ABC News has said it will host the first debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris on 10 September.

The network confirmed the showdown in a post on X, formerly Twitter, after Trump said on Thursday that he would be open to debating his Democratic rival multiple times before the November election.

“We think we should do three debates,” Trump said, suggesting two additional debates that he said would be hosted by Fox News and NBC, respectively.

Ms Harris confirmed that she will attend the ABC debate while at an event in Michigan on Thursday, and said later that she would be open to additional debates.

The network said the debate will be moderated by World News Tonight anchor and managing editor David Muir and ABC News Live Prime anchor Linsey Davis.

“I am looking forward to debating Donald Trump and we have a date of September 10. I hear he’s finally committed to it and I’m looking forward to it,” Ms Harris said at the event in Detroit.

Trump, the Republican candidate, debated President Joe Biden once in June.

The two were slated to do so again on 10 September but Mr Biden withdrew from the presidential race after a disastrous performance against Trump in the televised matchup. That paved the way for Ms Harris to become the Democratic nominee.

The confirmation of the debate on ABC marks an end to a back-and-forth that followed Mr Biden’s decision to leave the race between the Trump and Harris campaigns over that planned showdown.

Trump had previously said that he wanted a debate hosted by the conservative network Fox News, saying it would take place in Pennsylvania, “at a site in an area to be determined”.

The Harris campaign had maintained they would still like to debate Trump on 10 September.

At a news conference on Thursday at his Mar-a-Lago resort, Trump also said he would like to debate Ms Harris two additional times – on 4 September on Fox News and on 25 September on NBC.

Trump said that CBS will host a debate between the two vice-presidential nominees, Republican JD Vance and Democratic Tim Walz.

NBC News is reportedly in discussions with both campaigns about a potential debate this autumn, the New York Times reported.

Fox News said it sent formal letters to both campaigns last month proposing a September debate in Pennsylvania, though the Harris campaign said on Thursday that “Trump has to show up” to the ABC debate before they confirm any further showdowns.

Trump also criticised Ms Harris for not taking reporter questions or doing an interview since she became the likely Democratic nominee just over two weeks ago.

He called her “barely competent” and criticised her intelligence.

Later on Thursday, Ms Harris told reporters that she has asked her team to “get an interview scheduled” before the end of the month.

Trump’s hour-long event was held amid reports that his campaign is feeling the pressure from Democrats, who have new enthusiasm under Ms Harris and have been dominating headlines.

National and battleground state polls suggest her campaign has gained ground in recent days, though the race for the White House remains a close contest.

The former president denied he had “recalibrated” his campaign to challenge Ms Harris instead of Mr Biden, and he appeared to prickle when asked about the audience Ms Harris draws at rallies.

“Oh, give me a break,” he said, arguing that crowds at his rallies were larger than at hers.

His Thursday news conference is the first he has held in several months, as his campaign has previously focused on holding rallies across the country.

Trump also praised his running mate Mr Vance, who was recently under fire for comments he made in 2021 when he said those without children shouldn’t be leading the country and that women who don’t have children are “miserable” and “childless cat ladies”.

“I have to tell you, JD Vance has really stepped up,” Trump said. “He’s doing a fantastic job.”

He took aim at Ms Harris’ track record on immigration and the economy.

And he repeated his belief that US presidents should have a say over interest rates and monetary policy – a departure from the longstanding practice of having the US Federal Reserve, an independent body, oversee these matters.

He emphasised his priorities of lowering inflation, lowering crime rates and strengthening the military.

Ms Harris on Thursday addressed United Auto Workers in Detroit, and thanked the union for endorsing her.

She said there are “89 days to get this done” ahead of the election.

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Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus has been sworn in as Bangladesh’s interim leader, vowing to “uphold, support and protect the constitution”.

The 84-year-old took an oath at the presidential palace in Dhaka along with more than a dozen members of his new cabinet, vowing to perform his duties “sincerely”.

He flew into the capital, Dhaka, just days after Sheikh Hasina – the woman who ruled Bangladesh with an iron fist for 15 years – fled across the border to India.

Ms Hasina resigned as prime minister after weeks of student-led protests – which left hundreds dead – escalated and culminated in calls for her to stand down.

The decision to name Prof Yunus as chief adviser of the interim government followed a meeting between President Mohammed Shahabuddin, military leaders and student leaders.

The students had been clear they would not accept a military-led government, but wanted Prof Yunus to lead.

Among his new cabinet are Nahid Islam and Asif Mahmud, students who led the anti-government protests.

The hope is Prof Yunus, the so-called banker for the poor, will bring democracy back to Bangladesh after years of autocratic rule.

“People are excited,” the entrepreneur and economist told the BBC moments after arriving in Dhaka from France on Thursday.

He later told reporters that Bangladesh “has got a second independence” as he called for the restoration of law and order in the nation of 170 million people.

Following Prof Yunus’s swearing in, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi offered his “best wishes”, writing on X/Twitter that his government was “committed” to working with its neighbour for “peace, security and development”.

Prof Yunus paid tribute to those who died, saying they had “protected the nation” and given it “new life” after Ms Hasina’s rule.

She had begun that rule as a symbol of democracy but, by the time she fled, she was considered an autocrat who had sought to entrench her authority by silencing dissent.

Prisons were filled with people who sought to speak out against her. Prof Yunus – lauded for his pioneering use of micro-loans – was one of those who found themselves in legal trouble during her tenure.

Ms Hasina regarded him as a public enemy – he is currently on bail, appealing against a six-month jail term in what he has called a politically-motivated case.

Speaking on Thursday, he called on the country’s young people to help him rebuild the South Asian country.

“Bangladesh can be a beautiful country, but we destroyed the possibilities,” he said.

“Now we have to build a seedbed again – the new seedbed will be built by them,” he added, gesticulating towards the students who had arrived to greet him.

His ascension as Bangladesh’s interim leader follows weeks of turmoil.

More than 400 people are reported to have died after protests seeking to abolish a quota system for civil service jobs began in July.

A third of these jobs are reserved for relatives of veterans from Bangladesh’s war of independence from Pakistan, which took place in 1971. Campaigners argued the system was discriminatory and needed to be overhauled.

Though this demand was largely met after the Supreme Court backed the students’ demands and vastly reduced the scale of the quota system, the protests then transformed into a wider anti-government movement fuelled by crackdowns.

Bangladeshi media and demonstrators blamed police for the spiralling death toll. Officials maintained that officers only ever opened fire out of self-defence or to protect state property.

Students and their supporters had planned to march on the prime minister’s residence on Monday.

But before the march could get properly moving, the news came that Sheikh Hasina had fled Bangladesh and resigned as prime minister. She is currently in Delhi.

On Thursday, Donald Trump walked into a room of journalists gathered at his Mar-a-Lago estate for a news conference. He didn’t look particularly happy.

His remarks came after a week in which Kamala Harris and her new running mate Tim Walz have dominated media attention, raked in millions of dollars and enjoyed a bump in polling. Trump’s media event seemed more an attempt to win back the spotlight than announce anything new.

Just before Trump stepped up to the podium, one of his advisors texted me the wry assessment that Donald Trump is “never boring!!” (the exclamation marks were his).

The event included a couple of news items. Mr Trump announced that he’d agreed to join a TV debate with Vice-President Harris on 10 September. ABC News, the debate host, confirmed that Ms Harris had agreed to participate as well. Trump also said he’d like to do two more debates. There’s no word from the Harris team yet on whether they’ve accepted those additional matchups.

Over the course of the hour-long event, Trump took dozens of questions and he chastised Ms Harris for failing to take questions from reporters since ascending to the top of the ticket.

• Debate showdown between Trump and Harris set for September
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Much of the event, though, was spent on Trump’s old favourites, as if he was reaching for his rally hits. He talked about poll numbers, the unfair media, the dire state of the country and, yes, crowd sizes (even comparing his crowds to those of the civil rights leader Dr Martin Luther King, Jr)

Historically, one way Trump gets attention is by saying things that are controversial. And there was some of that today, too. He suggested America is on the brink of a world war and said Jewish Americans who support Vice-President Harris need “to have your head examined”.

This attention deficit is an unusual position for Trump.

The former president is not used to having to fight for the limelight, particularly in this election cycle. The Biden campaign was happy to let Trump dominate the news, in the belief that the more the race was about the former president, the better it would be for the current one. The Biden team wanted Trump front and centre.

But the shake up on the Democratic side has been dramatic and newsworthy and has pushed Trump off the front pages. To make things harder for the Republican candidate, much of the coverage of Ms Harris’s unexpected roll out as Democratic candidate has been positive. So, the strategy by Democrats has flipped.

Right now, Democrats are enjoying the media attention. Ms Harris wants this race to be about her. And with all the Democratic political drama, the press has been happy to oblige.

Hence the Mar-a-Lago news conference that didn’t really have much news.

Trump may do better following the advice of Marc Lotter, the Republican strategist who ran communication strategy for his 2020 campaign, who texted me to say the way the former president should win back attention was to stay focused. “Define Harris and Walz on policy. He wins on policy and results.”

To be fair, there was some of that in this press event. Trump repeatedly described Ms Harris as “extreme” and “liberal”. He did tout his own record on the economy and the border. But the attacks got rather lost in his grievance about crowd sizes and how they are reported, even suggesting that there may be something unconstitutional about the Harris campaign.

And, then it was over. And, as if to prove a point, within minutes of Trump walking off stage, the fickle cable news cameras had shifted their lenses from Florida to Michigan where Ms Harris and Mr Walz were holding a meeting with union workers. It was the Democrats time for some press coverage. Once again.

The United States, Egypt and Qatar have released a joint statement calling on Israel and Hamas to resume negotiations over a ceasefire and hostage-release deal.

The statement said the three nations had forged a “framework agreement” that had “only the details of implementation left to conclude”.

Israel said it would send negotiators to the proposed talks, which are pencilled in for 15 August in Doha or Cairo. Hamas did not immediately respond.

The renewed diplomatic push will be seen as an attempt to stop regional tensions from spiralling out of control, after Hamas’ leader Ismail Haniyeh was assassinated last week. Iran, blaming Israel, has vowed a response – though Israel has not commented directly on the killing.

In a joint statement, the three nations invited Israel and Hamas to restart talks on 15 August “to close all remaining gaps and commence implementation of the deal without further delay.”

“As mediators, if necessary, we are prepared to present a final bridging proposal that resolves the remaining implementation issues in a manner that meets the expectations of all parties,” it said.

The statement was signed by US President Joe Biden, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, and the Emir of Qatar Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani.

It said the framework agreement was based on “principles” previously outlined by President Biden on 31 May – which would start with a full ceasefire and the release of a number of hostages – and endorsed by the UN Security Council.

US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin said in a statement on Thursday evening he had spoken with Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant to brief him on changes to US forces in the region and “reinforce my ironclad support for Israel’s defense”.

“I also stressed the importance of concluding a ceasefire deal in Gaza that releases the hostages,” he said.

Despite numerous rounds of talks, the challenge of reaching a ceasefire and hostage release agreement has so far proved elusive.

Hamas is pushing for a ceasefire, but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said the conflict can only stop once Hamas is defeated.

On Thursday, Israel continued its bombardment of the Gaza strip. Gaza’s Hamas-run civil defence force said it hit two schools, killing more than 18 people. The Israeli military said it had struck Hamas command centres.

Any proposed talks could be made even more difficult by Hamas’ decision to elect Yahya Sinwar as its new leader, replacing Haniyeh.

Sinwar, who Israel holds responsible for the planning and execution of the 7 October attacks, is seen as one of the group’s most extreme figures.

Amid fears of an attack from Iran or its allies, Israel’s security cabinet met in an underground bunker on Thursday, instead of its usual meeting place, Israel’s Channel 13 reported.

More than a year has passed since a deadly ethnic conflict devastated homes and claimed over 220 lives in India’s north-eastern Manipur state. But its more than three million residents are still waiting for peace.

Clashes erupted in May last year between the majority Meitei and indigenous minority Kuki groups – they were sparked by Kuki protests against demands from Meiteis to be given official tribal status, which would make them eligible for affirmative action and other benefits.

The violence displaced tens of thousands – some 59,000 people are still living in government relief camps. It has split up neighbourhoods and torn apart bonds between communities.

Today, Manipur is divided into two camps, with Meiteis inhabiting the Imphal Valley and Kukis living in the surrounding hill areas. Borders and buffer zones guarded by security forces separate the two regions. Many locals have voluntarily taken up arms – some stolen from armed forces, some country-made – to protect their villages from intruders.

• What is happening in Manipur and why

Federal and state officials have made some attempts to end the conflict by holding peace talks between the communities, but locals say it hasn’t been enough – a recent peace deal signed in a district collapsed within a day. Distrust between the two groups persists and incidents of violence, including killings of security personnel, are regularly reported.

“The situation in Manipur is still tense and full of mistrust because people have to be confident about moving forward – and to move forward, there has to be some resolution of the past. There hasn’t been one,” says Sanjoy Hazarika, a commentator and author who specialises in India’s north-eastern states.

Both communities blame the other for stoking violence.

The state government and the Meitei community have frequently blamed illegal immigration – especially from neighbouring Myanmar – for the conflict. The Kuki community, which shares ethnic ties with the Chins in Myanmar, say this narrative has been used to target them within their own state.

“The state needs a full-fledged intervention: militarily to stop the violence and psychologically to start negotiations. The establishment of trust [between Kukis and Meiteis] is crucial. Trust cannot be built in a day,” says Shreema Ningombam, a political analyst in Imphal, the state capital.

In Sugnu village, about 60km (37 miles) from Imphal, the divide is stark.

It was once home to both Meiteis and Kukis, but the latter fled to the surrounding hills after the conflict began, leaving behind burnt and ransacked houses.

Despite heavy security, locals fear retaliatory attacks from “outsiders”. Meitei women groups, known as Meira Paibis, guard village entry points.

Yumlembam Manitombi, one of the guards, said she lost her 29-year-old son in last year’s violence. He was the eldest of her three children and the sole provider for the family.

They have installed a bust of him in the courtyard of their house. An engraving below the bust marks the reason for his death – it says Kuki Meitei War 2023.

“I want peace. Ending this war is my sole wish and I seek nothing more,” Ms Manitombi says.

In Churachandpur, the Kuki-dominated epicentre of the conflict, similar security measures exist. The entrance to the city features a “Wall of Remembrance” commemorating Kukis who died in the conflict.

Boinu Haokip and her family fled from Sugnu to Churachandpur last year to escape violence and now survive on odd jobs.

Ms Haokip, who is pursuing a degree in ethnic violence in Manipur, says her future looks bleak.

“I have to study and look after my family. Our society was in poverty for generations. We had begun coming out of it, but this violence has pushed us back at least a decade,” she says.

Questions about the future haunt others too as schools become makeshift camps. People have lost businesses, land and jobs and exhausted their savings.

The conflict has also forced some to flee to camps in the neighbouring state of Mizoram. With shortages of food, water, and medicine, people rely on odd jobs to survive.

Nengnei Chong, 52, fled with her two sons and has been living in a relief camp outside Mizoram’s capital Aizawl. But she says she regrets her decision to leave.

“It would have been better had we too died back home,” she says.

Mizoram lawmaker TBC Lalvenchhunga says the state government has limited resources.

“The government is financially struggling. If the federal government heeds our repeated requests [for more funds], we can help the refugees better,” he says.

Locals accuse the Bharatiya Janata Party-run Manipur and federal governments of not doing enough to quell the violence.

Kuki groups have accused state authorities of ignoring violence by Meiteis for political benefit, which the government denies. Opposition parties say federal government let the conflict rage on for too long. The Congress party has repeatedly criticised Prime Minister Narendra Modi for not visiting Manipur.

“Our government is making serious efforts to bring back normalcy in Manipur. Schools, colleges and offices in most places have opened up and are functioning. The hope for peace is visible,” Mr Modi said in parliament recently.

But experts say mistrust between the two communities has only hardened and the divide has deepened with the Kukis steadfastly demanding a “separate administration”, something the Meiteis vehemently oppose.

“Peace-building is a very painful and slow process. It is easier to indulge in violence than to build peace. If the centre [federal government] is able to bring both sides to the table, it will be a step in the right direction,” Mr Hazarika says.

But he cautions that this won’t be a quick process.

“Healing needs time and patience before you can really move forward.”

Over the past week, watched by the world’s media, the top leaders of Hamas descended on Qatar to choose a new political leader for their group.

Delegates flooded in from across the Middle East after almost a year of fighting between Hamas and Israel in Gaza.

Some arrived shaken, having woken just days before to the news that the group’s previous political leader – Ismail Haniyeh – had been killed in a blast in Tehran, allegedly by Israel.

Haniyeh, who had overseen his group’s negotiators in talks with Israel, played a crucial role in Hamas, balancing the militant wing’s desire to take the fight to Israel with calls from some to reach a settlement and end the conflict.

His position, it was clear, had to be filled quickly.

At the mourning ceremony in Doha, Hamas leaders lined up shoulder to shoulder in a huge white tent with carpets and fancy chairs, decorated with pictures of Ismail Haniyeh. Hundreds of people gathered to pay their respects to the movement’s late leader and his bodyguard.

The scene was more than a memorial service – it signalled the end of an era and the beginning of a new, more extreme phase.

This was not the first time I had witnessed Hamas’s top officials gather to choose a new leader after an unexpected funeral. Back in 2004 I witnessed them meet after Israel assassinated the group’s founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin – the meeting taking place in his house in Gaza. Less than a month later, Israel killed his successor Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi.

But this time the backstage discussions reflected the extent of the crisis and challenges they are facing.

Hamas attacked southern Israel on 7 October last year, killing about 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages back into Gaza. Since then, Israel’s military retaliation has killed more than 39,600 people, according to the Hamas-run health ministry, and wounded tens of thousands more. More than half the buildings in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed and almost the entire population has been displaced. Dissent against Hamas, which has ruled Gaza since 2007, has been growing. The group itself has taken severe losses.

On top of this, the killing of Ismail Haniyeh on 31 July in Tehran – a place he had always felt to be a safe haven – was a real shock for the organisation.

Hamas is convinced that Haniyeh was killed by an anti-personnel missile while he was browsing on his phone. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have said a projectile with a 7kg warhead was used. Some Western media reports say he was killed by a bomb planted in the room beforehand.

Back at Haniyeh’s mourning ceremony in Doha, one man in his mid-60s with white hair and a short beard stood in a corner away from the spotlight.

“Pay close attention to him,” a Hamas media officer told me. Who was he? “He is the shadowy man, Abu Omar Hassan,” he said.

Abu Omar Hassan, or Mohamed Hassan Darwish, is the head of the Supreme Shura Council, the top consultative body in Hamas. According to Hamas’s constitution, he was in prime position to be the organisation’s interim head until elections which had been scheduled for next March.

“He is the man of the big missions,” I was told.

As the mourning ceremony ended, these leaders’ real work began. For two days, the movement’s veteran faces and shadowy figures held meetings in Doha, which has hosted Hamas’s political bureau since 2012, to elect a new leader.

They chose Yahya Sinwar, already the group’s leader inside Gaza since 2017. The choice may come as a surprise to many, but anyone following his career since Israel released him in the 2011 exchange deal for captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit knew he was always likely to lead Hamas one day.

No political leader in Hamas has ever been closer to the group’s armed wing. His brother Mohammed leads the largest Hamas military battalion, while Mohammed Deif – the elusive Hamas veteran who led its armed wing for two decades until Israel said it killed him last month – was his neighbour, friend, and classmate. The pair grew up together in Gaza’s sprawling Khan Younis refugee camp.

Despite all this, many may see appointing him to the most important position in Hamas as madness. Israel’s security agencies believe Sinwar planned and executed the attack on southern Israel, and he is top of their wanted list.

“Not all of the people inside Hamas leadership were in favour of the decision,” a senior Hamas official told me. “Some leaders raised their concerns, others pushed for a more moderate person. But in the end he got the majority of the votes.”

Another Hamas official who attended the meetings said the movement felt unable to choose the powerful shadow operator Abu Omar Hassan because he had little public profile and was unknown outside the movement, whereas the 7 October attack had given Yahya Sinwar global notoriety.

“Sinwar has become a trademark after 7 October and he has great popularity in the Arab and Islamic worlds,” the official said. “He enjoys close relations with the axis of resistance supported by Iran, and his appointment in the midst of the war sends a message of defiance to Israel.”

The “axis of resistance” is a network of armed groups backed by Iran. Other members such as Lebanon-based Hezbollah also present threats to Israel.

Many Arab and some Western officials urged Hamas against naming Sinwar as leader because of his connection to the 7 October attacks. He and the organisation he now leads are proscribed as terrorists by many governments in the West.

“One of the reasons why we voted for him is because we want to honour him for masterminding the attacks” the official said. “October 7th belongs to him so he deserves to lead the movement.”

Ten months on from that attack, all attempts to agree a ceasefire have so far failed. The BBC understands that the two main mediators – Qatar and Egypt – are working on a new ceasefire proposal.

Leaks suggest the plan is based on convincing Iran not to respond militarily to the assassination of Haniyeh in its territory, in exchange for Israel ending its war in Gaza and withdrawing troops from the Philadelphi corridor.

The Philadelphi Corridor is a buffer zone, only about 100m (330ft) wide in parts, which runs along the Gaza side of the 13km (8-mile) border with Egypt. Gaza’s only other land border is with Israel itself.

A Palestinian official familiar with the ceasefire negotiations told me in Doha: “Egyptian intelligence has already sent a team to Doha and there are meetings to formulate an action plan based on sparing the region a possible Iranian response… in exchange for a ceasefire.”

For now, the drumbeat of conflict is only getting louder, with Sinwar, the most extremist figure in Hamas, set to lead the group for the next five years – if he survives the war.

Japan has – for the first time – issued a warning about an increased risk of a “major earthquake” striking in the near future.

The advisory was issued on Thursday night local time, telling people to be alert but not to evacuate. It also stressed that the warning did not mean a large earthquake was imminent, but that the probability was higher than usual.

It came hours after a 7.1 magnitude earthquake occurred off the southern island of Kyushu, which reportedly caused no major damage.

But experts were put on heightened alert because of where the epicentre sat – at the edge of the Nankai Trough, an area of seismic activity which stretches along Japan’s Pacific coast.

The plate boundary sits between Suruga Bay in central Japan, and the Hyuganada Sea in Kyushu to the south.

Previous Nankai Trough earthquakes have left thousands dead. These megaquakes have been recorded once every 90 to 200 years, with the last one occurring in 1946.

Experts say there is a 70% to 80% chance of a magnitude 8 or 9 quake striking somewhere along the trough in the next 30 years, according to the Kyodo News agency. Worst-case estimates suggest more than 200,000 people could be killed in the earthquake and potential subsequent tsunami.

However, at a press conference on Thursday, Japanese Meteorological Agency official Shinya Tsukada emphasised that while “there is a relatively higher chance of another major earthquake compared to normal times” they were not saying it would definitely happen “in a certain period of time”.

This current advisory – the lower of two types of alerts at officials’ disposal – will be in place for a week.

It asks residents to be on higher alert in the coming days, and for those who cannot evacuate quickly to consider doing so voluntarily, according to Japan’s NHK broadcaster.

Officials have also told people be cautious but carry on with their everyday lives, while checking evacuation routes where needed and that households have enough supplies.

Images of the Algerian boxer Imane Khelif and Taiwan’s Lin Yu-ting on the medal podium in Paris will go down as some of the most unforgettable of the 2024 Olympics.

A frenzied debate has raged over the International Olympic Committee clearing the duo to compete in the women’s boxing in Paris, despite them having been disqualified from last year’s Women’s World Championships for failing to meet eligibility criteria.

Amid the heat, science is shedding increasing light on our different chromosomal make-ups and what advantages they may bring to sport.

But the research is ongoing and even among the experts who spend their professional lives working on it, there are differing interpretations on what the science tells us.

We do know that the process of sex determination starts when a foetus is developing. Most females get two X chromosomes (XX), while most males get an X and a Y chromosome (XY).

Chromosomes influence a person’s sex. But hormones are important too, before birth – as well as later on during puberty. While the baby is still growing in the womb, hormones help the reproductive organs develop.

However, at some point through the pregnancy some babies’ reproductive organs don’t develop in the way most people’s do.

This is known as DSD: differences of sex development.

They are a group of about 40 conditions involving genes, hormones and reproductive organs that develop in the womb. It means a person’s sex development is different from that of most other people’s.

These chromosome abnormalities are rare – but they have come into sharp focus because of the boxing row at the Olympics.

The International Boxing Association chief executive Chris Roberts told BBC Sport that after both athletes had agreed to medical tests, XY chromosomes were found in “both cases”.

But it’s not that simple.

Because these genetic variations are so many and so varied, some experts say it’s impossible to establish that everyone with a Y chromosome is a male and everyone without a Y chromosome is a female.

“Just looking at the presence of a Y chromosome on its own does not answer the question of whether someone is male or female,” says Prof Alun Williams, who researches genetic factors related to sport performance at the Manchester Metropolitan University Institute of Sport.

“It’s obviously a very good marker, as most people with a Y chromosome are male…but it’s not a perfect indicator.”

For some people with DSD, the Y chromosome is not a fully formed typical male Y chromosome. It may have some genetic material missing, damaged or swapped with the X chromosome, depending on the variation.

When it comes to being male or female, what is usually crucial is a specific gene called SRY – which stands for ‘sex-determining region of the Y chromosome’.

“This is what is called the make-male gene. It’s the master switch of sex development,” says Dr Emma Hilton, a developmental biologist who studies genetic disorders. She is also a trustee of the Sex Matters charity, which argues Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-ting shouldn’t be competing until further testing is done.

There are some people born with XY chromosomes who have lost what Dr Hilton calls the “make-male” gene.

“These people don’t make testosterone. They develop a very typical female anatomy,” Dr Hilton says.

So a test that identifies XY chromosomes does not offer a complete picture. And in the case of Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-ting, the IBA has not disclosed details of the way they were tested.

However, Dr Hilton also says that in most people with XY chromosomes, the SRY “make-male” gene is present.

These people usually have testicles which are often inside the body.

“When they hit puberty they start producing testosterone – which is what underpins male advantage in sports,” says Dr Hilton.

The most famous example is Caster Semenya – a double Olympic gold medallist and three-time world champion over 800m, though Dr Alun Williams says there is not direct evidence that DSD athletes have the same advantage as typical males.

The roadblock is in a gene required to generate external genitalia – which boys need in order to grow a penis. Anyone with the same condition as Caster Semenya has a mutation within that gene that stops it functioning normally.

In the womb, they will develop a male anatomy until the final stage of growing a penis – and when they are not able to, then they’ll start developing a vulva and a clitoris.

But they don’t develop female reproductive organs: they don’t have a cervix or a uterus.

These people don’t have periods and they can’t get pregnant. Having sex with males can be difficult.

Discovering you have this kind of genetic mutation can be a shock.

“The most recent woman we diagnosed with having XY chromosomes was 33,” says Claus Højbjerg Gravholt – an endocrinology professor at Aarhus University who spent the past 30 years dealing with DSD.

His patient came to see him because she had no idea why she couldn’t get pregnant.

“We discovered she didn’t have a uterus, so she would never be able to have a baby. She was absolutely devastated.”

Prof Gravholt says the implications that come with questioning one’s gender identity can be destabilising – and he often refers his patients to a psychologist.

“If I showed you her photo, you would say: that’s a woman. She has a female body, she is married to a man. She feels like a female. And that is the case for most of my patients.”

When Prof Gravholt asked her why she didn’t consult a doctor about not getting periods, she said there was another older woman in her family who never menstruated – so she thought it wasn’t abnormal.

There is another genetic mutation Prof Gravholt has come across.

He has diagnosed males who have XX chromosomes – which are normally found in females. “These men are infertile. They look like normal males, but their testes are smaller than average and don’t produce sperm. It’s always devastating when they find out. As they grow older, they stop producing testosterone in the way most men do.”

In some cultures, talking openly about periods and female anatomy is not culturally acceptable. In some parts of the world, women may lack the education to understand that there’s something atypical going on in their bodies.

And that’s why experts believe that many DSDs are never diagnosed – which means that comprehensive data is scarce.

But Prof Gravholt points to figures from Denmark as a good indicator.

“Denmark is probably the best country in the world at collecting this data – we have a national registry with everyone who has ever had a chromosome examination.”

He says that XY chromosomes in females are very rare – in Denmark it’s about one in 15,000.

But he believes that when adding these many genetic conditions together, about one in 300 people are affected.

“We are learning that these variations are more common than we thought,” Prof Gravholt says. “A lot of patients are being diagnosed later in life. The oldest person I diagnosed was a male in his 60s.”

Do people with differences of sex development have an unfair advantage in sport? The short answer is that there is not enough data to reach a definitive conclusion.

“It wouldn’t surprise me if some people with a type of DSD had some physical advantage over women,” says Prof Alun Williams. Those advantages could include larger muscle mass, as well as bigger and longer bones and larger organs such as lungs and heart.

He says they may also have higher levels of blood haemoglobin that lead to improved oxygen delivery to where it’s needed in working muscles.

“Some people with some types of DSDs might have advantages in some or all of those elements, ranging from 0-100%, depending on the type of DSD and its precise genetic cause.”

He believes his opinion is representative of the experts in his field, but that more evidence is needed.

When it comes to Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-ting, we don’t have enough information to know if they have a DSD that would need to be regulated.

Regulating elite sports, which typically rely on male-female binary categories in competition, is complicated because the biology of sex itself is complex and not exclusively binary.

Dr Shane Heffernan has a PhD in molecular genetics in elite sports and is currently working on a paper on what athletes think about competitors with a DSD.

He says it’s all about the nuance of the individual’s genetic condition.

For example, females with a DSD known as androgen insensitivity syndrome have XY chromosomes; they produce testosterone; but their bodies aren’t equipped to process it. So they don’t get any of the benefits from that testosterone, like males do.

Dr Heffernan says that there aren’t enough known and studied athletes with a DSD to make a valid scientific conclusion as to whether they definitely have an advantage, and as to whether they should be eligible or ineligible to compete in the female category.

He believes that the International Olympic Committee is not basing its eligibility criteria on the best available science.

“This is worrying. The IOC makes an ‘assumption of no advantage’ – but there is no direct evidence for this, nor that there is a performance advantage with DSD athletes solely because of their genetic variations.

“We simply don’t have enough data. Many people hold an emotional position when it comes to inclusion in the female category, but how can the IOC justify this position – without the data to support it?”

He is one of many people who are urging the Olympics committee, international federations and funding councils to invest in research on athletes with a DSD – but he appreciates it’s difficult, because there can be a lot of stigma towards the individual athletes when it comes to these conditions.

Some are calling for mandatory sex testing at the next Olympics – including Reem Alsalem, the UN’s special rapporteur on violence against women and girls.

“Screening DNA is now a piece of cake,” Dr Emma Hilton says. “A simple cheek swab would be sufficient, and it’s minimally invasive.”

She says swabs should happen when athletes first register for their first affiliated competition – before they start winning medals and the spotlight hits them, so as to avoid what happened with Imane Khelif.

But there’s disagreement on that among scientists.

“A cheek swab wouldn’t allow you to reach a robust conclusion on someone’s sex and potential advantage in sport,” says Prof Williams.

He argues a comprehensive sex test would have to include these three categories:

1. Genetics (including looking for a Y chromosome and the SRY “make-male” gene).

2. Hormones (including, but not limited to, testosterone).

3. The body’s responsiveness to hormones like testosterone. Some people might have a Y chromosome, but be completely insensitive to testosterone.

He believes this is currently not being done because it’s expensive, it requires people with very specific expertise – and there are ethical concerns about the testing procedure.

“This assessment can be humiliating. It includes measurements of the most intimate parts of anatomy, like the size of your breast and your clitoris, the depth of your voice, the extent of your body hair.”

One thing is certain: this controversy is not going away.

For now, science is not yet able to offer a definitive view on how people with differing chromosomal make-ups should be categorised for the purposes of elite sport. For those who spend their lives trying to make sense of the science, their hope is that this latest row will propel much-needed research.

Three days into Ukraine’s cross-border attack on Russia’s Kursk region, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has said Moscow must “feel” the consequences for its invasion of Ukraine.

“Russia brought the war to our land and should feel what it has done”, Mr Zelensky said in his Thursday evening address, without directly referencing the Ukrainian offensive.

“Ukrainians know how to achieve their goals. And we did not choose to achieve our goals in the war,” he added.

Russia says at least 1,000 Ukrainian troops, supported by tanks and armoured vehicles, entered its territory on Tuesday morning – in what appears to be one of the largest assaults on Russian soil since the war began.

Russian President Vladimir Putin earlier accused Ukraine of a “major provocation”.

Ukrainian officials have been largely silent on the offensive. The exact situation on the ground is hard to determine, with few specific details released by either side.

“Everyone can see that the Ukrainian army knows how to surprise [and] achieve results,” the Ukrainian president said earlier on Thursday, without directly referencing the assault.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said it was monitoring Kursk’s nuclear plant, according to state-owned Russian news agency RIA-Novosti.

Russia’s defence ministry said on Thursday that its troops were “continuing to destroy” armed Ukrainian units with air strikes, rockets and artillery fire.

The ministry said Russian reserves had been rushed to the region.

The Institute for the Study of War, a well-respected think tank, said geo-located footage showed Ukrainian armoured vehicles had advanced to positions 10km (6.2 miles) into the Kursk region in the first two days of the incursion.

Russia’s military leadership is under severe scrutiny domestically, as some popular and generally well-informed pro-war Telegram channels have said the situation on the ground is not as stable as the Kremlin has suggested.

The influential pro-war Rybar Telegram channel strongly criticised the highest ranks of the Russian military on Wednesday, saying that “for two months the full information was sent to the useless headquarters”, adding that there was enough time “to make an appropriate decision”.

Local leaders in regions adjacent to Kursk, in both Russia and Ukraine, have told residents to leave for their safety.

On Wednesday, the head of the Ukrainian region of Sumy, Volodymyr Artyukh, ordered the evacuation of areas bordering Kursk.

In the Russian region of Belgorod, governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said on Thursday that settlements across his province had been attacked by Ukrainian forces over the past 24 hours.

Ukraine’s key allies seemed surprised by the offensive – with White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre saying the US was reaching out to Ukraine to better understand what it hoped to achieve.

This is not the first incursion into Russia by fighters based in Ukraine. Some groups of anti-Kremlin Russians launched raids last year, which were repelled.

The forces crossed into the Belgorod and Kursk regions again in March, where they engaged in clashes with Russian security forces.

On Wednesday evening, Ukrainian MP Oleksiy Honcharenko said the Ukrainian army had established control over the Sudzha gas hub, a major facility involved in the transit of natural gas from Russia to the EU via Ukraine, which has continued despite the war.

It is the only point of entry for Russian gas into the EU.

As of Thursday, gas was reportedly still flowing from Sudzha.

Russia’s National Guard said it had reinforced security around Kursk’s nuclear power station, which lies some 70km north-east of Sudzha.

For the past few months Russia has made incremental gains in eastern Ukraine, as many of Kyiv’s ground forces have faced relentless attacks in the eastern Donbas region.

In a recent interview, Ukraine’s head of defence intelligence, Kyrylo Budanov, said the main offensive by Russian forces “is expected to be over in a month and a half to two months”.

“If you remember being a kid and blowing up a balloon or into a milkshake, your cheeks got sore because there is an energy penalty associated with bubble formation.”

Paul Barrett, the Dublin-born chief executive of the Australian green energy firm Hysata, is explaining the plan to create the cheapest hydrogen in the world – by eliminating bubbles.

The company, based at Port Kembla, an industrial hub south of Sydney, is using a familiar process known as electrolysis, which involves passing electricity through water to split it into hydrogen and oxygen.

But Hysata has developed a special material which sits in the water and which it says makes its electrolyser much more efficient than competing products.

The company says it can produce a kilo of hydrogen using 20% less electricity than conventional methods.

Hydrogen is the most abundant element on the planet and, crucially, when used as a fuel or in industrial processes it does not produce carbon dioxide (CO2).

Many see hydrogen as the answer to cutting carbon dioxide emissions, particularly in heavy industry like steelmaking and chemical production.

Hydrogen production comes in four varieties – green, grey, blue and black.

The green variety is produced with renewable energy, grey comes from splitting methane into carbon dioxide and hydrogen, while blue is made in the same way, but the CO2 by-product is captured and stored.

The production of black hydrogen comes from partially burning coal.

But if there is to be a transition to green hydrogen then its supply needs to be massively increased.

“Ensuring you have the production of green hydrogen close enough to the demand point and being able to regulate the supply of that is probably the biggest challenge,” explains Dr Liam Wagner, an associate professor at Curtin University in Adelaide.

“The efficiency of production and the amount of energy required to run these processes is the biggest frontier.”

Australia is rich in natural resources and has long been the world’s quarry. It’s an export-driven nation; its coal has helped to power Japan, while its iron ore has underpinned much of China’s growth. Many hope that hydrogen could follow.

“The prospects for hydrogen are as a way of exporting energy to countries that can’t produce enough of their own either as hydrogen in a liquid form or as ammonia, which I think is the most likely,” Dr Wagner adds.

Hysata hopes to play a part in that. Its device was initially invented by researchers at the University of Wollongong in the state of New South Wales.

In a conventional electrolyser, bubbles in the water can be clingy and stick to the electrodes, clogging up the process and leading to energy loss.

By using a sponge-like material between the electrodes, Hysata eliminates those troublesome bubbles.

“It is not unlike your kitchen sponge in terms of what it does. It is just a lot thinner,” says Mr Barrett.

“It’s pretty easy to manufacture at a super low cost,” he adds.

Cost and efficiency have been major hurdles for the hydrogen sector, but Hysata has recently raised US$111m (£87m) in investment to beef up its production.

“What we are speaking about is natural hydrogen which is coming directly from the earth,” explains Dr Ema Frery, a research team leader at CSIRO, Australia’s national science agency.

“A lot of rocks that are in Australia can produce hydrogen. We have a lot of old granites that are now close to the subsurface and can generate hydrogen through radiogenic processes.”

So-called geogenic hydrogen is also known as white or gold hydrogen.

Dr Frery, a French-born geoscientist based in Western Australia, is investigating how it might be extracted, stored and used in an economically viable way.

“A conventional hydrogen system can consist of a rock capable of generating hydrogen at a given rate, migration pathways and a reservoir where the hydrogen can be stored.

“Surface seeps at the top of the reservoir can indicate the presence of a hydrogen system at depth,” she says. “It is happening in other countries. In Mali, people are extracting natural hydrogen from the ground for more than ten years to produce electricity for a local village.”

Despite the research work, some doubt that hydrogen will become a big export for Australia.

One of those is the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA), a global research organisation which advocates the use of renewable energy.

Exporting hydrogen from Australia would “make no financial sense”, according to Amandine Denis-Ryan, the chief executive of the IEEFA in Australia.

“Hydrogen shipping would be prohibitively expensive. It requires extremely low temperatures and large volumes, and involves high losses. Using hydrogen locally makes much more sense.”

She hopes that government funding will not be “wasted” on such projects.

Like bubbles on electrodes, new technologies and processes invariably hit sticky patches where progress is hindered and doubts amplified, but the architects of hydrogen’s advance are confident it has a key part to play in our energy transition.

Bahman Shabani, a professor at RMIT University’s School of Engineering in Melbourne, is working to store surplus renewable energy using an electrolyser, a storage tank and a fuel cell that together act like a battery.

“Hydrogen is gaining popularity all around the world. If you look at the investment levels in China, for example, in Japan, in Germany, in Europe in general, in the United States, they are all realising the importance of this area.”

Newly released footage from local Pennsylvania police reveals a clearer picture of the moments surrounding the attempted assassination of Donald Trump in July.

In one body-camera video, a local officer tells colleagues he told the US Secret Service ahead of time to secure the building the gunman used.

Another shows the moment an officer is hoisted on to a rooftop and lays eyes on the gunman, seconds before he opens fire at the Trump rally.

Trump was nicked by a bullet in the shooting, one person was killed and two others badly injured.

The body and dashboard footage was released on Thursday to US media outlets by the Butler Township Police Department.

They capture moments of frustration, confusion and miscommunication in the moments before and after the assassination attempt.

In one, a local officer said he had asked the Secret Service to man the building where the gunman had fired from, days before the rally.

“I told them they need to post guys over there,” he said, according to one video obtained by the Wall Street Journal.

“I told them that [on] Tuesday.”

The open-air rally took place on Saturday 13 July.

The officer appears angry as he tells his colleagues that he asked the Secret Service to secure the building.

“I talked to the Secret Service guys, they were like, ‘Yeah, no problem, we’re going to post guys over here,’” the officer says.

Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, was shot and killed by the Secret Service counter-sniper team after he fired eight bullets in Trump’s direction from a rooftop just outside the rally’s security perimeter.

The would-be assassin was on a building in what police have described as a “secondary ring”, which was patrolled not by the Secret Service but by local and state officers.

Trump, who was on stage addressing supporters, was wounded in the ear before he ducked and Secret Service agents pulled him off stage.

In another video, a Butler County police officer is seen being hoisted up by a colleague on to the rooftop where he spots Crooks.

He quickly drops down when he sees the gunman is armed.

He is then seen running to the other side of the building and to his police car to retrieve a rifle.

Around 40 seconds after the officer first lays eyes on the gunman, Crooks fires at Trump.

The officer shouts to his colleague: “He’s straight up … Who’s got eyes on him?”

The video then shows police officers trying to access the roof.

“He’s got glasses, long hair,” the officer who saw Crooks tells them, adding he has a book bag and an AR-style rifle.

After getting on the roof, the officers see Crooks’ body.

The first police officer is then heard saying: “I popped my head up there like an idiot by myself,” adding that he “started calling out” that a gunman was on the roof.

“Were you on the same frequency?” he is heard asking, referring to the police radio.

In other footage, one officer reportedly appears confused as to why the rooftop was unmanned.

“I thought it was you! I thought you guys were on the roof!” He then swears in frustration and asked: “Why are we not on the roof?”

The Secret Service had posted three counter-snipers inside one of the adjacent buildings.

One of them had spotted Crooks earlier in the day following reports among the law enforcement on site of a suspicious person at the rally.

The Secret Service sniper then took a photo of Crooks before leaving his post to search for the suspect.

BBC News has not seen all the videos. Their contents were reported on by multiple US news outlet.

In a statement on Thursday, Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said the agency was reviewing the footage.

“The US Secret Service appreciates our local law enforcement partners, who acted courageously as they worked to locate the shooter that day,” he said.

“The attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump was a US Secret Service failure, and we are reviewing and updating our protective policies and procedures in order to ensure a tragedy like this never occurs again.”

The FBI is also investigating the incident, as is a bipartisan House panel made up of 13 lawmakers.

A speeding Mercedes driver has been jailed for 10 years for causing the death of an Ecuadorian politician’s daughter.

Psychologist Vanessa Sagnay de la Bastida was crossing the road holding hands with her fiancé Michael Williams as they walked home near Wandsworth Bridge on 16 March 2022.

Octavian Cadar, 39, drove towards them at about 55mph, more than double the 20mph speed limit, causing the terrified couple to become separated as they fled.

Ms Sagnay, 27, who was known as Charlotte, was hit before she reached the pavement, causing her to somersault in the air and land on a railing and sign post.

She suffered a catastrophic head injury and died at the scene.

Cadar, of Bexley, south-east London, had accused the couple of causing the collision by “messing about in the road”, only admitting later to jurors that was wrong.

He also claimed he was trying to avoid them but the court was told the accident would not have happened if he had been driving at 30mph.

A jury deliberated for 42 minutes to find him guilty of causing Ms Sagnay’s death by dangerous driving.

Cadar was jailed for 10 years and disqualified from driving for 10 years and eight months.

In 2018, he had been convicted of speeding, fined, and given six penalty points at Bromley Magistrates’ Court.

Speaking at his sentencing, Mr Williams, who was studying for a PhD at University College London, said: “No-one should have the power to kill just to drive fast.

“Cadar valued speeding in a sports car more than our lives. Afterwards he reacted with anger and blame.

“What was my worst nightmare is now my reality. At least in my nightmares I am with Charlotte again.”

On his fiancée, he said: “My life with Charlotte was wonderful, she was the best friend I ever had.

“She had the magical ability to support people in just the way they needed.”

He added: “She was completely non-judgmental and fiercely, unflinchingly, fought for everyone to be treated fairly.

“Friendship like that made it feel easy for me to be myself, and my best self.

“How could I possibly explain who Charlotte was, what she meant to me, and everything that was lost when she was killed?

“She was half of me. I am less than a person without her.”

On the day of her death, they had been finalising details of their wedding, he said: “Charlotte never got to hear what I wrote in my wedding vows.

“Instead I read them at her funeral.”

Her mother, Jeanne Sagnay de la Bastida, spoke of her pride at her daughter’s academic success at St Andrew’s University, having achieved two Masters degrees, and that she was about to embark on a PhD.

Weeping, she told the court: “My daughter was, is and always will be my life, my everything and my everyone.

On her grief and loss, she said she felt as if an atomic bomb had exploded, leaving her struggling to breathe “toxic air”.

She said: “It is unnatural, unexpected, violent, undeserved, senseless, amoral.

“It has taken up residence in my body and consumed me.”

Ms Sagnay and Mr Williams, who had known each other since school in Scotland, were on their way home from a trip to the gym.

Describing the collision, Mr Williams said he realised he had been separated from Ms Sagnay because they were no longer holding hands.

He said: “She fell on the front of the car. She went onto a street sign. There was a loud bang. I screamed and I crossed the street. I tried to call the ambulance.

“I was on the phone to the emergency services and that is when the driver of the car came out.

“He was shouting. He was angry and he was saying ‘why did you freeze? Why didn’t you keep walking?’

“I said to him ‘because we were terrified’.”

An athlete has died while taking part in a swimming event at the CrossFit Games in Texas, organisers said.

Lazar Dukic, 28, from Serbia, was competing on Marine Creek Lake near the city of Fort Worth on Thursday morning when he disappeared under the water and failed to resurface, officials from Fort Worth emergency services said.

Emergency services were called at around 08:00 local time (14:00 BST) and a body recovered about an hour later.

A statement from the games read: “We are devastated by the passing of Lazar Dukic.

“Our hearts are with Lazar’s entire family, friends, and fellow athletes.

“Out of respect for the family and in cooperation with the Fort Worth Police Department, we will share updates when possible.”

The rest of Thursday’s events have been suspended and organisers are “fully cooperating with authorities”, a separate statement said.

The search for Mr Dukic’s body involved a dive team from the Fort Worth Police Department as well as drones, the BBC’s US partner CBS News reported, citing local officials.

CrossFit CEO Don Faul said Mr Dukic was a “loved and respected” member of the fitness community.

“There’s a lot of people in the community who are hurting right now,” he said.

“A lot of people are mourning. We want to do everything we can to support the community, to support the family.”

He also said a “fully documented safety plan” had been in place and that safety personnel were onsite throughout the event.

A crowdfunder to support Mr Dukic’s family that began with a target of $200,000 (£157,000) has already raised more than $211,000.

The page said Mr Dukic debuted at the CrossFit Games in 2021 after years playing water polo in his native Serbia.

“Known for his kindness, humor, and supportive nature, Lazar brought a breath of fresh air wherever he went,” it said.

“Beyond his athletic achievements, Lazar was caring, humorous and relentlessly supported those around him.”

A CrossFit Games bio on its website ranked Mr Dukic as Serbia’s number one CrossFit athlete in the years between 2017 and 2021, and ranked third in the country this year.

The CrossFit Games is an annual competition in which athletes take part in various events across numerous disciplines, often only finding out what each stage will entail shortly beforehand.

This year’s instalment began on Thursday and was scheduled to conclude on Sunday.

Fans at the Olympics are trying out a new AI-powered talent spotting system that hopes to find the gold medallists of the future. Its developers aim to use a portable version of the technology to bring advanced sport science to remote areas around the world.

As the alarm sounds, Tacto races frantically to swipe the infra-red sensors in front of him as some of them suddenly flash blue.

Not far away his younger brother, Tomo, sprints down a short running track as his motion is tracked by a series of cameras.

The seven and four-year-old siblings from Yokohama, Japan, are taking part in a series of AI-powered tests that have been specially set up near the Olympic Stadium in Paris.

The aim of the system is to identify the potential gold medallists of the future.

Data is gathered from five tests which include activities like running, jumping, and measuring grip strength.

This information is then analysed to assess a person’s power, explosiveness, endurance, reaction time, strength and agility.

The results are compared with data from professional and Olympic athletes.

“We’re using computer vision and historical data, so the average person can compare themselves to elite athletes and see what sport they are most physically aligned to,” says Sarah Vickers, head of Intel’s Olympic and Paralympic Program.

After completing the tests, each participant is told which sport they would be most suited to from a list of 10.

Intel says all the data collected from the people taking part is deleted once the process is complete.

Aside from technology, it is something the young brothers are having fun doing.

“I enjoyed it,” says Tacto. “I liked the bit where we had to sprint the best.”

The AI system that is open to fans at Paris 2024 has a far smaller, more portable counterpart that can be run on most devices which have a basic camera and a little computing power.

“With just a mobile phone or a tablet or a PC you have this opportunity to go into places where you couldn’t go before,” says Sarah.

This AI technology can assess people’s performance just by analysing video from the camera without the need for physical sensors.

The International Olympic Committee recently took the system to Senegal, where it toured around five different villages and assessed more than 1,000 children on their athletic potential.

Partnering with Senegal’s National Olympic Committee, and after a follow-up round of more advanced tests, it identified 48 children with “huge potential”, and one with “exceptional potential”.

They have been offered places on sports programmes if they want, to see how far they can take their athletic abilities.

It is hoped that the system can be rolled out further and used to offer opportunities to people in areas which it would be impossible to reach with bulkier assessment systems.

Prof John Brewer, a visiting lecturer at University of Suffolk, who has worked with England’s Football Association on talent identification, says spotting potential at a young age is the “holy grail” of sport.

However, he warns that a basic system that can only measure a few attributes would be limited when it comes to technical sports like football or basketball, or ones that require endurance.

“If you want to win the marathon or the 10K you have to have that aerobic capacity, that oxygen transport capacity, that no filming will ever show,” he says.

Prof Brewer does see the benefits of the system for making initial assessments of potential athletes.

“If they are revealing skill and agility which suggests that they are able to have talent in a particular sport then that has to be encouraged,” he says. “And if it is portable and can be taken to areas where they don’t necessarily have access to high-tech assessment methods, then that can only be a good thing.”

“But it would only be one part of a much bigger talent identification system.”

Back at the Olympic Stadium, young Tacto has his results – he has been identified as a potential sprinter.

He is delighted, although he says he currently prefers football and tennis.

Two more experienced athletes are Hank and Brock, who both used to compete for their university in the US at inter-collegiate level. This standard can offer world-class facilities and has produced many Olympians.

“We’re former athletes and we’re competitive and thought it’d be fun,” says Hank.

“This kind of technology wasn’t around when we were swimming 10 to 15 years ago,” Brock adds.

And what were their results?

“Rugby,” says Hank.

“I got basketball and I’ve literally never played basketball in my life,” replies Brock.

“Well, he played with me once and we never allowed him back,” replies Hank.

It seems even with AI technology, computers cannot get it right every time.

When Team GB’s Kyle Kothari reflects back on the journey to his first ever Olympic Games, he feels proud.

The 26-year-old is preparing to go for glory in the men’s 10m platform dive, the same event in which Tom Daley won bronze in Tokyo.

But, in many ways, being in Paris at all makes him feel like he’s already won.

After medals in lower-profile events, Kyle faced the possibility of career-ending operations, first in 2019 for a ruptured left achilles, and then the same injury on the other foot in 2021 – six months before the last Games in Tokyo.

“At that point, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to come back,” he tells BBC Asian Network.

Kyle says he started exploring life outside of sport, even working at JP Morgan as an analyst for seven months.

But receiving an offer to work full-time made him realise he couldn’t leave the sport just yet.

“Especially when I knew if I could stay injury-free, I knew how good I could be.

“If I didn’t give it a go, I’d be cheating myself later down the line.”

Growing up, Kyle, who is British Asian, says he was actually into gymnastics as a kid.

But he says he “loved” weekly diving sessions so much he chose the water as his future path.

According to data compiled by Sport England, about 95% of black adults and 93% of Asian adults in the UK do not swim, with South Asians among the groups least likely to be active.

“Being a British Asian in sport is already quite rare,” Kyle says.

“Especially when you get into the higher levels.”

He describes gymnastics as feeling “more diverse”, but aquatic sports like diving and swimming “were not diverse at all”.

“You sometimes need someone to do it, for you to believe that it’s possible,” he says.

That message – and sense of responsibility – hit home for him earlier this year, at the World Championships in Doha.

Speaking with the Indian diving team, he says they were surprised someone with South Asian heritage, like Kyle, was so good at diving.

“The coach told me about how some of the kids didn’t believe it was possible. Because there’s not been Indians that have been in the top six in the world before.

“It was the first time I actually thought: Hang on, it’s important to see someone that looks like you doing something.

“That makes you think that it’s possible.”

But Kyle also acknowledges his privilege in being able to follow his sporting dreams.

“Doing sport to this level requires such sacrifice. Not just financially but also from your family and support network,” he says.

Kyle points to the help from his family growing up in pushing him to achieve big things.

“My parents really valued sport growing up, and that’s quite rare in my community. My dad would have sold the house so that I could make an Olympics.”

That support also aided his decision to leave “a financially secure job” at JP Morgan.

“How many people are able to just turn an opportunity like that down?”

Now, he says he is grateful for National Lottery funding, and hopes that sports in general can become better-paying, so it becomes a realistic career path for people from diverse backgrounds.

After making the switch from synchronised diving to individual, Kyle says he’s “excited to compete, but equally nervous”, to be at one of the world’s biggest sporting events.

The last person to win a medal for Team GB in the event was Tom Daley, someone he credits along with other members of the diving squad for their help.

“The entire team is filled with people that have multiple world medals, European medals, Commonwealth medals.

“We are just super-close mates. There’s no egos, there’s no chip on their shoulder. You can ask anyone anything about any advice.”

The aim, Kyle says, is “to try and go for a medal”, but he’s pretty chilled if it doesn’t happen.

“In a weird way, I don’t really mind.

“I don’t think I’ll be that hung up on it because my journey to get here has been so much harder,” he says.

“You can always find something to be upset about after you’ve competed.

“You can nitpick and things like that. For me, if you asked me three years ago whether I’d be on this team… it’s just a real honour.”

Listen to Ankur Desai’s show on BBC Asian Network live from 15:00-18:00 Monday to Thursday – or listen back here.

More than a year has passed since a deadly ethnic conflict devastated homes and claimed over 220 lives in India’s north-eastern Manipur state. But its more than three million residents are still waiting for peace.

Clashes erupted in May last year between the majority Meitei and indigenous minority Kuki groups – they were sparked by Kuki protests against demands from Meiteis to be given official tribal status, which would make them eligible for affirmative action and other benefits.

The violence displaced tens of thousands – some 59,000 people are still living in government relief camps. It has split up neighbourhoods and torn apart bonds between communities.

Today, Manipur is divided into two camps, with Meiteis inhabiting the Imphal Valley and Kukis living in the surrounding hill areas. Borders and buffer zones guarded by security forces separate the two regions. Many locals have voluntarily taken up arms – some stolen from armed forces, some country-made – to protect their villages from intruders.

• What is happening in Manipur and why

Federal and state officials have made some attempts to end the conflict by holding peace talks between the communities, but locals say it hasn’t been enough – a recent peace deal signed in a district collapsed within a day. Distrust between the two groups persists and incidents of violence, including killings of security personnel, are regularly reported.

“The situation in Manipur is still tense and full of mistrust because people have to be confident about moving forward – and to move forward, there has to be some resolution of the past. There hasn’t been one,” says Sanjoy Hazarika, a commentator and author who specialises in India’s north-eastern states.

Both communities blame the other for stoking violence.

The state government and the Meitei community have frequently blamed illegal immigration – especially from neighbouring Myanmar – for the conflict. The Kuki community, which shares ethnic ties with the Chins in Myanmar, say this narrative has been used to target them within their own state.

“The state needs a full-fledged intervention: militarily to stop the violence and psychologically to start negotiations. The establishment of trust [between Kukis and Meiteis] is crucial. Trust cannot be built in a day,” says Shreema Ningombam, a political analyst in Imphal, the state capital.

In Sugnu village, about 60km (37 miles) from Imphal, the divide is stark.

It was once home to both Meiteis and Kukis, but the latter fled to the surrounding hills after the conflict began, leaving behind burnt and ransacked houses.

Despite heavy security, locals fear retaliatory attacks from “outsiders”. Meitei women groups, known as Meira Paibis, guard village entry points.

Yumlembam Manitombi, one of the guards, said she lost her 29-year-old son in last year’s violence. He was the eldest of her three children and the sole provider for the family.

They have installed a bust of him in the courtyard of their house. An engraving below the bust marks the reason for his death – it says Kuki Meitei War 2023.

“I want peace. Ending this war is my sole wish and I seek nothing more,” Ms Manitombi says.

In Churachandpur, the Kuki-dominated epicentre of the conflict, similar security measures exist. The entrance to the city features a “Wall of Remembrance” commemorating Kukis who died in the conflict.

Boinu Haokip and her family fled from Sugnu to Churachandpur last year to escape violence and now survive on odd jobs.

Ms Haokip, who is pursuing a degree in ethnic violence in Manipur, says her future looks bleak.

“I have to study and look after my family. Our society was in poverty for generations. We had begun coming out of it, but this violence has pushed us back at least a decade,” she says.

Questions about the future haunt others too as schools become makeshift camps. People have lost businesses, land and jobs and exhausted their savings.

The conflict has also forced some to flee to camps in the neighbouring state of Mizoram. With shortages of food, water, and medicine, people rely on odd jobs to survive.

Nengnei Chong, 52, fled with her two sons and has been living in a relief camp outside Mizoram’s capital Aizawl. But she says she regrets her decision to leave.

“It would have been better had we too died back home,” she says.

Mizoram lawmaker TBC Lalvenchhunga says the state government has limited resources.

“The government is financially struggling. If the federal government heeds our repeated requests [for more funds], we can help the refugees better,” he says.

Locals accuse the Bharatiya Janata Party-run Manipur and federal governments of not doing enough to quell the violence.

Kuki groups have accused state authorities of ignoring violence by Meiteis for political benefit, which the government denies. Opposition parties say federal government let the conflict rage on for too long. The Congress party has repeatedly criticised Prime Minister Narendra Modi for not visiting Manipur.

“Our government is making serious efforts to bring back normalcy in Manipur. Schools, colleges and offices in most places have opened up and are functioning. The hope for peace is visible,” Mr Modi said in parliament recently.

But experts say mistrust between the two communities has only hardened and the divide has deepened with the Kukis steadfastly demanding a “separate administration”, something the Meiteis vehemently oppose.

“Peace-building is a very painful and slow process. It is easier to indulge in violence than to build peace. If the centre [federal government] is able to bring both sides to the table, it will be a step in the right direction,” Mr Hazarika says.

But he cautions that this won’t be a quick process.

“Healing needs time and patience before you can really move forward.”

“If you remember being a kid and blowing up a balloon or into a milkshake, your cheeks got sore because there is an energy penalty associated with bubble formation.”

Paul Barrett, the Dublin-born chief executive of the Australian green energy firm Hysata, is explaining the plan to create the cheapest hydrogen in the world – by eliminating bubbles.

The company, based at Port Kembla, an industrial hub south of Sydney, is using a familiar process known as electrolysis, which involves passing electricity through water to split it into hydrogen and oxygen.

But Hysata has developed a special material which sits in the water and which it says makes its electrolyser much more efficient than competing products.

The company says it can produce a kilo of hydrogen using 20% less electricity than conventional methods.

Hydrogen is the most abundant element on the planet and, crucially, when used as a fuel or in industrial processes it does not produce carbon dioxide (CO2).

Many see hydrogen as the answer to cutting carbon dioxide emissions, particularly in heavy industry like steelmaking and chemical production.

Hydrogen production comes in four varieties – green, grey, blue and black.

The green variety is produced with renewable energy, grey comes from splitting methane into carbon dioxide and hydrogen, while blue is made in the same way, but the CO2 by-product is captured and stored.

The production of black hydrogen comes from partially burning coal.

But if there is to be a transition to green hydrogen then its supply needs to be massively increased.

“Ensuring you have the production of green hydrogen close enough to the demand point and being able to regulate the supply of that is probably the biggest challenge,” explains Dr Liam Wagner, an associate professor at Curtin University in Adelaide.

“The efficiency of production and the amount of energy required to run these processes is the biggest frontier.”

Australia is rich in natural resources and has long been the world’s quarry. It’s an export-driven nation; its coal has helped to power Japan, while its iron ore has underpinned much of China’s growth. Many hope that hydrogen could follow.

“The prospects for hydrogen are as a way of exporting energy to countries that can’t produce enough of their own either as hydrogen in a liquid form or as ammonia, which I think is the most likely,” Dr Wagner adds.

Hysata hopes to play a part in that. Its device was initially invented by researchers at the University of Wollongong in the state of New South Wales.

In a conventional electrolyser, bubbles in the water can be clingy and stick to the electrodes, clogging up the process and leading to energy loss.

By using a sponge-like material between the electrodes, Hysata eliminates those troublesome bubbles.

“It is not unlike your kitchen sponge in terms of what it does. It is just a lot thinner,” says Mr Barrett.

“It’s pretty easy to manufacture at a super low cost,” he adds.

Cost and efficiency have been major hurdles for the hydrogen sector, but Hysata has recently raised US$111m (£87m) in investment to beef up its production.

“What we are speaking about is natural hydrogen which is coming directly from the earth,” explains Dr Ema Frery, a research team leader at CSIRO, Australia’s national science agency.

“A lot of rocks that are in Australia can produce hydrogen. We have a lot of old granites that are now close to the subsurface and can generate hydrogen through radiogenic processes.”

So-called geogenic hydrogen is also known as white or gold hydrogen.

Dr Frery, a French-born geoscientist based in Western Australia, is investigating how it might be extracted, stored and used in an economically viable way.

“A conventional hydrogen system can consist of a rock capable of generating hydrogen at a given rate, migration pathways and a reservoir where the hydrogen can be stored.

“Surface seeps at the top of the reservoir can indicate the presence of a hydrogen system at depth,” she says. “It is happening in other countries. In Mali, people are extracting natural hydrogen from the ground for more than ten years to produce electricity for a local village.”

Despite the research work, some doubt that hydrogen will become a big export for Australia.

One of those is the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA), a global research organisation which advocates the use of renewable energy.

Exporting hydrogen from Australia would “make no financial sense”, according to Amandine Denis-Ryan, the chief executive of the IEEFA in Australia.

“Hydrogen shipping would be prohibitively expensive. It requires extremely low temperatures and large volumes, and involves high losses. Using hydrogen locally makes much more sense.”

She hopes that government funding will not be “wasted” on such projects.

Like bubbles on electrodes, new technologies and processes invariably hit sticky patches where progress is hindered and doubts amplified, but the architects of hydrogen’s advance are confident it has a key part to play in our energy transition.

Bahman Shabani, a professor at RMIT University’s School of Engineering in Melbourne, is working to store surplus renewable energy using an electrolyser, a storage tank and a fuel cell that together act like a battery.

“Hydrogen is gaining popularity all around the world. If you look at the investment levels in China, for example, in Japan, in Germany, in Europe in general, in the United States, they are all realising the importance of this area.”

The video begins with loud bangs on a door that leads to a dimly lit stairwell.

“They are entering my home arbitrarily. They are destroying the door,” a woman can be heard crying.

It is the voice of María Oropeza, a campaign co-ordinator for opposition coalition Vente Venezuela, who is live streaming her detention on Instagram.

The bangs increase in intensity as she tells her followers that she has done nothing wrong: “I am not a criminal.”

Officials from Venezuela’s military counterintelligence agency then burst through her door and the video cuts to black.

Ms Oropeza is the latest opposition figure who has been detained following the announcement in the early hours of 29 July of Venezuela’s disputed presidential election result.

In the days since, members of the security forces have seized Freddy Superlano and Roland Carreño – both of whom worked for the opposition party Popular Will – and Ricardo Estévez, a technical adviser for the same opposition movement as Ms Oropeza.

Amnesty International told the BBC they had “well-founded reasons to believe [the detained people’s] lives and integrity are at risk”.

The pressure group says that they have been seeing a new pattern of more targeted arrests by the Venezuelan authorities since the election.

Many of those detained have reportedly not been told why they were being arrested.

In the live stream of Ms Oropeza’s detention, she can be heard asking those banging on her door if they have a search warrant. She receives no answer.

Tension has been high since Venezuela’s National Electoral Council declared President Nicolás Maduro the winner of the election – a declaration that was immediately dismissed by the opposition, which said it had proof that it, not the government had won. Mass anti-government protests quickly followed.

President Maduro accused the opposition of instigating a “coup” and announced plans to build two new maximum-security prisons to house protesters it accuses of being “criminal fascists”.

The government says more than 2,000 people have been detained, some of which it accuses of “terrorism”.

Clara del Campo, Amnesty International’s Americas senior campaigner, said the arbitrary detentions had followed a “two-pronged trend”.

“On the one hand, they have been massive and indiscriminate when it comes to protesters who took to the streets to support the opposition’s claim to election victory and, on the other, targeted and selected towards human rights defenders and opposition members,” she explained.

According to Ms del Campo, the mass detention of protesters is aimed at punishing and dissuading people from publicly expressing dissent.

It is an observation echoed by Venezuelan human rights NGO Foro Penal, which told BBC Mundo that it had witnessed an unprecedented “escalation of repression”.

Foro Penal has received reports of people who had their phones checked arbitrarily while they were walking down the street, with the security officials stopping them citing social media posts or messages as the reason for their subsequent arrest.

The NGO told the BBC that people arrested in this manner have typically been held in detention centres without access to independent lawyers.

These detentions have led to a culture of fear, with some people now worried about sharing information on social media, attending protests, or even raising the alarm about people who have been seized for fear of punishment.

President Maduro himself has spoken of a strategy he called “Operation Tun Tun” (Operation Knock Knock).

Rights groups say it consists of the authorities going door-to-door to detain those with links to the protests or the opposition.

More than 2,000 have been detained since the election, according to government figures. Amnesty International says that among them are more than 100 children aged between 13 and 17 and at least six people with disabilities.

Ms Del Campo said those detained were “largely accused of ‘terrorism’ and related crimes, denied legal defence, remain disappeared and incommunicado, and are at high risk of ill treatment”.

She also said that human rights defenders and members of the opposition had been specifically targeted so as to “curtail political participation and the protection of rights”.

One of them is Kennedy Tejeda – a young pro-bono human rights lawyer with Foro Penal – who was arrested as he was trying to assist other people detained for protesting.

As well as implementing its “Operation Knock Knock”, the authorities have also targeted activists and opposition members in other ways.

The BBC has been told about dozens of people, including journalists and activists, whose passports have been revoked.

Edni López, a university professor and humanitarian worker who assisted many NGOs in Venezuela, was detained on the morning of 4 August at the international airport in the capital, Caracas.

She was planning to board a flight to Colombia from where she was going to fly to Argentina for a holiday with friends.

She last contacted her friends and boyfriend from the airport. In Whatsapp messages seen by the BBC, she told them that the migration authorities claimed her passport was “expired”, despite it being in date. They then lost contact with Ms López.

The airport later informed them she did not board her Avianca airlines flight.

A close friend of hers told the BBC that Ms López’s case was not unique: “Many people with no ties to any political cause have stated that their passports have been cancelled as well.”

The friend, who asked to remain unnamed, said that there were apparently “no clear criteria” for deciding whose passports were void and called the detentions “unconstitutional”.

The BBC has approached the Venezuelan government and Avianca for comment. Avianca said it could not comment on specific passenger cases unless ordered to by an authority, but added the airline only allowed passengers who in addition to meeting travel requirements had been approved by the country’s authorities beforehand.

We have not yet received a reply from the government.

Talking to reporters, Edni López’s mother made a plea to the country’s authorities: “Give me back my daughter, it’s not fair that a Venezuelan mother has to go through this.”

She also said that her daughter had a health condition that required daily medication.

After two days in which they visited several detention centres, her family finally learned that she was being held at one of them and told she would be taken to court in the city of La Guaira.

They have so far received no information about the charges being brought against her.

Her friend described the situation as “overwhelming”. “We don’t know the conditions of her captivity.”

Another person close to Ms López told the BBC: “The only reason we think this measure was taken is because she works in the humanitarian sector and because she is a university professor.”

The friend added that they had heard that the charges against Ms López were of a political nature.

“I can attest and testify that Edni has not participated in any political event, much less that she has issued or made a political publication on any [social] network or platform,” the friend insisted.

Ms López is not the only person to be detained at the airport.

A day earlier, prominent LGBT activist Yendri Omar Velásquez was also seized at the same airport as he was trying to leave Venezuela to report human rights violations to the United Nations.

He was told his passport was cancelled and was held for six hours before being released.

The impact of these detentions is immense, not only on those who are seized by the authorities but also on those close to them.

Ms López’s friends and relatives asked not to be named, fearing they could face repercussions for simply highlighting her plight.

Human rights groups say that this fear is exactly what the authorities are trying to achieve.

They argue that by targeting rights activists and lawyers – the very people that those swept up in the mass arrests may turn to for help – those already in detention are further isolated, and those who may think of speaking out will be deterred.

For many young woman, there have been very few film adaptations as hotly anticipated as Colleen Hoover’s It Ends With Us.

The 2016 book became an internet sensation a few years ago – it took TikTok’s #booktok by storm with more than one billion tags and sold 20 million copies weeks as the number one New York Times bestseller.

While on the surface the film appears to be a standard romantic comedy, it comes with a dark twist.

Starring Gossip Girl star Blake Lively, it tells the story of Lily Bloom, a young woman who grew up witnessing domestic abuse and winds up in the same position years later.

Lily, a florist in Boston, navigates a complicated love triangle between her charming but abusive boyfriend Ryle Kincaid – played by Jane the Virgin’s Justin Baldoni – and her compassionate first love, Atlas Corrigan, acted by Brandon Sklenar.

Speaking to the BBC at the premiere, Lively says she felt the “responsibility of servicing the people that care so much about the source material”.

“I really feel like we delivered a story that’s emotional and it’s fun, but also funny, painful, scary, tragic and it’s inspiring and that’s what life is, it’s every single colour,” says the 36-year-old actress who is married to fellow actor Ryan Reynolds.

But the film has been met with some criticism that it romanticises domestic abuse.

A two-star review from The Telegraph called it a “queasy drama” that “repackages domestic violence as slick romance”.

Tim Robey added that the film “splices abuse and glossy courtship in the big city to deeply dubious effects”.

Hoover has explained that her inspiration for the novel was the domestic abuse that her mother endured.

Rebecca Goshawk, who works for Solace, a charity that supports victims of gender-based violence, says she is worried about how the film may have covered domestic abuse.

“Film can be a really powerful way for young people to see examples of domestic abuse and educate them about healthy relationships,” she explains.

“But when it’s done poorly it’s really worrying as it could romanticise unhealthy relationships and young people don’t have the knowledge to see what is dangerous behaviour.”

Lively, who is also credited as a producer, tells the BBC that she is adamant the film has been made sensitively and “with lots of empathy”.

“Lily is a survivor and a victim and while they are huge labels, these are not her identity. She defines herself and I think it’s deeply empowering that no one else can define you.”

Fans at the premiere also say that they don’t think the book or film romanticise unhealthy relationships.

Taylor Lopez, 19, says that showing the story from the perspective of a victim who grapples with the difficult decision of loving someone but also needing to leave them is done really well.

Her friends Phoebe and Celina agree, adding that the film “perfectly comes together” and “the feelings and experiences of the characters are so relatable”.

They all also think that Lively, who rose to fame in the 2000s playing Serena van der Woodsen in Gossip Girl, is the perfect casting.

“In the book Lily is a 23-year-old and so people have complained about her casting but actually she’s the perfect choice,” Celina explains.

However, the critics have not been so favourable, awarding the film a mix of two and three stars.

The Independent said the film was “sincere but completely ludicrous” in a two-star review and added that Lively’s character “does not register as a real person, so, it’s odd, and a little uncomfortable, to see her burdened with such raw trauma”.

The Guardian acknowledged that there were “expected clichés, but there are also many that are mercifully avoided too, the story not always conforming to type”.

A four-star review from The Times was one of the most favourable and described the film as “Pretty Woman meets 50 Shades of Grey” and a “dizzy, guilty pleasure”.

“Lively is perfectly cast and has that combination of self-consciousness, determination and doubt that is wholly fitting for a character yearning to break free from the coercive clutches of those around her,” Kevin Maher wrote.

Adaptations of popular books, particularly those read by younger women such as Twilight and The Hunger Games, have become blockbuster hits.

Hoover and Lively’s loyal and impressively large fan bases may help It Ends With Us on to that list, despite the lukewarm response by the critics.

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

• The small African country with the world’s highest suicide rate
• Zambians mourn gospel singer popular in churches and clubs
• ‘Fear kept me alive on epic motorbike trip across Africa’
• Beauty contest sparks row over who counts as South African

The Miss South Africa beauty contestant at the centre of a nationality row has withdrawn from the competition, saying she took the decision for her and her family’s safety and well-being.

Chidimma Adetshina’s announcement on Instagram came a day after a preliminary investigation by the home affairs department found that her mother may have committed “identity theft” to become a South African national.

Ms Adetshina – a 23-year-old law student – said she was born in Soweto, a township next to Johannesburg, and grew up in Cape Town.

In media interviews she explained her father was Nigerian and her mother was a South African of Mozambican descent.

For weeks her roots have been at the centre of a social media storm, with some South Africans questioning whether she was a South African.

As the row escalated, the organisers of the Miss South Africa pageant asked the home affairs department to conduct an investigation ahead of the event on Saturday.

In a statement on Wednesday, the department said it had so far found that the identity of an “innocent” South African mother “may have been stolen” by Ms Adetshina’s mother.

However, Ms Adetshina “could not have participated in the alleged unlawful actions of her mother as she was an infant at the time”, the department said.

It added that it was conducting further investigations with the aim of pressing criminal charges, while also obtaining legal advice “on the implications of the alleged fraudulent activity on Adetshina’s citizenship status”.

In an Instagram post, Ms Adetshina did not respond to the findings, but said she had taken the “difficult decision” to withdraw from the competition.

She said she was grateful “for all the love and support” she had received, and wished the remaining contestants the best.

“Whoever wears the crown, represents us all,” Ms Adetshina added.

• Beauty contest sparks row over who counts as South African
• Tyla’s racial identity: South African singer sparks culture war
• Nigerian anger over South African xenophobia

Beijing is cracking down on “aggressive fans” who it says are affecting the performance of Chinese athletes at the Paris Olympics – the latest in its years-long war against celebrity worship.

In recent days, state media reports have called out “inappropriate” behaviour, such as fans booing during events or accusing referees of being unfair.

This “fan culture”, they said, reached a peak on 3 August when paddler Chen Meng defeated teammate Sun Yingsha to win gold in the table tennis women’s singles.

The Chinese internet exploded with support for Ms Sun despite her loss, with some denouncing Ms Chen’s victory, saying she won only because Ms Sun was exhausted from three earlier events.

Chinese social media platforms have collectively removed tens of thousands of posts and banned over 800 accounts for allegedly “spreading negativity and fomenting conflict” about the event.

One of Ms Sun’s fans wrote that she “wishes Chen tests positive for a banned substance, then the gold medal can go to [Sun],” sparking anger online.

A 29-year-old woman has also been arrested for posting defamatory comments about the match.

It’s not clear what she had said but police said on Tuesday that she “maliciously fabricated information and blatantly defamed others, resulting in an adverse impact on society”.

This is the latest in Beijing’s crackdown on what it calls “toxic” celebrity culture.

Previously, China has seen the banning of celebrity rankings, the restructuring of fan clubs, and the regular scrubbing of “harmful” content from fan pages.

In the last few days, the state-run Global Times newspaper published several articles denouncing “fan culture” in sports.

One of its reports said “numerous Chinese people” were now worried about “the visibly aggressive fan culture that threatens to erode the sporting world”.

In addition to inflammatory comments directed at sporting personalities, authorities have also criticised fans who cheer loudly or use flash photography during matches, and those who profit by selling memorabilia signed by athletes.

“The [fan culture] not only affects the training and competition of Chinese athletes, but also seriously affects the reputation of Chinese sports,” state news agency Xinhua said in a video report on Wednesday.

Shanghai Daily published a commentary urging social media platforms to “enforce strict policies against malicious behaviours” and sporting organisations to “take a firm stance against… fan mania”.

Chinese authorities had warned against “fan culture” even before the Paris Olympics.

Late last year, the Chinese Olympic Committee and General Administration of Sport of China told fans off after repeated incidents of them filming and following athletes.

“It seems that these ‘low-level fans’ are driven by their love for idols and impulsively make irrational actions that endanger the normal order of events, public order and good customs, sportsmanship and social morality,” they had said in a joint statement.

Ahead of the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, the committee warned Chinese Olympians not to get involved in fan clubs, adding that it wants to “resolutely put an end to the spread of the chaos of fan culture to the field of sports”.

The athletes themselves have said they want to be treated with “respect”. Veteran table tennis player Deng Yaping, for instance, had urged fans to “express our preferences without attacking others”.

She added: “We must respect each other and leave space for everyone.”

A fourth Banksy artwork revealed in London in as many days appears to have been stolen.

On Thursday, the Bristol-based street artist posted an image on Instagram of the silhouette of a wolf howling at the moon on a satellite dish in Rye Lane, Peckham, south London.

The Banksy press team told the BBC they “believed” it had been stolen.

The Metropolitan Police said it had been called to reports of a “stolen satellite dish containing artwork” but no arrests had been made.

A witness, Tom Kellow, was on his lunch break when he saw the satellite dish getting removed.

He said: “They had a ladder. There was one guy on the roof and the other two were watching the ladder.

“They saw me filming and it got a bit tetchy. One gave me a kick in the side and another tried to throw my phone on the roof. Luckily it hit a tree and came back down again.

“I told a police officer in the area about it.

“It’s a great shame we can’t have nice things and it’s a shame it couldn’t have lasted more than an hour.”

The artwork was the fourth Banksy to be revealed in London since Monday. The street artist also claimed credit for the three other black silhouette compositions, which appeared around the capital as part of an animal-themed series.

According to Google maps, the satellite dish in Rye Lane was not believed to have been there before the artwork appeared.

Banksy unveiled his third piece on Wednesday, which depicts three monkeys seemingly swinging on a railway bridge in Brick Lane, east London.

On Tuesday, the anonymous street artist posted a photo of two elephant silhouettes, with their trunks stretched towards each other, created on the side of a house in Edith Terrace in Chelsea.

He posted an artwork of a goat perched on top of a wall near Kew Bridge in Richmond on Monday.

The BBC understands the art series is set to conclude at the end of this week.

A renowned British crocodile expert has been jailed for 10 years and five months in Australia, after admitting to sexually abusing dozens of dogs, in a case which horrified the nation.

Adam Britton, a leading zoologist who has worked on BBC and National Geographic productions, pleaded guilty to 56 charges relating to bestiality and animal cruelty.

He also admitted to four counts of accessing child abuse material.

The Northern Territory (NT) Supreme Court heard the 53-year-old filmed himself torturing the animals until almost all died, and then shared the videos online under pseudonyms.

His abuse went unnoticed for years, until a clue was found in one of his videos. Britton was arrested in April 2022 after a search of his rural Darwin property, which also uncovered child abuse material on his laptop.

Much of the detail of Britton’s crimes are too graphic to publish, and so “grotesque” Chief Justice Michael Grant warned the courtroom they could cause “nervous shock”.

As the facts of the case were read aloud, some members of the public rushed outside. Others watching from the gallery cried and mouthed insults at Britton. He at times hung his head and reached for tissues.

Calling the offending “devious”, Justice Grant said the “unalloyed pleasure” Britton took in torturing the animals was “sickeningly evident”.

“[Your] depravity falls entirely outside any ordinary human conception,” he said.

Including time already served, Britton could be eligible for parole in September 2028. He is also banned from owning any mammals for the rest of his life.

Mr Britton’s lawyer argued his offending was driven by a rare disorder causing intense, atypical sexual interests.

In court on Thursday, they read out a letter from Britton, who apologised for his “demeaning crimes”.

“I deeply regret the pain and trauma that I caused to innocent animals and consequently to my family, friends and members of the community,” it said.

Adding that his family was not aware or involved in any way, he wrote: “I will seek long term treatment and… I will find a path towards redemption.”

Born in West Yorkshire, Britton grew up in the UK before moving to Australia more than 20 years ago to work with crocodiles.

With a PhD in zoology, he had built a global reputation for his expertise, even hosting Sir David Attenborough while the veteran broadcaster filmed part of the Life in Cold Blood docuseries on his property.

Locals have told media he seemed like a quiet but passionate defender of animals.

But he was harbouring a “sadistic sexual interest” in them, court documents say. Exchanges with “like-minded” people in secret online chatrooms detail how Britton began molesting horses at the age of 13.

“I was sadistic as a child to animals, but I had repressed it. In the last few years I let it out again, and now I can’t stop. I don’t want to. :),” he wrote in one message tendered to the court.

For at least the past decade, Britton had exploited his own pets and manipulated other dog owners into giving him theirs.

“My own dogs are family and I have limits,” he explained in a Telegram chat entered into evidence.

“I only badly mistreat other dogs… I have no emotional bond to them, they are toys pure and simple. And [there are] plenty more where they came from.”

He tortured at least 42 dogs, killing 39 of them, according to court documents seen by the BBC. The files only detail his crimes over the 18 months before his arrest, but still fill more than 90 pages.

Using online marketplace Gumtree Australia, Britton would find people who were often reluctantly giving their pets away due to travel or work commitments. He would build a “rapport” with them to negotiate taking custody of the animals and if they reached out for updates on their old pets, the court heard he would tell them “false narratives” and send them old photos.

In reality, he was abusing the animals in a shipping container on his property that had been fitted out with recording equipment – which he called his “torture room” – before sharing footage of his crimes online using aliases.

Britton would also coach others on how to copy his behaviour and get rid of the evidence.

Asked how to dispose of the dogs’ remains, Britton – who shared his sprawling property on the outskirts of Darwin with eight crocodiles – said “some I feed to other animals”.

He was only caught after uploading a clip in which he tortured at least eight dogs – all except one were puppies – which was passed on to NT police in an anonymous tip-off.

Britton usually went to great lengths to avoid identifying himself or his location in his videos, but in this one a bright orange City of Darwin dog leash could be seen in the background.

Within weeks, in April 2022, police swooped on his property and arrested Britton, who has been remanded in custody ever since.

They seized recording devices, animal remains and a laptop on which they also located 15 files containing child abuse material.

Animal advocates say the case shows the need for stronger animal cruelty penalties.

Speaking outside court, many who had travelled from all over the country for the hearing expressed disappointment at the sentence, but said it offered some solace to the owners of the pets Britton abused.

Addressing the zoologist directly, one activist told Britton he was “right where you should be – locked up.”

“Once respected and esteemed, you’re now a disgrace to the scientific community,” said Natalie Carey. “No one will ever look at you with admiration again.”

A man responsible for one of the most viral clips in Australian history has died at the age of 82.

The prison escapee and on-again off-again petty criminal – whose best-known alias was Jack Karlson – shot to fame in 2009, after a clip of his dramatic 1991 arrest outside a Chinese restaurant in Brisbane was uploaded to the internet and enthralled the world.

“What is the charge? Eating a meal? A succulent Chinese meal” Karlson – born Cecil George Edwards – theatrically shouted, while resisting a string of officers.

“Gentlemen, this is democracy manifest” and “get your hand off my penis” were among his other, now immortalised, phrases.

The seminal moment has inspired thousands of memes, musical remixes, reaction videos – and even a few tattoos. Democracy Manifest is also the name of a purebred Australian racehorse.

Karlson’s family confirmed he had passed away in hospital on Wednesday, following a battle with prostate cancer, surrounded by loved ones.

“He walked a full and colourful path and despite the troubles thrown at him, he lived by his motto – to keep on laughing,” they said in a statement.

Karlson had captivated the nation’s media again in June, after he reunited with one of the policemen, Stoll Watt, who had arrested him that fateful day, to announce an upcoming documentary into his obscure and eccentric life.

Although he was a convicted criminal, Karlson had always maintained that the 1991 incident was a case of mistaken identity.

And after the footage emerged on the internet, it was broadly speculated that Karlson had been confused for a Hungarian chess player, famous for dine-and-dash attempts across the country at the time.

“They thought I was some international gangster”, he said.

“Typical police grabbing you – if they can put something on you, they’ll do it.”

In a recent interview with ABC News, Karlson described his long life as one of adventure. It reportedly included three jail breaks and multiple run-ins with authorities.

And his theatrics apparently continued into his final weeks.

His niece Kim Edwards told Australian broadcaster SBS: “He had a few attempts to escape [hospital] and pulled his cords out a couple of times and asked us many times to sneak in his pipe.

“As a final send off we gave uncle a last taste of red wine through his drip just before it was removed.”

Those who knew him though, say his childhood was akin to a Charles Dickens tragedy – describing a youth spent in and out of care homes and government institutions.

Tributes have flooded social media following the news of his passing.

“Sad news: Mr Democracy Manifest has died. The cultural icon, whose arrest inspired a thousand t-shirts and millions of downloads, had advanced cancer,” Chris Reason, the reporter who covered the now infamous squabble, wrote on X.

“His immortal words will echo through generations.”

One fan, Danny Kingston, posted a photograph of himself wearing a T-shirt depicting the meme, captioned: “A true legend has left this planet. Godspeed Jack Karlson.”

Mr Watt – who formed a close friendship with Karlson since their reunion – remembered the 82-year-old as a “larger than life” figure “with a big heart”.

“It’s a sad day for Australia. We’ve just lost a true colourful character,” he told the ABC.

Elon Musk has deleted an image he shared on X, formerly Twitter, which promoted a conspiracy theory about the UK building “detainment camps” on the Falkland Islands for rioters.

The image – which was faked to look like it had come from the Daily Telegraph website – had been posted by the co-leader of the far-right Britain First party, Ashlea Simon, though it had appeared elsewhere before she shared it.

Mr Musk’s post was viewed more than 1.7 million times before it was removed – with Ms Simon’s post briefly tagged with a note reading “this story does not exist” before it too was removed.

It is the latest in a series of controversial interventions from the tech billionaire since the unrest began, some of which have been directly condemned by the prime minister.

The role of social media platforms, including X, in the disorder is also the subject of intense scrutiny, with the government and media regulator urging greater action from them.

Mr Musk has not acknowledged he published then deleted the post. The BBC has approached X for comment.

The Telegraph has stressed it did not publish any such article.

“This is a fabricated headline for an article that does not exist,” said a Telegraph Media Group spokesperson.

“We notified relevant platforms and requested that the post be taken down.”

Before it was removed, comments under Mr Musk’s post compared the UK to a fascist state.

It comes as the UK government is grappling with how to deal with misinformation online in the face of unrest across England and in Northern Ireland.

The government and Ofcom both say social media companies should act over their role in the crisis, and the media regulator will get enhanced powers under the Online Safety Act by 2025 to take firmer action against such posts.

Mr Musk has previously replied to a post on X from the prime minister – in which Sir Keir said he would not tolerate attacks on mosques or Muslim communities – asking: “Shouldn’t you be concerned about attacks on *all* communities?”

When asked about comments from Mr Musk, Sir Keir previously said “my focus is on ensuring our communities are safe. That is my sole focus. I think it’s very important for us all to support the police in what they’re doing”.

Before Mr Musk bought Twitter in 2022, Britain First had been banned from the social media site under its hate speech rules.

But he lifted the ban after he took over, saying at the time that he was “against censorship that goes far beyond the law“, and labelled himself a “free speech absolutist”.

For that reason, Britain First – and other far-right figures including its then-leaders – were able to return to the platform.

Mr Musk has used his platform in the past to praise its “community notes” feature, which allows X’s own users to partially verify whether posts are real or not.

But it has been accused of taking too long – and in this case, no such notes appeared under Mr Musk’s post by the time it was deleted.

It took just under 10 hours for a community note to appear underneath the original post shared by Ms Simon.

Japan has – for the first time – issued a warning about an increased risk of a “major earthquake” striking in the near future.

The advisory was issued on Thursday night local time, telling people to be alert but not to evacuate. It also stressed that the warning did not mean a large earthquake was imminent, but that the probability was higher than usual.

It came hours after a 7.1 magnitude earthquake occurred off the southern island of Kyushu, which reportedly caused no major damage.

But experts were put on heightened alert because of where the epicentre sat – at the edge of the Nankai Trough, an area of seismic activity which stretches along Japan’s Pacific coast.

The plate boundary sits between Suruga Bay in central Japan, and the Hyuganada Sea in Kyushu to the south.

Previous Nankai Trough earthquakes have left thousands dead. These megaquakes have been recorded once every 90 to 200 years, with the last one occurring in 1946.

Experts say there is a 70% to 80% chance of a magnitude 8 or 9 quake striking somewhere along the trough in the next 30 years, according to the Kyodo News agency. Worst-case estimates suggest more than 200,000 people could be killed in the earthquake and potential subsequent tsunami.

However, at a press conference on Thursday, Japanese Meteorological Agency official Shinya Tsukada emphasised that while “there is a relatively higher chance of another major earthquake compared to normal times” they were not saying it would definitely happen “in a certain period of time”.

This current advisory – the lower of two types of alerts at officials’ disposal – will be in place for a week.

It asks residents to be on higher alert in the coming days, and for those who cannot evacuate quickly to consider doing so voluntarily, according to Japan’s NHK broadcaster.

Officials have also told people be cautious but carry on with their everyday lives, while checking evacuation routes where needed and that households have enough supplies.

On Thursday, Donald Trump walked into a room of journalists gathered at his Mar-a-Lago estate for a news conference. He didn’t look particularly happy.

His remarks came after a week in which Kamala Harris and her new running mate Tim Walz have dominated media attention, raked in millions of dollars and enjoyed a bump in polling. Trump’s media event seemed more an attempt to win back the spotlight than announce anything new.

Just before Trump stepped up to the podium, one of his advisors texted me the wry assessment that Donald Trump is “never boring!!” (the exclamation marks were his).

The event included a couple of news items. Mr Trump announced that he’d agreed to join a TV debate with Vice-President Harris on 10 September. ABC News, the debate host, confirmed that Ms Harris had agreed to participate as well. Trump also said he’d like to do two more debates. There’s no word from the Harris team yet on whether they’ve accepted those additional matchups.

Over the course of the hour-long event, Trump took dozens of questions and he chastised Ms Harris for failing to take questions from reporters since ascending to the top of the ticket.

• Debate showdown between Trump and Harris set for September
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Much of the event, though, was spent on Trump’s old favourites, as if he was reaching for his rally hits. He talked about poll numbers, the unfair media, the dire state of the country and, yes, crowd sizes (even comparing his crowds to those of the civil rights leader Dr Martin Luther King, Jr)

Historically, one way Trump gets attention is by saying things that are controversial. And there was some of that today, too. He suggested America is on the brink of a world war and said Jewish Americans who support Vice-President Harris need “to have your head examined”.

This attention deficit is an unusual position for Trump.

The former president is not used to having to fight for the limelight, particularly in this election cycle. The Biden campaign was happy to let Trump dominate the news, in the belief that the more the race was about the former president, the better it would be for the current one. The Biden team wanted Trump front and centre.

But the shake up on the Democratic side has been dramatic and newsworthy and has pushed Trump off the front pages. To make things harder for the Republican candidate, much of the coverage of Ms Harris’s unexpected roll out as Democratic candidate has been positive. So, the strategy by Democrats has flipped.

Right now, Democrats are enjoying the media attention. Ms Harris wants this race to be about her. And with all the Democratic political drama, the press has been happy to oblige.

Hence the Mar-a-Lago news conference that didn’t really have much news.

Trump may do better following the advice of Marc Lotter, the Republican strategist who ran communication strategy for his 2020 campaign, who texted me to say the way the former president should win back attention was to stay focused. “Define Harris and Walz on policy. He wins on policy and results.”

To be fair, there was some of that in this press event. Trump repeatedly described Ms Harris as “extreme” and “liberal”. He did tout his own record on the economy and the border. But the attacks got rather lost in his grievance about crowd sizes and how they are reported, even suggesting that there may be something unconstitutional about the Harris campaign.

And, then it was over. And, as if to prove a point, within minutes of Trump walking off stage, the fickle cable news cameras had shifted their lenses from Florida to Michigan where Ms Harris and Mr Walz were holding a meeting with union workers. It was the Democrats time for some press coverage. Once again.

ABC News has said it will host the first debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris on 10 September.

The network confirmed the showdown in a post on X, formerly Twitter, after Trump said on Thursday that he would be open to debating his Democratic rival multiple times before the November election.

“We think we should do three debates,” Trump said, suggesting two additional debates that he said would be hosted by Fox News and NBC, respectively.

Ms Harris confirmed that she will attend the ABC debate while at an event in Michigan on Thursday, and said later that she would be open to additional debates.

The network said the debate will be moderated by World News Tonight anchor and managing editor David Muir and ABC News Live Prime anchor Linsey Davis.

“I am looking forward to debating Donald Trump and we have a date of September 10. I hear he’s finally committed to it and I’m looking forward to it,” Ms Harris said at the event in Detroit.

Trump, the Republican candidate, debated President Joe Biden once in June.

The two were slated to do so again on 10 September but Mr Biden withdrew from the presidential race after a disastrous performance against Trump in the televised matchup. That paved the way for Ms Harris to become the Democratic nominee.

The confirmation of the debate on ABC marks an end to a back-and-forth that followed Mr Biden’s decision to leave the race between the Trump and Harris campaigns over that planned showdown.

Trump had previously said that he wanted a debate hosted by the conservative network Fox News, saying it would take place in Pennsylvania, “at a site in an area to be determined”.

The Harris campaign had maintained they would still like to debate Trump on 10 September.

At a news conference on Thursday at his Mar-a-Lago resort, Trump also said he would like to debate Ms Harris two additional times – on 4 September on Fox News and on 25 September on NBC.

Trump said that CBS will host a debate between the two vice-presidential nominees, Republican JD Vance and Democratic Tim Walz.

NBC News is reportedly in discussions with both campaigns about a potential debate this autumn, the New York Times reported.

Fox News said it sent formal letters to both campaigns last month proposing a September debate in Pennsylvania, though the Harris campaign said on Thursday that “Trump has to show up” to the ABC debate before they confirm any further showdowns.

Trump also criticised Ms Harris for not taking reporter questions or doing an interview since she became the likely Democratic nominee just over two weeks ago.

He called her “barely competent” and criticised her intelligence.

Later on Thursday, Ms Harris told reporters that she has asked her team to “get an interview scheduled” before the end of the month.

Trump’s hour-long event was held amid reports that his campaign is feeling the pressure from Democrats, who have new enthusiasm under Ms Harris and have been dominating headlines.

National and battleground state polls suggest her campaign has gained ground in recent days, though the race for the White House remains a close contest.

The former president denied he had “recalibrated” his campaign to challenge Ms Harris instead of Mr Biden, and he appeared to prickle when asked about the audience Ms Harris draws at rallies.

“Oh, give me a break,” he said, arguing that crowds at his rallies were larger than at hers.

His Thursday news conference is the first he has held in several months, as his campaign has previously focused on holding rallies across the country.

Trump also praised his running mate Mr Vance, who was recently under fire for comments he made in 2021 when he said those without children shouldn’t be leading the country and that women who don’t have children are “miserable” and “childless cat ladies”.

“I have to tell you, JD Vance has really stepped up,” Trump said. “He’s doing a fantastic job.”

He took aim at Ms Harris’ track record on immigration and the economy.

And he repeated his belief that US presidents should have a say over interest rates and monetary policy – a departure from the longstanding practice of having the US Federal Reserve, an independent body, oversee these matters.

He emphasised his priorities of lowering inflation, lowering crime rates and strengthening the military.

Ms Harris on Thursday addressed United Auto Workers in Detroit, and thanked the union for endorsing her.

She said there are “89 days to get this done” ahead of the election.

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Images of the Algerian boxer Imane Khelif and Taiwan’s Lin Yu-ting on the medal podium in Paris will go down as some of the most unforgettable of the 2024 Olympics.

A frenzied debate has raged over the International Olympic Committee clearing the duo to compete in the women’s boxing in Paris, despite them having been disqualified from last year’s Women’s World Championships for failing to meet eligibility criteria.

Amid the heat, science is shedding increasing light on our different chromosomal make-ups and what advantages they may bring to sport.

But the research is ongoing and even among the experts who spend their professional lives working on it, there are differing interpretations on what the science tells us.

We do know that the process of sex determination starts when a foetus is developing. Most females get two X chromosomes (XX), while most males get an X and a Y chromosome (XY).

Chromosomes influence a person’s sex. But hormones are important too, before birth – as well as later on during puberty. While the baby is still growing in the womb, hormones help the reproductive organs develop.

However, at some point through the pregnancy some babies’ reproductive organs don’t develop in the way most people’s do.

This is known as DSD: differences of sex development.

They are a group of about 40 conditions involving genes, hormones and reproductive organs that develop in the womb. It means a person’s sex development is different from that of most other people’s.

These chromosome abnormalities are rare – but they have come into sharp focus because of the boxing row at the Olympics.

The International Boxing Association chief executive Chris Roberts told BBC Sport that after both athletes had agreed to medical tests, XY chromosomes were found in “both cases”.

But it’s not that simple.

Because these genetic variations are so many and so varied, some experts say it’s impossible to establish that everyone with a Y chromosome is a male and everyone without a Y chromosome is a female.

“Just looking at the presence of a Y chromosome on its own does not answer the question of whether someone is male or female,” says Prof Alun Williams, who researches genetic factors related to sport performance at the Manchester Metropolitan University Institute of Sport.

“It’s obviously a very good marker, as most people with a Y chromosome are male…but it’s not a perfect indicator.”

For some people with DSD, the Y chromosome is not a fully formed typical male Y chromosome. It may have some genetic material missing, damaged or swapped with the X chromosome, depending on the variation.

When it comes to being male or female, what is usually crucial is a specific gene called SRY – which stands for ‘sex-determining region of the Y chromosome’.

“This is what is called the make-male gene. It’s the master switch of sex development,” says Dr Emma Hilton, a developmental biologist who studies genetic disorders. She is also a trustee of the Sex Matters charity, which argues Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-ting shouldn’t be competing until further testing is done.

There are some people born with XY chromosomes who have lost what Dr Hilton calls the “make-male” gene.

“These people don’t make testosterone. They develop a very typical female anatomy,” Dr Hilton says.

So a test that identifies XY chromosomes does not offer a complete picture. And in the case of Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-ting, the IBA has not disclosed details of the way they were tested.

However, Dr Hilton also says that in most people with XY chromosomes, the SRY “make-male” gene is present.

These people usually have testicles which are often inside the body.

“When they hit puberty they start producing testosterone – which is what underpins male advantage in sports,” says Dr Hilton.

The most famous example is Caster Semenya – a double Olympic gold medallist and three-time world champion over 800m, though Dr Alun Williams says there is not direct evidence that DSD athletes have the same advantage as typical males.

The roadblock is in a gene required to generate external genitalia – which boys need in order to grow a penis. Anyone with the same condition as Caster Semenya has a mutation within that gene that stops it functioning normally.

In the womb, they will develop a male anatomy until the final stage of growing a penis – and when they are not able to, then they’ll start developing a vulva and a clitoris.

But they don’t develop female reproductive organs: they don’t have a cervix or a uterus.

These people don’t have periods and they can’t get pregnant. Having sex with males can be difficult.

Discovering you have this kind of genetic mutation can be a shock.

“The most recent woman we diagnosed with having XY chromosomes was 33,” says Claus Højbjerg Gravholt – an endocrinology professor at Aarhus University who spent the past 30 years dealing with DSD.

His patient came to see him because she had no idea why she couldn’t get pregnant.

“We discovered she didn’t have a uterus, so she would never be able to have a baby. She was absolutely devastated.”

Prof Gravholt says the implications that come with questioning one’s gender identity can be destabilising – and he often refers his patients to a psychologist.

“If I showed you her photo, you would say: that’s a woman. She has a female body, she is married to a man. She feels like a female. And that is the case for most of my patients.”

When Prof Gravholt asked her why she didn’t consult a doctor about not getting periods, she said there was another older woman in her family who never menstruated – so she thought it wasn’t abnormal.

There is another genetic mutation Prof Gravholt has come across.

He has diagnosed males who have XX chromosomes – which are normally found in females. “These men are infertile. They look like normal males, but their testes are smaller than average and don’t produce sperm. It’s always devastating when they find out. As they grow older, they stop producing testosterone in the way most men do.”

In some cultures, talking openly about periods and female anatomy is not culturally acceptable. In some parts of the world, women may lack the education to understand that there’s something atypical going on in their bodies.

And that’s why experts believe that many DSDs are never diagnosed – which means that comprehensive data is scarce.

But Prof Gravholt points to figures from Denmark as a good indicator.

“Denmark is probably the best country in the world at collecting this data – we have a national registry with everyone who has ever had a chromosome examination.”

He says that XY chromosomes in females are very rare – in Denmark it’s about one in 15,000.

But he believes that when adding these many genetic conditions together, about one in 300 people are affected.

“We are learning that these variations are more common than we thought,” Prof Gravholt says. “A lot of patients are being diagnosed later in life. The oldest person I diagnosed was a male in his 60s.”

Do people with differences of sex development have an unfair advantage in sport? The short answer is that there is not enough data to reach a definitive conclusion.

“It wouldn’t surprise me if some people with a type of DSD had some physical advantage over women,” says Prof Alun Williams. Those advantages could include larger muscle mass, as well as bigger and longer bones and larger organs such as lungs and heart.

He says they may also have higher levels of blood haemoglobin that lead to improved oxygen delivery to where it’s needed in working muscles.

“Some people with some types of DSDs might have advantages in some or all of those elements, ranging from 0-100%, depending on the type of DSD and its precise genetic cause.”

He believes his opinion is representative of the experts in his field, but that more evidence is needed.

When it comes to Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-ting, we don’t have enough information to know if they have a DSD that would need to be regulated.

Regulating elite sports, which typically rely on male-female binary categories in competition, is complicated because the biology of sex itself is complex and not exclusively binary.

Dr Shane Heffernan has a PhD in molecular genetics in elite sports and is currently working on a paper on what athletes think about competitors with a DSD.

He says it’s all about the nuance of the individual’s genetic condition.

For example, females with a DSD known as androgen insensitivity syndrome have XY chromosomes; they produce testosterone; but their bodies aren’t equipped to process it. So they don’t get any of the benefits from that testosterone, like males do.

Dr Heffernan says that there aren’t enough known and studied athletes with a DSD to make a valid scientific conclusion as to whether they definitely have an advantage, and as to whether they should be eligible or ineligible to compete in the female category.

He believes that the International Olympic Committee is not basing its eligibility criteria on the best available science.

“This is worrying. The IOC makes an ‘assumption of no advantage’ – but there is no direct evidence for this, nor that there is a performance advantage with DSD athletes solely because of their genetic variations.

“We simply don’t have enough data. Many people hold an emotional position when it comes to inclusion in the female category, but how can the IOC justify this position – without the data to support it?”

He is one of many people who are urging the Olympics committee, international federations and funding councils to invest in research on athletes with a DSD – but he appreciates it’s difficult, because there can be a lot of stigma towards the individual athletes when it comes to these conditions.

Some are calling for mandatory sex testing at the next Olympics – including Reem Alsalem, the UN’s special rapporteur on violence against women and girls.

“Screening DNA is now a piece of cake,” Dr Emma Hilton says. “A simple cheek swab would be sufficient, and it’s minimally invasive.”

She says swabs should happen when athletes first register for their first affiliated competition – before they start winning medals and the spotlight hits them, so as to avoid what happened with Imane Khelif.

But there’s disagreement on that among scientists.

“A cheek swab wouldn’t allow you to reach a robust conclusion on someone’s sex and potential advantage in sport,” says Prof Williams.

He argues a comprehensive sex test would have to include these three categories:

1. Genetics (including looking for a Y chromosome and the SRY “make-male” gene).

2. Hormones (including, but not limited to, testosterone).

3. The body’s responsiveness to hormones like testosterone. Some people might have a Y chromosome, but be completely insensitive to testosterone.

He believes this is currently not being done because it’s expensive, it requires people with very specific expertise – and there are ethical concerns about the testing procedure.

“This assessment can be humiliating. It includes measurements of the most intimate parts of anatomy, like the size of your breast and your clitoris, the depth of your voice, the extent of your body hair.”

One thing is certain: this controversy is not going away.

For now, science is not yet able to offer a definitive view on how people with differing chromosomal make-ups should be categorised for the purposes of elite sport. For those who spend their lives trying to make sense of the science, their hope is that this latest row will propel much-needed research.

Democratic vice-presidential candidate Tim Walz’s military record has been under scrutiny since he was announced as Kamala Harris’s running mate.

Historic accusations made by some veterans have been revived by his opposite number, Republican JD Vance, who himself served in the military.

Mr Vance says that Mr Walz intentionally avoided combat in Iraq by resigning shortly before his unit was deployed there, and that he has been dishonest about his role in the military.

We’ve looked into his record and the military service of Mr Vance.

Mr Vance claimed: “When Tim Walz was asked by his country to go to Iraq, you know what he did? He dropped out of the army and allowed his unit to go without him.”

Several former National Guard colleagues have previously publicly voiced frustrations at Mr Walz’s decision to leave their unit before deployment to Iraq – but others have rejected assertions that he retired to avoid combat duty.

Mr Walz served for 24 years in the Army National Guard, a military force which is usually deployed within the US to respond to events such as natural disasters, but is also part of the US Army’s reserve.

In February 2005, while he was still in the National Guard, Mr Walz filed an application to run to be elected as a member of Congress from Minnesota.

The following month it was announced that there would be “a possible partial mobilisation of roughly 2,000 troops from the Minnesota National Guard” to Iraq within the next two years, according to a 2005 press release from Mr Walz’s congressional campaign.

In the statement, Mr Walz said: “I do not yet know if my artillery unit will be part of this mobilisation.”

He added: “I don’t want to speculate on what shape my campaign will take if I am deployed, but I have no plans to drop out of the race.”

Mr Walz then retired from the National Guard in May 2005, which he later said was so he could focus fully on running for Congress.

It’s unclear exactly when he submitted his resignation notice. We’ve asked both the National Guard and the Harris campaign when this was.

His National Guard unit received orders to mobilise for Iraq in July 2005, and was sent there in March 2006, according to the battalion’s history page.

Mr Vance also says Mr Walz made “dishonest” claims about serving in combat in a video promoted by the Harris campaign.

During a clip in which he is talking about gun control in the US, he appears to say he carried weapons in war himself, according to the transcription from the campaign.

But what he actually meant is not entirely clear.

Mr Walz went to Italy with the National Guard in 2003 as part of support for the US war in Afghanistan – but he was never deployed to an active war zone.

Responding to this claim about Mr Walz, a Harris campaign spokesperson said: “In his 24 years of service, the Governor carried, fired and trained others to use weapons of war innumerable times.”

The Trump campaign says Mr Walz “continues telling the lie that he retired as a Command Sergeant Major”.

His official biography on the Minnesota state website says “Command Sergeant Major Walz retired from the 1-125th Field Artillery Battalion in 2005.”

He did reach the rank of command sergeant major near the end of his service, but he officially retired one rank below as a master sergeant.

A national guard spokesperson told the BBC that “his rank reverted to master sergeant on May 15th, 2005, for benefit purposes because he did not complete additional coursework at the US Army Sergeants Major Academy. He retired the following day.”

Mr Vance served for four years in the US Marine Corps.

He was deployed to Iraq for about six months in 2005 as a military journalist, although he didn’t experience combat.

“I was lucky to escape any real fighting,” he said in his 2016 memoir.

He left the Marine Corps in 2007 as a corporal to attend Ohio State University.

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Over the past week, watched by the world’s media, the top leaders of Hamas descended on Qatar to choose a new political leader for their group.

Delegates flooded in from across the Middle East after almost a year of fighting between Hamas and Israel in Gaza.

Some arrived shaken, having woken just days before to the news that the group’s previous political leader – Ismail Haniyeh – had been killed in a blast in Tehran, allegedly by Israel.

Haniyeh, who had overseen his group’s negotiators in talks with Israel, played a crucial role in Hamas, balancing the militant wing’s desire to take the fight to Israel with calls from some to reach a settlement and end the conflict.

His position, it was clear, had to be filled quickly.

At the mourning ceremony in Doha, Hamas leaders lined up shoulder to shoulder in a huge white tent with carpets and fancy chairs, decorated with pictures of Ismail Haniyeh. Hundreds of people gathered to pay their respects to the movement’s late leader and his bodyguard.

The scene was more than a memorial service – it signalled the end of an era and the beginning of a new, more extreme phase.

This was not the first time I had witnessed Hamas’s top officials gather to choose a new leader after an unexpected funeral. Back in 2004 I witnessed them meet after Israel assassinated the group’s founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin – the meeting taking place in his house in Gaza. Less than a month later, Israel killed his successor Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi.

But this time the backstage discussions reflected the extent of the crisis and challenges they are facing.

Hamas attacked southern Israel on 7 October last year, killing about 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages back into Gaza. Since then, Israel’s military retaliation has killed more than 39,600 people, according to the Hamas-run health ministry, and wounded tens of thousands more. More than half the buildings in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed and almost the entire population has been displaced. Dissent against Hamas, which has ruled Gaza since 2007, has been growing. The group itself has taken severe losses.

On top of this, the killing of Ismail Haniyeh on 31 July in Tehran – a place he had always felt to be a safe haven – was a real shock for the organisation.

Hamas is convinced that Haniyeh was killed by an anti-personnel missile while he was browsing on his phone. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have said a projectile with a 7kg warhead was used. Some Western media reports say he was killed by a bomb planted in the room beforehand.

Back at Haniyeh’s mourning ceremony in Doha, one man in his mid-60s with white hair and a short beard stood in a corner away from the spotlight.

“Pay close attention to him,” a Hamas media officer told me. Who was he? “He is the shadowy man, Abu Omar Hassan,” he said.

Abu Omar Hassan, or Mohamed Hassan Darwish, is the head of the Supreme Shura Council, the top consultative body in Hamas. According to Hamas’s constitution, he was in prime position to be the organisation’s interim head until elections which had been scheduled for next March.

“He is the man of the big missions,” I was told.

As the mourning ceremony ended, these leaders’ real work began. For two days, the movement’s veteran faces and shadowy figures held meetings in Doha, which has hosted Hamas’s political bureau since 2012, to elect a new leader.

They chose Yahya Sinwar, already the group’s leader inside Gaza since 2017. The choice may come as a surprise to many, but anyone following his career since Israel released him in the 2011 exchange deal for captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit knew he was always likely to lead Hamas one day.

No political leader in Hamas has ever been closer to the group’s armed wing. His brother Mohammed leads the largest Hamas military battalion, while Mohammed Deif – the elusive Hamas veteran who led its armed wing for two decades until Israel said it killed him last month – was his neighbour, friend, and classmate. The pair grew up together in Gaza’s sprawling Khan Younis refugee camp.

Despite all this, many may see appointing him to the most important position in Hamas as madness. Israel’s security agencies believe Sinwar planned and executed the attack on southern Israel, and he is top of their wanted list.

“Not all of the people inside Hamas leadership were in favour of the decision,” a senior Hamas official told me. “Some leaders raised their concerns, others pushed for a more moderate person. But in the end he got the majority of the votes.”

Another Hamas official who attended the meetings said the movement felt unable to choose the powerful shadow operator Abu Omar Hassan because he had little public profile and was unknown outside the movement, whereas the 7 October attack had given Yahya Sinwar global notoriety.

“Sinwar has become a trademark after 7 October and he has great popularity in the Arab and Islamic worlds,” the official said. “He enjoys close relations with the axis of resistance supported by Iran, and his appointment in the midst of the war sends a message of defiance to Israel.”

The “axis of resistance” is a network of armed groups backed by Iran. Other members such as Lebanon-based Hezbollah also present threats to Israel.

Many Arab and some Western officials urged Hamas against naming Sinwar as leader because of his connection to the 7 October attacks. He and the organisation he now leads are proscribed as terrorists by many governments in the West.

“One of the reasons why we voted for him is because we want to honour him for masterminding the attacks” the official said. “October 7th belongs to him so he deserves to lead the movement.”

Ten months on from that attack, all attempts to agree a ceasefire have so far failed. The BBC understands that the two main mediators – Qatar and Egypt – are working on a new ceasefire proposal.

Leaks suggest the plan is based on convincing Iran not to respond militarily to the assassination of Haniyeh in its territory, in exchange for Israel ending its war in Gaza and withdrawing troops from the Philadelphi corridor.

The Philadelphi Corridor is a buffer zone, only about 100m (330ft) wide in parts, which runs along the Gaza side of the 13km (8-mile) border with Egypt. Gaza’s only other land border is with Israel itself.

A Palestinian official familiar with the ceasefire negotiations told me in Doha: “Egyptian intelligence has already sent a team to Doha and there are meetings to formulate an action plan based on sparing the region a possible Iranian response… in exchange for a ceasefire.”

For now, the drumbeat of conflict is only getting louder, with Sinwar, the most extremist figure in Hamas, set to lead the group for the next five years – if he survives the war.

Three days into Ukraine’s cross-border attack on Russia’s Kursk region, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has said Moscow must “feel” the consequences for its invasion of Ukraine.

“Russia brought the war to our land and should feel what it has done”, Mr Zelensky said in his Thursday evening address, without directly referencing the Ukrainian offensive.

“Ukrainians know how to achieve their goals. And we did not choose to achieve our goals in the war,” he added.

Russia says at least 1,000 Ukrainian troops, supported by tanks and armoured vehicles, entered its territory on Tuesday morning – in what appears to be one of the largest assaults on Russian soil since the war began.

Russian President Vladimir Putin earlier accused Ukraine of a “major provocation”.

Ukrainian officials have been largely silent on the offensive. The exact situation on the ground is hard to determine, with few specific details released by either side.

“Everyone can see that the Ukrainian army knows how to surprise [and] achieve results,” the Ukrainian president said earlier on Thursday, without directly referencing the assault.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said it was monitoring Kursk’s nuclear plant, according to state-owned Russian news agency RIA-Novosti.

Russia’s defence ministry said on Thursday that its troops were “continuing to destroy” armed Ukrainian units with air strikes, rockets and artillery fire.

The ministry said Russian reserves had been rushed to the region.

The Institute for the Study of War, a well-respected think tank, said geo-located footage showed Ukrainian armoured vehicles had advanced to positions 10km (6.2 miles) into the Kursk region in the first two days of the incursion.

Russia’s military leadership is under severe scrutiny domestically, as some popular and generally well-informed pro-war Telegram channels have said the situation on the ground is not as stable as the Kremlin has suggested.

The influential pro-war Rybar Telegram channel strongly criticised the highest ranks of the Russian military on Wednesday, saying that “for two months the full information was sent to the useless headquarters”, adding that there was enough time “to make an appropriate decision”.

Local leaders in regions adjacent to Kursk, in both Russia and Ukraine, have told residents to leave for their safety.

On Wednesday, the head of the Ukrainian region of Sumy, Volodymyr Artyukh, ordered the evacuation of areas bordering Kursk.

In the Russian region of Belgorod, governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said on Thursday that settlements across his province had been attacked by Ukrainian forces over the past 24 hours.

Ukraine’s key allies seemed surprised by the offensive – with White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre saying the US was reaching out to Ukraine to better understand what it hoped to achieve.

This is not the first incursion into Russia by fighters based in Ukraine. Some groups of anti-Kremlin Russians launched raids last year, which were repelled.

The forces crossed into the Belgorod and Kursk regions again in March, where they engaged in clashes with Russian security forces.

On Wednesday evening, Ukrainian MP Oleksiy Honcharenko said the Ukrainian army had established control over the Sudzha gas hub, a major facility involved in the transit of natural gas from Russia to the EU via Ukraine, which has continued despite the war.

It is the only point of entry for Russian gas into the EU.

As of Thursday, gas was reportedly still flowing from Sudzha.

Russia’s National Guard said it had reinforced security around Kursk’s nuclear power station, which lies some 70km north-east of Sudzha.

For the past few months Russia has made incremental gains in eastern Ukraine, as many of Kyiv’s ground forces have faced relentless attacks in the eastern Donbas region.

In a recent interview, Ukraine’s head of defence intelligence, Kyrylo Budanov, said the main offensive by Russian forces “is expected to be over in a month and a half to two months”.

Newly released footage from local Pennsylvania police reveals a clearer picture of the moments surrounding the attempted assassination of Donald Trump in July.

In one body-camera video, a local officer tells colleagues he told the US Secret Service ahead of time to secure the building the gunman used.

Another shows the moment an officer is hoisted on to a rooftop and lays eyes on the gunman, seconds before he opens fire at the Trump rally.

Trump was nicked by a bullet in the shooting, one person was killed and two others badly injured.

The body and dashboard footage was released on Thursday to US media outlets by the Butler Township Police Department.

They capture moments of frustration, confusion and miscommunication in the moments before and after the assassination attempt.

In one, a local officer said he had asked the Secret Service to man the building where the gunman had fired from, days before the rally.

“I told them they need to post guys over there,” he said, according to one video obtained by the Wall Street Journal.

“I told them that [on] Tuesday.”

The open-air rally took place on Saturday 13 July.

The officer appears angry as he tells his colleagues that he asked the Secret Service to secure the building.

“I talked to the Secret Service guys, they were like, ‘Yeah, no problem, we’re going to post guys over here,’” the officer says.

Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, was shot and killed by the Secret Service counter-sniper team after he fired eight bullets in Trump’s direction from a rooftop just outside the rally’s security perimeter.

The would-be assassin was on a building in what police have described as a “secondary ring”, which was patrolled not by the Secret Service but by local and state officers.

Trump, who was on stage addressing supporters, was wounded in the ear before he ducked and Secret Service agents pulled him off stage.

In another video, a Butler County police officer is seen being hoisted up by a colleague on to the rooftop where he spots Crooks.

He quickly drops down when he sees the gunman is armed.

He is then seen running to the other side of the building and to his police car to retrieve a rifle.

Around 40 seconds after the officer first lays eyes on the gunman, Crooks fires at Trump.

The officer shouts to his colleague: “He’s straight up … Who’s got eyes on him?”

The video then shows police officers trying to access the roof.

“He’s got glasses, long hair,” the officer who saw Crooks tells them, adding he has a book bag and an AR-style rifle.

After getting on the roof, the officers see Crooks’ body.

The first police officer is then heard saying: “I popped my head up there like an idiot by myself,” adding that he “started calling out” that a gunman was on the roof.

“Were you on the same frequency?” he is heard asking, referring to the police radio.

In other footage, one officer reportedly appears confused as to why the rooftop was unmanned.

“I thought it was you! I thought you guys were on the roof!” He then swears in frustration and asked: “Why are we not on the roof?”

The Secret Service had posted three counter-snipers inside one of the adjacent buildings.

One of them had spotted Crooks earlier in the day following reports among the law enforcement on site of a suspicious person at the rally.

The Secret Service sniper then took a photo of Crooks before leaving his post to search for the suspect.

BBC News has not seen all the videos. Their contents were reported on by multiple US news outlet.

In a statement on Thursday, Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said the agency was reviewing the footage.

“The US Secret Service appreciates our local law enforcement partners, who acted courageously as they worked to locate the shooter that day,” he said.

“The attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump was a US Secret Service failure, and we are reviewing and updating our protective policies and procedures in order to ensure a tragedy like this never occurs again.”

The FBI is also investigating the incident, as is a bipartisan House panel made up of 13 lawmakers.

Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus has been sworn in as Bangladesh’s interim leader, vowing to “uphold, support and protect the constitution”.

The 84-year-old took an oath at the presidential palace in Dhaka along with more than a dozen members of his new cabinet, vowing to perform his duties “sincerely”.

He flew into the capital, Dhaka, just days after Sheikh Hasina – the woman who ruled Bangladesh with an iron fist for 15 years – fled across the border to India.

Ms Hasina resigned as prime minister after weeks of student-led protests – which left hundreds dead – escalated and culminated in calls for her to stand down.

The decision to name Prof Yunus as chief adviser of the interim government followed a meeting between President Mohammed Shahabuddin, military leaders and student leaders.

The students had been clear they would not accept a military-led government, but wanted Prof Yunus to lead.

Among his new cabinet are Nahid Islam and Asif Mahmud, students who led the anti-government protests.

The hope is Prof Yunus, the so-called banker for the poor, will bring democracy back to Bangladesh after years of autocratic rule.

“People are excited,” the entrepreneur and economist told the BBC moments after arriving in Dhaka from France on Thursday.

He later told reporters that Bangladesh “has got a second independence” as he called for the restoration of law and order in the nation of 170 million people.

Following Prof Yunus’s swearing in, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi offered his “best wishes”, writing on X/Twitter that his government was “committed” to working with its neighbour for “peace, security and development”.

Prof Yunus paid tribute to those who died, saying they had “protected the nation” and given it “new life” after Ms Hasina’s rule.

She had begun that rule as a symbol of democracy but, by the time she fled, she was considered an autocrat who had sought to entrench her authority by silencing dissent.

Prisons were filled with people who sought to speak out against her. Prof Yunus – lauded for his pioneering use of micro-loans – was one of those who found themselves in legal trouble during her tenure.

Ms Hasina regarded him as a public enemy – he is currently on bail, appealing against a six-month jail term in what he has called a politically-motivated case.

Speaking on Thursday, he called on the country’s young people to help him rebuild the South Asian country.

“Bangladesh can be a beautiful country, but we destroyed the possibilities,” he said.

“Now we have to build a seedbed again – the new seedbed will be built by them,” he added, gesticulating towards the students who had arrived to greet him.

His ascension as Bangladesh’s interim leader follows weeks of turmoil.

More than 400 people are reported to have died after protests seeking to abolish a quota system for civil service jobs began in July.

A third of these jobs are reserved for relatives of veterans from Bangladesh’s war of independence from Pakistan, which took place in 1971. Campaigners argued the system was discriminatory and needed to be overhauled.

Though this demand was largely met after the Supreme Court backed the students’ demands and vastly reduced the scale of the quota system, the protests then transformed into a wider anti-government movement fuelled by crackdowns.

Bangladeshi media and demonstrators blamed police for the spiralling death toll. Officials maintained that officers only ever opened fire out of self-defence or to protect state property.

Students and their supporters had planned to march on the prime minister’s residence on Monday.

But before the march could get properly moving, the news came that Sheikh Hasina had fled Bangladesh and resigned as prime minister. She is currently in Delhi.

A speeding Mercedes driver has been jailed for 10 years for causing the death of an Ecuadorian politician’s daughter.

Psychologist Vanessa Sagnay de la Bastida was crossing the road holding hands with her fiancé Michael Williams as they walked home near Wandsworth Bridge on 16 March 2022.

Octavian Cadar, 39, drove towards them at about 55mph, more than double the 20mph speed limit, causing the terrified couple to become separated as they fled.

Ms Sagnay, 27, who was known as Charlotte, was hit before she reached the pavement, causing her to somersault in the air and land on a railing and sign post.

She suffered a catastrophic head injury and died at the scene.

Cadar, of Bexley, south-east London, had accused the couple of causing the collision by “messing about in the road”, only admitting later to jurors that was wrong.

He also claimed he was trying to avoid them but the court was told the accident would not have happened if he had been driving at 30mph.

A jury deliberated for 42 minutes to find him guilty of causing Ms Sagnay’s death by dangerous driving.

Cadar was jailed for 10 years and disqualified from driving for 10 years and eight months.

In 2018, he had been convicted of speeding, fined, and given six penalty points at Bromley Magistrates’ Court.

Speaking at his sentencing, Mr Williams, who was studying for a PhD at University College London, said: “No-one should have the power to kill just to drive fast.

“Cadar valued speeding in a sports car more than our lives. Afterwards he reacted with anger and blame.

“What was my worst nightmare is now my reality. At least in my nightmares I am with Charlotte again.”

On his fiancée, he said: “My life with Charlotte was wonderful, she was the best friend I ever had.

“She had the magical ability to support people in just the way they needed.”

He added: “She was completely non-judgmental and fiercely, unflinchingly, fought for everyone to be treated fairly.

“Friendship like that made it feel easy for me to be myself, and my best self.

“How could I possibly explain who Charlotte was, what she meant to me, and everything that was lost when she was killed?

“She was half of me. I am less than a person without her.”

On the day of her death, they had been finalising details of their wedding, he said: “Charlotte never got to hear what I wrote in my wedding vows.

“Instead I read them at her funeral.”

Her mother, Jeanne Sagnay de la Bastida, spoke of her pride at her daughter’s academic success at St Andrew’s University, having achieved two Masters degrees, and that she was about to embark on a PhD.

Weeping, she told the court: “My daughter was, is and always will be my life, my everything and my everyone.

On her grief and loss, she said she felt as if an atomic bomb had exploded, leaving her struggling to breathe “toxic air”.

She said: “It is unnatural, unexpected, violent, undeserved, senseless, amoral.

“It has taken up residence in my body and consumed me.”

Ms Sagnay and Mr Williams, who had known each other since school in Scotland, were on their way home from a trip to the gym.

Describing the collision, Mr Williams said he realised he had been separated from Ms Sagnay because they were no longer holding hands.

He said: “She fell on the front of the car. She went onto a street sign. There was a loud bang. I screamed and I crossed the street. I tried to call the ambulance.

“I was on the phone to the emergency services and that is when the driver of the car came out.

“He was shouting. He was angry and he was saying ‘why did you freeze? Why didn’t you keep walking?’

“I said to him ‘because we were terrified’.”