At any rate, the moment was not totally unexpected, after something similar in 2016. And two years later, North and South fielded a joint women’s ice hockey team at the Winter Games in the South.

The selfie represents one of the North’s few visible interactions with the outside world during the Games, including a perfunctory press conference by the two table-tennis stars.

Away from the stadiums, unverified footage has appeared to show An holding a collection of pin-badges, which are reported to be an item popularly traded by international gymnasts.

After so much exposure to the Western world, the athletes will probably undergo a gruelling “debrief” after returning home to ensure they stay on-message, said Lee, who is also the co-host of the BBC World Service’s Lazarus Heist podcast.

Contrary to the myth, any athlete deemed to have “failed” would probably not be punished, the analysts agreed. But they could face gruelling “self-criticism” sessions.

“The big hit for not winning a medal isn’t so much the punishment, it’s that you don’t gain all the benefits that you could have gained,” said Everard. Victorious athletes may be given higher status in society and even prizes such as a new home.

It remains to be seen whether this latest sporting diplomacy will translate into meaningful new talks between the two Koreas. The relative bonhomie in Paris was briefly imperilled at the outset by a furore when organisers mixed up the two nations’ names in the opening ceremony, for which they apologised.

Outside the Bercy Arena after Saturday’s gymnastics, one fan from the Seoul side was not convinced the politics would change much.

But she said the sight of sportspeople sharing a stage was at least a reminder that all Koreans were united by something “human”.

Vice-President Kamala Harris is interviewing potential contenders to be her running mate on Sunday, ahead of a battleground tour next week.

Among those travelling to Washington, DC, to meet Ms Harris are Governor Josh Shapiro, Senator Mark Kelly and Governor Tim Walz.

The choices for the Democratic vice-president has been narrowed to a group of five, according to CBS, the BBC’s US partner.

A decision is required before the Democratic National Convention, which starts on 19 August in Chicago.

It is unclear whether other potential candidates, including Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear or Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, were scheduled to meet with Ms Harris.

Harris officially became the Democratic presidential nominee on Friday in a vote of party delegates.

Once Ms Harris’s running mate is announced, the two are expected to tour the battleground states.

Mr Shapiro has seen high approval ratings since he was elected in 2022 and could help Ms Harris capture Pennsylvania – a must-win state in the race for the White House.

Arizona Senator Mark Kelly, a former Navy pilot and Nasa astronaut, has become a leading voices on gun safety and his strong border stance and occasional criticisms of the Biden administration could help appeal to independent and conservative voters.

Mr Walz, who served 12 years in Congress before becoming governor of Minnesota in 2019, gained national attention for his strategy calling Donald Trump and JD Vance “weird”.

On Friday President Joe Biden said he had spoken to Ms Harris about her search for a running mate. Asked what qualities she should look for in a vice-presidential candidate, he said: “I’ll let her work that out.”

Potential partners to join Ms Harris on the Democratic ticket for November’s election face an exhaustive vetting process, having to answer up to 200 questions before being seriously considered.

• Who could be Kamala Harris’ running mate?
• JD Vance was once ‘never Trump’. Now he’s his running mate
• Kamala Harris formally chosen as Democratic nominee

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

The United Automobile Workers, a major US union representing more than 400,000 people, said its preferred vice-presidential pick was Mr Beshear, who “stood with us on the picket line and has been there for workers”.

Speaking to CBS’ Face the Nation, UAW’s Shawn Fain added that Mr Walz was also “100% behind labour”, while he criticised Mr Shapiro’s support of private school vouchers in Pennsylvania – a Republican-backed proposal to send $100m to families for private school tuition and school supplies.

• SIMPLE GUIDE: Everything you need to know about the vote
• ANALYSIS: Three ways Trump will try to end Harris honeymoon
• SWING STATES: Where the election could be won and lost
• EXPLAINER: RFK Jr and others running for president
• VOTERS: US workers in debt to buy groceries

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex have discussed the online threats facing children in their first formal broadcast interview since their conversation with Oprah Winfrey three years ago.

Speaking on CBS News Sunday Morning, the couple drew on their own experience as parents, saying all they wanted to do was “protect” their son Archie and daughter Lilibet.

Prince Harry added that “one of the scariest things” was knowing that any parent could lose a child to suicide as a result of exposure to harmful content.

The pair recently launched a new programme called The Parents Network, which aims to support parents and guardians who have been affected by the issue.

In their interview with Oprah, Prince Harry and Meghan covered issues from racism to life in the Royal Family.

This interview solely focused on their ambitions to tackle online harm.

“Our kids are young, they are three and five, they’re amazing, but all you want to do as parents is protect them,” Meghan said.

“And so as we can see what’s happening in the online space, we know that there’s a lot of work to be done there and we’re just happy to be a part of change for good.”

• Why did Harry and Meghan leave the Royal Family?
• Press battle ‘central’ to Royal Family rift – Harry
• Prince Harry remembers pain of bereavement

Prince Harry said that in the “olden days” parents always knew what their children were up to, as long as they were at home.

“At least they were safe, right?” he said.

“And now, they could be in the next door room on a tablet or on a phone, and can be going down these rabbit holes. And before you know it, within 24 hours, they could be taking their life.”

Alongside the sit-down interview, clips showed the couple meeting with bereaved parents near Santa Barbara, most of whom had lost a child due to harmful social media content or online bullying.

Prince Harry said that it has reached a point where almost every parent has to be “a first responder”.

“And even the best first responders in the world wouldn’t be able to tell the signs of possible suicide,” he said.

“That is the terrifying piece of this.”

Prince Harry, whose mother, Diana, Princess of Wales, died when he was 12, has been open about the impact grief had – and continues to have – on his mental health.

In her interview with Oprah, Meghan also spoke about her battles with poor mental health.

She said there was “a through-line” which connected her experience to those families who had lost a child.

“When you’ve been through any level of pain or trauma, I believe part of our healing journey – certainly part of mine – is being able to be really open about it,” she said.

Meghan said that she hadn’t really “scraped the surface” on her own experience, but she never wanted anyone else to feel the way she had.

She said: “If me voicing what I have overcome will save someone or encourage someone in their life to really genuinely check in on them, and not assume the appearance is good so everything is OK, then that’s worth it. I’ll take a hit for that.”

The couple are expected to highlight the importance of safeguarding young people online during their official visit to Colombia later this month. The trip follows their visit to Nigeria in May.

Speaking about their new initiative, The Parents Network, Meghan said that it was important to “start somewhere”.

She urged people watching the interview to look at it through the lens of it being their own child who was impacted.

“What if it was my daughter, what if it was my son,” she said. “My son or my daughter who comes home, who are joyful, who I love, and one day, right under my roof, our entire lives change because of something that was completely out of our control.

“And if you look at it through the lens as a parent, there is no way to see that any other way than to try and find a solution.”

The Sussexes moved to California in June 2020 with their son Archie. Their daughter Lilibet was born there in 2021.

The couple do not mention any other members of the Royal Family in their CBS interview.

They are not expected to visit Prince Harry’s father, King Charles III, in Scotland during his summer break.

Last week, the Duke of Sussex said his decision to fight against intrusion from the tabloid press was a “central piece” behind the breakdown of his relationship with the rest of his family.

Masked individuals have attacked police and forced their way into a hotel which has been used to house asylum seekers.

Trouble flared outside the Holiday Inn Express, in Rotherham, after earlier demonstrations by both anti-racist and anti-immigration supporters.

Glass bottles and wooden fence panels were thrown at riot police officers lined up in front of the building, while a bin fire was started close to the hotel entrance.

Footage shared on social media appeared to show one man breaking a glass fire exit door at the hotel, with people wearing balaclavas later seen inside the building.

Live: Crowd breaks windows and throws bottles at police at Rotherham hotel

One injured police officer was seen being escorted away by two colleagues, while a BBC reporter saw one man arrested as officers tried to regain control of the scene and push the crowd back.

Fence panels ripped from nearby properties were among the missiles thrown at police, while some were heard chanting “get them out” in the direction of the hotel.

Flames from a bin fire, started as the demonstration grew increasingly ugly, were extinguished after a short time.

South Yorkshire Police has been contacted for comment.

In a statement, the region’s mayor, Oliver Coppard, said he was “appalled” by the violence.

He said: “What we’re seeing is not a protest, it is brutal thuggery directed against some of the most vulnerable people in our society.

“The people carrying out these attacks do not represent the beautiful, brilliant place and people I know.

“We will come after those carrying out this violence with the full force of the law.”

Labour MP for Rotherham Sarah Champion also condemned the disturbance. She said: “The people causing damage do not represent our town and I am disgusted by their actions.

“This is criminal disorder and intimidation – not protest.”

A counter-demonstration by anti-racism campaigners had earlier drawn about 100 people, but after a short time they were ushered away by a police escort for their own safety after they were surrounded.

The BBC’s Cathy Killick, who had earlier been at the scene, said that the atmosphere had been “hostile” as the crowds gathered at about 12:00 BST.

She said that the two groups had been kept apart by a police line, before the anti-racism protesters were moved a “safe distance away” when they became outnumbered and surrounded.

Later, riot officers wearing helmets lined up between the hotel and the crowd, as objects were thrown and the situation escalated.

A police van was rocked by some of the crowd, who then cheered as hotel windows were shattered.

A spokesperson for IHG, which owns the Holiday Inn Express brand, said: “The safety and security of our guests and colleagues is always our priority.

“Any further questions should be directed to the Home Office.”

Meanwhile, in Sheffield, anti-racism protesters heavily outnumbered rival demonstrators as crowds gathered peacefully in the city centre.

People were heard chanting ‘Nazi scum off our streets’ and ‘Refugees are welcome here’.

Although some young males were later seen throwing apples and bottles at police, the situation did not escalate.

The scenes followed violence erupting across the UK on Saturday, which resulted in more than 100 people being arrested.

Trouble flared at far-right demonstrations held in Liverpool, Manchester, Belfast and Hull.

South Yorkshire on BBC Sounds

More than 90 people were arrested after demonstrations organised by far-right groups descended into riots in UK towns and cities on Saturday.

There was unrest in Hull, Liverpool, Bristol, Manchester, Stoke-on-Trent, Blackpool and Belfast, with missiles thrown, shops looted and police attacked in some places. Other smaller demonstrations elsewhere did not turn violent.

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has pledged to give police forces the government’s “full support” to take action against “extremists” attempting to “sow hate”.

Tensions have been high after the killing of three young girls at a Taylor Swift-themed dance party in Southport, Merseyside, on Monday.

In Liverpool, bricks, bottles and a flare were thrown at police, one officer was hit in the head when a chair was thrown, and another was kicked and knocked off his motorbike.

Around one thousand anti-immigration protestors, some of whom were shouting Islamophobic slurs, were confronted by counter-protesters.

A few hundred anti-fascist demonstrators gathered near Liverpool’s Lime Street station at lunchtime, calling for unity and tolerance, chanting “refugees are welcome here” and “Nazi scum, off our streets”.

• Follow live: Disorder breaks out in towns and cities across England
• Violent Southport protests reveal organising tactics of the far-right

Police in riot gear with dogs struggled to keep the two sides apart and reinforcements were called to try and maintain order.

The unrest continued into the early hours of Sunday morning, with fireworks launched towards police officers wearing riot gear.

A library was set on fire in the Walton area of the city and rioters tried to prevent firefighters from putting it out, Merseyside Police said.

Shops were broken into and a number of wheelie bins were set on fire, it added.

The force confirmed a number of officers had been injured in what they described as “serious disorder”, adding that two had been taken to hospital – one with a suspected broken nose and one with a suspected broken jaw.

It said 23 people had been arrested.

Assistant Chief Constable Jenny Simms said: “The disorder, violence and destruction has no place here in Merseyside, least of all after the tragic events that took place in Southport on Monday”.

“Those who engaged in this behaviour bring nothing but shame to themselves and this city. “

More protests are expected on Sunday, though not as many as on Saturday.

At a meeting of government ministers earlier on Saturday, a spokesperson for Sir Keir Starmer said the PM told those assembled that “the right to freedom of expression and the violent disorder we have seen are two very different things.”

He added: “there is no excuse for violence of any kind and reiterated that the government backs the police to take all necessary action to keep our streets safe”.

On Saturday, the home secretary also warned that anyone engaging in “unacceptable disorder” would face imprisonment and travel bans amongst other punishments, adding that “sufficient” prison places had been made available.

“Criminal violence and disorder has no place on Britain’s streets,” Yvette Cooper said.

Police have the government’s full backing in taking action against those engaging in “thuggery”, she added.

In Bristol, protesters and counter-protests were engaged in a standoff.

One group could be heard singing Rule Britannia, “England ’til I die” and “we want our country back”.

Beer cans were thrown at the anti-racism group, and some of the rival protesters were baton-charged by officers.

Avon and Somerset Police said 14 people in the city had been arrested, with Chief Inspector Vicks Hayward-Melen anticipating there would be “further arrests over the coming days”.

In Manchester, there were scuffles with police, and at least two arrests.

While in Belfast, two people were arrested as protesters outside a mosque threw objects at members of the media and earlier smashed windows in a cafe.

In Hull, protesters smashed a window at a hotel used to house asylum seekers, and bottles and eggs were thrown at police.

City Hall was placed on lockdown as the British Chess Championships took place inside.

Humberside Police said three police officers had been injured and 20 people arrested after disorder in the city centre also saw shops ransacked and items set on fire.

In Blackpool, protesters faced off against punks attending Rebellion Festival. There was little police presence as skirmishes broke out between the two groups, with bottles and chairs thrown.

Lancashire Police said it had arrested more than 20 people. The force said its focus had been on Blackpool but there had also been “minor disruption” in Blackburn and Preston.

In Stoke-on-Trent, bricks were thrown at officers. Staffordshire Police said that two men at the centre of online claims they had been stabbed had actually been hit by an object that was thrown, and were not seriously injured.

The force said 10 people had been arrested and three officers suffered minor injuries.

Elsewhere Leicestershire Police arrested two people in Leicester city centre. And West Yorkshire Police said a protest on the Headrow in Leeds “passed off largely without incident”, despite one arrest being made.

Not all demonstrations held across the UK descended into violence on Saturday, and in some places protesters dispersed by the evening.

Saturday’s protests follow a night of violence in Sunderland on Friday, which saw four police officers hospitalised.

Hundreds of people rioted, beer cans and bricks were thrown at riot police outside a mosque and a Citizens Advice office was torched.

Twelve people have been arrested in connection with the violence.

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.

An extra 70 prosecutors are on standby this weekend to charge people arrested in connection with violent disorder.

Shadow home secretary James Cleverly called on Sir Keir and the home secretary to “do more” to restore public order and “send a clear message to the thugs”.

Earlier this week, the prime minister announced a new national violent disorder programme to help clamp down on violent groups by allowing police forces to share intelligence.

French prosecutors have opened an investigation into death threats made against the organisers of the Paris Olympics opening ceremony.

On Saturday artistic director Thomas Jolly, ceremonies director Thierry Reboul and Alexandre Billard of events agency Ubi Bene, filed a complaint for death threats.

Last month, French DJ Barbara Butch, who performed in the opening ceremony’s drag queen sequence, lodged a complaint after receiving abuse online.

That sequence sparked controversy as some religious officials and conservative politicians in France and abroad saw an offensive reference to The Last Supper.

Mr Jolly has said that he was not inspired by the famous Leonardo da Vinci painting showing Jesus Christ and his apostles.

Instead, he said the sequence, titled Festivity, was inspired by Greek mythology and intended to be a celebration of diversity, adding his intention was not to “be subversive, nor to mock or to shock”.

French prosecutors opened the investigation after Mr Jolly, who is openly gay, complained of death threats and cyberbullying.

Some emails received by Mr Jolly and the head of a production company quoted a verse from the Quran, stating that “Allah’s punishment will befall the organisers in Saint-Denis” (one of the Olympic sites), Le Parisien newspaper reports.

Prosecutors are also investigating insults directed at drag queen Nicky Doll, who also featured in the controversial scene.

DJ Barbara Butch told France Inter radio on Sunday that she had received messages “inviting me to burn in hell in every language and swastikas”.

On Friday, French President Emmanuel Macron said he was “outraged” by the cyberbullying directed at Jolly, adding that “nothing justifies threatening an artist”.

“The French were very proud of this ceremony,” he said. “France showed appropriate boldness with artistic freedom.”