A plane has crashed in the Brazilian state of São Paulo, killing all 61 people on board.

The twin-engine turboprop was flying from Cascavel in the southern state of Paraná to Guarulhos airport in São Paulo city when it came down in the town of Vinhedo, Voepass airline says.

Footage circulating on social media shows a plane descending vertically, spiralling as it falls.

The ATR 72-500 was carrying 57 passengers and four crew. Local authorities say there were no survivors.

Brazil’s President, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, expressed solidarity with the families and friends of the victims.

São Paulo’s state Governor, Tarcísio Gomes de Freitas, declared three days of mourning.

The authorities said the flight recorders had been retrieved. ATR, the French-Italian plane maker, said it would co-operate with the investigation.

The plane landed in a residential area but no-one on the ground was injured.

Officials say only one home in a local condominium complex was damaged.

Video showed a large area on fire and smoking wreckage in an area full of houses.

Police and fire services are at the scene.

According to tracking website Flightradar24, the plane left Cascavel at 11:56 local time (14:56 GMT). The last signal received from the aircraft was about an hour and a half later.

Brazil’s civil aviation agency said the plane, which was built in 2010, had been “in good operating condition, with valid registration and airworthiness certificates”.

The four crew members on board at the time of the accident were all duly licensed and had valid qualifications, it added.

The Uopeccan Cancer Hospital in Cascavel told BBC Brasil that two of its trainee doctors were among the passengers who died.

The moment the passenger plane crashed was witnessed by local residents.

“When I heard the sound of the plane falling, I looked out my window at home and saw the moment it crashed,” Felipe Magalhaes told Reuters news agency, adding that the sight had left him “terrified”.

Another resident, Nathalie Cicari, told CNN Brasil she had been having lunch when she heard a “very loud noise very close by”, describing it like the sound of a drone but “much louder”.

“I went out on the balcony and saw the plane spinning. Within seconds, I realised that it was not a normal movement for a plane.”

It is Brazil’s worst plane crash since 2007, when a TAM Express plane crashed and burst into flames at São Paulo’s Congonhas airport, killing 199 people.

President Lula paid tribute to the victims at an event where he was speaking.

“I have to be the bearer of very bad news and I would like everyone to stand up so that we can have a minute of silence,” he told his audience.

He posted on social media that news of the crash was “very sad”. “All my solidarity to the families and friends of the victims,” he said.

The nearby town of Valinhos sent 20 emergency personnel to the crash site as part of a joint operation, local authorities said.

“Twenty men were mobilised, including three vehicles from the Valinhos Municipal Civil Guard and one vehicle from the Civil Defense,” Valinhos City Hall said in a statement.

ATR said in a statement that it had been informed of an accident involving an ATR 72-500.

“Our first thoughts are with all the individuals affected by this event,” it said.

“The ATR specialists are fully engaged to support both the investigation and the customer.”

Eyewitnesses have described seeing the moment a passenger plane crashed in the Brazilian state of São Paulo killing all 61 people onboard.

“When I heard the sound of the plane falling, I looked out my window at home and saw the moment it crashed,” Felipe Magalhaes told Reuters news agency.

He ran out of his house in the town of Vinhedo to see where the plane had fallen. “Terrified and not knowing what to do, I jumped over the wall,” he said.

Nathalie Cicari lives near to where the plane crashed and said she was having lunch when she heard a “very loud noise very close by”.

She described it as being similar to the sound of a drone but “much louder”.

“I went out on the balcony and saw the plane spinning,” Ms Cicari told CNN Brasil.

“Within seconds, I realised that it was not a normal movement for a plane.”

The moment of impact was “terrifying”, she said. She was not hurt despite having to evacuate her house which was filled with a huge plume of black smoke after the crash.

Another witness called Pietro told Reuters he had seen “a lot of people” breaking into a condominium “to make videos”.

“What I saw was the wreckage of the plane, all that was left was the cabin,” he said.

At Cascavel Airport in the southern state of Paraná, where the plane had taken off bound for São Paulo city, a handful of passengers who missed the Voepass flight spoke of their feelings.

Adriano Assis said that when he had arrived at the airport there was a lack of information on take-off and nobody was at the counter to answer questions.

When someone did arrive, they told him he could not board yet, he said.

“I even argued with him, but he ended up saving my life,” Mr Assis told a local newspaper, as reported by Brazilian news agency Globo.

Another passenger, Jose Felipe, was initially going to book on to a Latam flight but instead went to try and board the Voepass plane.

“We thought we were going to go through Latam, but Latam was closed,” Mr Felipe told Reuters.

“I arrived early, waited, waited, waited, waited and nothing.”

“When it was 11:00 I came to look for [information] here,” he went on.

“Then they told me, ‘You’re not getting on this plane anymore because you’re past the boarding [time] limit.’

“So I fought, I even pushed a little bit, I told him, ‘Let me get on, I have to leave on this plane and he said, ‘No, I can rebook your ticket.’

“Man, it’s such an overwhelming feeling. I’m here shaking, my legs are here… Only God and I were aware of this moment.”

Ukrainian troops remained in Russia’s western Kursk region on Friday night, as its surprise cross-border offensive into Russia came to the end of a fourth day.

The Russian defence ministry said it was “continuing to repel” Ukraine’s military, which it claimed had lost more than 280 personnel in the past 24 hours – a figure that has not been independently verified.

Reports suggest that Ukrainian troops are operating more than 10km (six miles) inside Russia – the deepest cross-border advance by Kyiv since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Ukraine has not openly admitted the incursion, but President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Thursday that Moscow must “feel” the consequences for its invasion.

Fighting in Kursk has edged gradually closer to a nuclear power plant, prompting the UN nuclear agency to release a statement urging the two sides to “exercise maximum restraint”.

International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Rafael Grossi appealed to all sides to take measures “to avoid a nuclear accident with the potential for serious radiological consequences”.

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Some residents of the Kursk region were evacuated by authorities, with a group pulling into Moscow’s central train station on Friday. One unnamed resident told AFP news agency: “It’s terrible. They are bombing.”

Overnight, Ukraine’s military said it had struck a military airfield deep inside Russia, destroying a warehouse containing hundreds of glide bombs.

The targeting of the Lipetsk air base, more than 350km (217 miles) from Ukraine’s border, is the kind of operation Kyiv has been wanting to do for some time.

The weaponry it managed to destroy in the attack is the very kind Russia has used to terrorise Ukrainian towns, cities and military positions for most of its invasion.

The military’s statement also said the airfield was known for housing Russia’s Su-34, Su-35 and MiG-31 war planes.

Russian authorities nearby said a state of emergency was in place in the area, confirming what they described as “detonations” at an “energy infrastructure facility”. Residents of four nearby villages were being evacuated.

Hours after Ukraine’s strikes, Russia responded by striking a shopping centre in the Ukrainian town of Kostyantynivka, close to the frontline in the eastern Donetsk region, killing at least 14 people and injuring 43, Ukrainian officials say.

Residential buildings, shops and more than a dozen cars were also damaged in the attack.

Shortly after Ukraine’s offensive was launched on Tuesday, the Russian defence ministry said its forces were managing to suppress “raid attempts by enemy units”.

But a video checked by BBC Verify shows a different picture, with a 15-vehicle Russian convoy damaged, burned and abandoned on a road through the town of Oktyabr’skoe, roughly 38km (24 miles) from the border on the Russian side.

The early morning footage also shows Russian soldiers, some injured, possibly dead among the vehicles.

A “federal state of emergency” has been declared in the Kursk region – a move that underlines how grave the current situation is.

Russia said that up to 1,000 Ukrainian troops, supported by tanks and armoured vehicles, entered the Kursk region as the offensive began.

Despite the deployment of reserve troops and orders to evacuate, Russia has been unable to slow the momentum of this Ukrainian advance.

This is more than the probing attacks we have seen in the past.

It is a committed assault which has shocked Russia’s military and the Kremlin. For the last 18 months, it has been Moscow dictating the dynamics of this war.

Now it is having to contain this attack, as well as domestic criticism for not preventing it in the first place.

Despite long-time Western worries of an escalation, the consensus among Ukraine’s allies is that this operation falls within its right to defend itself.

While he is yet to directly reference the assault, President Zelensky said in a video address late on Thursday: “Russia has brought the war to our land and should feel what it has done.”

But with his Ukrainian forces still outnumbered by the Russians on the battlefield, the line between masterstroke and miscalculation is a fine one.

The Russian rouble was down 2.5% against the dollar on Friday, with traders telling AFP news agency that Ukraine’s Kursk offensive was one of the reasons behind the fall.

The ousted Bangladeshi Prime Minister, Sheikh Hasina, will return to the country when elections are declared, her son Sajeeb Wazed Joy says.

Ms Hasina, who resigned and fled the country earlier this week following a massive unrest, is currently in India.

Bangladeshi media say more than 500 people were killed in weeks of demonstrations against Ms Hasina. Many of them were shot by the police.

Thousands were injured in the worst violence Bangladesh has seen since its war of independence in 1971.

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“Absolutely, she will come [to Bangladesh],” Mr Wazed tells the BBC, saying his mother will return as and when the interim government decides to hold the polls.

The military-backed interim government, headed by Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus, was sworn in on Thursday along with 16 advisers.

Two of the student protest leaders are among the advisers.

Mr Wazed is an information technology expert who now lives in the US.

He worked as an IT adviser for Ms Hasina for several years during her tenure as prime minister from 2009 to 2024.

“She will certainly go back,” her son says.

“Whether she comes back into politics or not, that decision has not been made. She is quite fed up with how she was treated.”

The student-led movement started as a protest against quotas in civil service jobs last month before becoming massive unrest to oust Ms Hasina following a brutal police crackdown.

Mr Joy is confident that when the polls are held, the Awami League, the party of Ms Hasina, will emerge victorious.

“I am convinced that If you have elections in Bangladesh today, and if they are free and fair and if there’s a level playing field, then the Awami League will win,” he says.

Ms Hasina became prime minister for a fourth consecutive term in a controversial election held in January 2024.

The main opposition parties boycotted the election saying under Ms Hasina’s government there could not be “any free and fair election”.

Her son termed the current interim government as unconstitutional and said elections should be held within 90 days.

However, he was a bit circumspect about his political ambitions or whether he would return to the country to stand for the leadership of the Awami League, following in the footsteps of his grandfather, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the founding leader of Bangladesh, and Ms Hasina.

“No decision has been made in this regard. I never had political ambitions,” he says.

But he adds that he was upset over the way the protesters had ransacked and set fire to their ancestral homes, including the museum dedicated to his grandfather in Dhaka.

“Under these circumstances, I am quite angry, I will do whatever it takes,” he says.

He says he is in touch with party supporters who are very upset and outraged over what happened in the past few weeks.

“If 40,000 protesters or so can force the government to resign, then what happens if protests are held by the Awami League, which has millions of supporters?” he asserts.

Ms Hasina and her sister (Rehana Siddiq) have been stranded in Delhi since Monday.

India has been a strong supporter of the Bangladeshi leader.

There have been reports she is trying to seek asylum in the UK, the United Arab Emirates or Saudi Arabia.

“Those questions about her visa and asylum, they are all rumours,” her son says.

“She’s not applied anywhere. She’s staying put for the time being, watching how the situation unfolds in Bangladesh.

“Her ultimate goal is always to go back home in Bangladesh.”

Asked about well-documented human rights violations and extra-judicial killings during his mother’s 15-year tenure, he says some mistakes were made.

“Of course, there were individuals in our government who made mistakes, but we always righted the ship,” he adds.

“We had one minister’s son, who was a member of the special police force. He is in jail convicted of extra-judicial killings. That’s unprecedented.”

“My mother tried to do the right thing in terms of arrests,” her son insists.

From the outside, Adam Britton seemed like a passionate – albeit quiet and nerdy – advocate for animals.

Over decades, the 53-year-old built a colourful reputation as one of the world’s leading crocodile experts.

He swam with the apex predators in the wild, lent his pet crocodile Smaug to countless films and documentaries, and even hosted Sir David Attenborough at his home in Darwin, Australia; all the while preaching the need for greater respect for the creatures.

But Britton has now been dubbed one of the world’s worst animal abusers, this week sentenced to over a decade in jail for filming himself sexually abusing and torturing dozens of dogs. Along with 56 charges of animal cruelty and bestiality, he also admitted to four counts of accessing child abuse material.

The news sent ripples of shock and disgust around the globe, leaving some of those who knew Britton questioning how he became the “Monster of McMinns Lagoon” – a reference to the sprawling property where he committed his crimes.

Several described to the BBC a shy but friendly man, others an arrogant attention-seeker who took credit for work that was not his own. But there was one point on which they all agreed: when combing through their memories for clues of Britton’s depravity, they found nothing.

“It truly seems like a Ted Bundy type situation where you would never imagine such a thing being possible,” former colleague Brandon Sideleau says.

Born in West Yorkshire in 1971, court documents state that Britton had concealed a “sadistic sexual interest” in animals since he was a child and began molesting horses at the age of 13.

But beyond that, little is known about his youth in the United Kingdom.

On his blog, Britton said he was inspired to become a zoologist by three people – his mum, who was an “avid naturalist”; his biology teacher Val Richards; and Sir David, his role model.

He studied a Bachelor of Science at the University of Leeds, graduating in 1992, then in 1996 finished a PhD in Zoology – on the hunting methods of bats – at the University of Bristol.

But his dream was always to escape the UK and research crocs, he said in a 2008 interview. He’d been fascinated with them since childhood and wanted to help reframe the increasingly fraught relationship between humans and the reptiles.

“If people don’t understand [them], you don’t really have much hope of trying to convince people they are worth conserving,” he told entertainment news site Den of Geek.

So in the mid-1990s, Britton turned up on the dusty plains of the Northern Territory (NT), home to the biggest saltwater crocodile population on the planet.

There, Grahame Webb – a pioneer in the field – took the “very, very enthusiastic” young man under his wing at Crocodylus Park, a small zoo and research facility.

Britton gravitated towards filming projects, but also took part in research, including a 2005 study on the potent antibiotic powers of crocodile blood which made global headlines.

In 2006, he left to start a rival crocodile consultancy business alongside his wife, and later also took on an adjunct research role at Charles Darwin University.

Over Britton’s decades in Darwin’s croc research fraternity, many peers who initially thought he was shy but “nice enough” came to view him as an anti-social “odd man out”.

“He was quite up himself… so he wasn’t a particularly popular person, but he was reasonably good at his job,” says John Pomeroy, who organised research field work for Crocodylus Park.

Prof Webb had seen himself as a mentor of sorts, one who gave Britton his start in the industry and the opportunity to build filming expertise, but Britton burned all bridges when he quit.

He was an egotist who passed much of the work of the team at Crocodylus Park as his own, Prof Webb alleges, and then poached their clients.

“There’s scientists and then there’s scientists,” Prof Webb tells the BBC.

“He knew everyone, and he had a lot of knowledge, but that’s different. Librarians have a lot of knowledge too.

“Guys like Adam are just trying to get on the bloody news.”

Mr Sideleau – who, with Britton, co-founded an attack database called CrocBITE in 2013 – tells the BBC a similar story. Britton “loved to take credit” for the archive but had “never contributed a single incident” to it, Mr Sideleau says. He merely paid for the website domain.

But in the broader community, Britton and his pet crocodile became stars.

After leaving Crocodylus Park, he established himself as a go-to expert on croc behaviour and made his leafy estate in McMinns Lagoon – at one point home to eight crocodiles – a global filming destination.

“He had international standing unlike anyone else,” one former friend and wildlife researcher – who asked not to be named – tells the BBC.

When Sir David’s Life in Cold Blood documentary series came knocking in 2006, Britton built a specialised enclosure for Smaug that allowed the programme to capture ground-breaking footage of crocodiles mating.

It was a “dream come true” to work with his idol, Britton told the Daily Telegraph years later.

Given how difficult it is to film many crocodile behaviours in the wild, a circus of TV crews cycled through McMinns Lagoon.

“If you’ve ever seen an underwater shot of a saltwater crocodile, there’s a good chance it’s Smaug,” Britton told the NT News in 2018.

Steve Backshall filmed scenes for his Deadly 60 documentary, Man vs Wild’s Bear Grylls paid a visit, and even movie producers had Britton’s number.

His expertise was also sought after abroad. He helped measure the world’s longest crocodile, captured in the Philippines in 2011, and in 2016 accompanied TV host Anderson Cooper on a dive with wild crocodiles in Botswana for an episode of CBS’s 60 Minutes.

“He was a leader in his field… a nice guy,” Australian director and writer Andrew Traucki tells the BBC.

Mr Traucki worked with Britton when filming croc horror film Black Water in 2008, as well as its 2019 sequel. He described spending many enjoyable hours on Britton’s property, kept company by his “awesome” Swiss Shepherds.

By that time, the zoologist was exploiting his own pets and manipulating other dog owners into giving him theirs, the court heard.

Using online marketplace Gumtree Australia, he would find people who were often reluctantly giving their pets away and promise to provide a “good home”.

If anyone reached out for updates, he would tell them “false narratives” and send them old photos.

Most of the time the dogs were already dead, having experienced indescribable suffering inside a shipping container fitted out with recording equipment which Britton called his “torture room”.

Over the 18 months leading up to his arrest, he tortured at least 42 dogs, killing 39 of them.

“This is the thing that’s sort of haunted me since I’ve heard… you would have never picked him for that,” Mr Traucki says.

The news similarly rocked the broader community. Hundreds of people around the world joined social media groups dedicated to following his case, and some turned up to his court hearings arguing he should be put to death – despite the penalty being outlawed in Australia since 1985.

A small crowd even travelled to Darwin to see Britton be sentenced, crying inside the courtroom as his details of his crimes – too graphic to publish – were read aloud.

They wanted to be a voice for the pet owners swindled by Britton, most of whom are still too traumatised and guilt-ridden to speak out, as well as a visible symbol of the community’s horror.

“I would look at that man and think, ‘What an intelligent and kind man’, and then to learn of what he had done… I didn’t sleep for three weeks,” one of the attendees Natalie Carey says.

With the benefit of hindsight, several people who knew Britton say there were fleeting moments when he appeared to lack empathy.

But all say there was genuinely no indication he was violent or cruel.

“It wasn’t like we saw him pulling the wings of grasshoppers just to watch them suffer. He wasn’t one of those people,” Prof Webb says.

“It’s just sad when you realise that someone you know has been so [messed] up mentally and you weren’t sharp enough to see it and do something about it.”

“You do feel a sense of responsibility.”

Mr Britton’s lawyer argued he had suffered from a rare disorder causing intense, atypical sexual interests since he was a child.

But in his apology letter, Britton accepted “full responsibility” for the “pain and trauma” he had caused and promised to seek treatment.

“I will find a path towards redemption,” he wrote.

On the face of it, the earthquake that struck southern Japan on Thursday was not a big deal.

The magnitude 7.1 quake did little damage and the tsunami warning was quickly scaled back.

But the earthquake was swiftly followed by a warning – one which had never been given before.

There was, Japan’s meteorological agency said, an increased risk of a “major earthquake”. Japan’s prime minister has cancelled a planned trip to a summit in Central Asia to be in the country for the next week.

For many in Japan, thoughts turned to the “big one” – a once-in-a-century quake that many had grown up being warned about.

Worst-case scenarios predict more than 300,000 dead, with a wall of water potentially 30m (100ft) striking along the East Asian nation’s Pacific coast.

Which sounds terrifying. And yet, the overwhelming feeling that Masayo Oshio was left with was confusion.

“I am baffled with the advisory and don’t know what to make of it,” she admitted to the BBC from her home in Yokohama, south of the capital, Tokyo.

“We know we cannot predict earthquakes and we have been told the big one is coming one day for so long, so I kept asking myself: is this it? But it does not seem real to me.”

So, what is the “big one”, can it be predicted – and is it likely to strike any time soon?

Japan is a country used to earthquakes. It sits on the Ring of Fire and, as a result, experiences about 1,500 earthquakes a year.

The vast majority do little damage, but there are some – like the one which struck in 2011 measuring magnitude 9.0, sending a tsunami into the north-east coast and killing more than 18,000 people.

But the one that authorities fear may strike in this more densely populated region to the south could – in the absolute worst-case scenario – be even more deadly.

Earthquakes along the Nankai Trough – an area of seismic activity which stretches along Japan’s Pacific coast – have been already been responsible for thousands of deaths.

In 1707, a rupture along its entire 600km length caused the second-biggest earthquake ever recorded in Japan and was followed by the eruption of Mount Fuji.

These so-called “megathrust” earthquakes tend to strike every hundred years or so, often in pairs: the last ones were in 1944 and 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, with worst-case scenarios suggesting it would cause trillions in damage, and potentially kill hundreds of thousands.

And this long-anticipated event is, according to geologists Kyle Bradley and Judith A Hubbard, “the original definition of the ‘Big One’”.

“The history of great earthquakes at Nankai is convincingly scary” so as to be concerning, the pair acknowledged in their Earthquake Insights newsletter on Thursday.

Not according to Robert Geller, professor emeritus of seismology at the University of Tokyo.

“The issuance of the warning yesterday has almost nothing to do with science,” he told the BBC.

This, he argues, is because while earthquakes are known to be a “clustered phenomenon”, it is “not possible to tell in advance whether a quake is a foreshock or an aftershock”.

Indeed, only about 5% of earthquakes are “foreshocks”, say Bradley and Hubbard.

However, the 2011 earthquake was preceded by a 7.2 magnitude foreshock, they note – one which was largely ignored.

The warning system was drawn up after 2011 in an attempt to prevent a disaster of this scale again, and Thursday was the first time the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) used it.

But, crucially, while it told people to be prepared, it did not tell anyone to evacuate. Indeed, they were keen to play down any massive imminent risk.

“The likelihood of a new major earthquake is higher than normal, but this is not an indication that a major earthquake will definitely occur,” the JMA said.

Even so, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida announced he had cancelled his plans to travel out of Japan to “ensure our preparations and communications are in order”.

He added that he feared people would be “feeling anxious”, given it was the first time such an advisory had been issued.

Masayo Oshio does not seem to be, however.

“I feel that the government is overplaying it,” she said.

Prof Geller was more scathing, saying the advisory was “not a useful piece of information”.

The system allows for either a warning or a lower-level alert to be sent out. Thursday was an alert, advising people to be prepared to evacuate.

And, anecdotally, it seems to have worked. Even in a country used to receiving alerts on their phones, the “Nankai Trough” effect – and threat of the “Big One” – made people stop and take notice.

“One thing I did when I saw the advisory was to check what we have at home and make sure we are prepared, since I have not done that for a while,” admitted Masayo Oshio.

And this has been replicated along the Pacific coast.

In Nichinan, Miyazaki Prefecture, near the epicentre of Thursday’s 7.1, officials were inspecting the conditions of already-opened evacuation shelters. In Kochi Prefecture, western Japan, 10 municipalities opened at least 75 evacuation shelters by Friday morning , according to Kyodo news agency.

The thermal plant operator Jera Co., a joint venture between Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc. and Chubu Electric Power Co., said it was on emergency alert, reaffirming communication routes with fuel carriers and evacuation protocols for piers.

In the town of Kuroshio, also in Kochi, elderly residents and others were urged to evacuate voluntarily to safer locations. Officials of Wakayama Prefecture, western Japan, confirmed evacuation routes in co-operation with local municipalities.

Prof Geller – for all his scepticism – says it is a good opportunity to “make sure you’re doing all the routine precautions you should be doing anyway”.

“Have a week’s worth of water on hand, some canned food, and then maybe have some batteries for your flashlight,” he advises.

The moment India won a bronze medal in hockey at Paris Olympics, the players burst into wild celebrations.

But PR Sreejesh quietly walked to one end of the field and bowed down in front of the goalpost – his home for almost two decades.

He will miss that home, but India will miss him even more. The goalkeeper, who played his last international match on Thursday, leaves an illustrious legacy behind him.

The “Wall of India”, as he is popularly known, played a crucial role in India’s podium finish. His team were up 2-1 and Spain were fighting hard for an equaliser but Sreejesh thwarted their attempts, especially in the dying minutes of the match.

The instincts and the tactful dives he is known for were on full display. His impact on the game can be understood from the fact that the Spaniards earned nine penalty corners, but couldn’t convert any. Sreejesh and his defence team put their bodies on the line to protect their lead until the end.

The former Indian captain can also be credited with bringing India into contention for a medal. The knock-out match against Great Britain went into a penalty shootout and once again it was down to the Wall to protect his team – he did exactly that with two masterful saves.

He was in tears after India lost the semi-final to Germany as he knew the elusive gold medal was out of his grasp, but he quickly turned his attention to the bronze medal match. On Thursday, he was crying again – but this time in joy.

Indians cried with him and social media was flooded with tributes to the man who carried the country’s hopes and dreams for nearly two decades.

India is known to be cricket crazy and players from other sports often don’t get the same attention, fame or money. And for a hockey goalkeeper, it’s even harder to be acknowledged.

“It’s difficult to love a goalkeeper. He is invisible, and is only in the limelight when he makes a blunder. When I was young, I didn’t know who India’s goalkeeper was then,” he told the Indian Express in 2021.

Sreejesh never chased attention or stardom; he just liked to get on with the job. It was this attitude that kept him going despite a bitter-sweet debut.

He had already made waves in the junior circuit with his quick reflexes and ability to judge a ball’s trajectory in nano seconds.

But his debut in the senior team in 2006 at the South Asian Games didn’t go that well. He performed well in the tournament but missed a crucial save in the final against India’s arch-rival Pakistan. The criticism that followed was a steep learning curve for him.

The next few years were tough as he didn’t get a permanent place in the team. Indian hockey also went through a bad phase during this period, with the team failing to even qualify for the Beijing Olympics in 2008.

But Sreejesh continued to work hard on his skills and his moment of redemption came in 2011. It was the final of the Champions Trophy and Pakistan was once again the opposing side.

He looked much more self-assured and made two crucial penalty saves to win the game for India.

Sreejesh was thrust into the limelight immediately after the match. He travelled with the team to the London Olympics in 2012 but India ended their campaign without a medal.

Despite the team’s dismal performance, the custodian of the Indian goalpost continued to perform well. His next shining moment came when he was again faced with Pakistan in the 2014 Asian Games final. He saved two penalties to end India’s 16-year gold medal drought at the Games.

But if there is one moment that sums up his character, grit and determination, it has to be the bronze medal match against Holland in the Hockey World League in 2015.

He was badly injured, his thighs were covered in ice packs, his thumb was close to broken and his shoulder was covered in protective surgical tapes. He could barely walk the night before the match.

He joked that he looked like a mummy as he took his position at the goalpost. But behind all the pain and the humour was a resolve to win a medal for India in a major international tournament after more than three decades. His stunning saves in the penalty shootout helped India win the match against a superior team.

His place as a legend in Indian hockey was now cemented. He was soon asked to lead the team at the Rio Olympics. They didn’t win a medal but reached the quarter-final – bettering their performance from London.

But he never let success get to his head, remaining humble and approachable and living his life without the trappings of glamour usually associated with sport stars. This endeared him to his teammates and also Indians at large.

An injury in 2017 threatened to end his career. Defying all odds, he made a comeback after two surgeries and several months of rehabilitation.

But his performance took time to peak and critics said his famed reflexes had slowed down. Younger goalkeepers were also making a claim for his spot. But he stayed away from the noise and continued to work hard.

He was once again ready to end another drought – a 41-year wait for a hockey medal at the Olympics. He helped India win a bronze medal at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics with his astute understanding of the game.

He was able to ride through many storms in his career largely due to his upbringing.

Sreejesh was born into a farming family in the southern state of Kerala.

He loved sports but didn’t enjoy running as much. So after trying out other sports and different playing positions in hockey, he chose goalkeeping as it didn’t involve much running.

He did well at the state level and was called for the national trials in Delhi in 2003.

The 15-year-old arrived in the Indian capital after a train journey of more than 48 hours. He spoke little Hindi – the language spoken by most players at the camp.

Staying with mostly Hindi-speaking boys in the hostel, he embraced the challenge and learnt the language – including some pretty colourful words that were often heard during tense matches in later years.

He was selected for the team but didn’t have a good kit to protect himself. His father then sold his cow to raise 10,000 rupees ($119; £93) to pay for the kit.

Life came full circle on Thursday when his father was surrounded by hundreds of people in his house to watch his son win yet another accolade for India in his last match.

For Sreejesh, his two children will now become his priority, along with his new role as the head coach of the Indian junior hockey team.

“It’s time for my kids to start their journey and I’m done, and their life starts,” he told Olympics.com.

When asked about his legacy, he prefers not to talk about his achievements.

“I want people to remember me as a good person who always had a smiling face,” the Hindustan Times quoted him.

“And for the youngsters and kids, when they pad up and step on to the hockey field, they should feel I want to become a keeper like Sreejesh.”

San Francisco’s former mayor Willie Brown has dismissed as “fiction” Donald Trump’s story that they once endured a scary helicopter trip together.

The former president said on Thursday that he and Mr Brown had gone “down” in a helicopter together and Mr Brown had been “a little concerned”.

“We thought maybe this was the end,” Trump said. “We were in a helicopter… and there was an emergency landing. This was not a pleasant landing.”

Trump later insisted the story was true in a call to the New York Times, saying he was “probably going to sue” without elaborating.

Mr Brown, 90, told US media he had never shared a helicopter with Trump, adding: “I don’t think I’d want to ride on the same helicopter with him.”

Trump, 78, appeared to be confusing Mr Brown with Jerry Brown, California’s former governor, with whom he shared a helicopter ride in 2018 to visit the aftermath of the Paradise wildfires. Gavin Newsom, the current state governor, was also on the flight.

Both men told US media there had been no emergency landing or danger. “I call complete BS,” Mr Newsom told The New York Times.

Trump told his story in response to a question about Willie Brown’s relationship with Kamala Harris, 59, in the mid-1990s while she was a California prosecutor.

Trump was asked whether he thought the relationship had played a role in Ms Harris’s career journey.

“Well, I know Willie Brown very well,” Trump said, before speaking of the flight and claiming the former mayor had told him “terrible things” about Ms Harris.

“He had a big part in what happened with Kamala,” Trump said.

The former mayor also denied this.

“That’s so far-fetched, it’s unbelievable,” he told local TV station KRON. “I could not envision thinking of Kamala Harris in any negative way.

“She’s a good friend a long time ago, absolutely beautiful woman, smart as all hell, very successful, electorally speaking.

“He was doing what Donald does best, his creative fiction.”

A spokesperson for Jerry Brown also told US media that the former governor had not discussed Ms Harris on the helicopter flight in 2018.

Trump’s remarks at an hour-long news conference at his Mar-a-Lago estate come as a recent national poll shows Ms Harris is beating him among likely voters.

The two have visited a number of battleground states this week alongside their vice-presidential candidates to speak to voters.

The King has praised the way “community spirit” and “compassion” have countered the “aggression and criminality” on display during the riots, says Buckingham Palace.

King Charles had been in phone conversations on Friday evening with Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and police chiefs.

He gave his “heartfelt thanks to the police and emergency services for all they are doing to restore peace in those areas that have been affected by violent disorder”, said a palace spokesman.

In a call for unity, the King hoped that “shared values of mutual respect and understanding will continue to strengthen and unite the nation”.

King Charles, currently in Scotland, spoke to the prime minister about the wave of disorder and riots.

In another joint call, the King spoke to Chief Constable Gavin Stephens, chair of the National Police Chiefs Council and to UK Gold Commander Ben Harrington, Chief Constable of Essex, thanking the police for their efforts and getting an update on the protests.

“The King shared how he had been greatly encouraged by the many examples of community spirit that had countered the aggression and criminality from a few with the compassion and resilience of the many,” said a palace spokesman.

There had been questions about whether the King would speak about the riots – and as a politically-neutral monarch he had left the initial response to ministers.

But the King has a long record of working to build bridges between different faiths and cultures – calling Britain a “community of communities”.

And against the divisions revealed during this unrest, he has made his views known, calling for tolerance and “mutual respect and understanding”.

He is said to have been involved in behind-the-scenes efforts to bring together communities affected by the riots, during his summer break in Scotland, in a year in which he has been treated for cancer.

But it is not expected that the King will make any immediate visits to trouble spots until the unrest is over, with the response to the protests seen as being the responsibility of the government.

This follows the pattern seen after the outbreak of riots in 2011, during which Queen Elizabeth didn’t put out any messages, but royal visits took place after calm had been restored.

The King, then Prince Charles, subsequently visited Tottenham and other affected areas to encourage cross-community relations in the wake of the riots.

There had previously been criticism of the lack of an intervention by the King.

“We’re told the monarch is supposed to be a figurehead who unites the nation, yet when the nation is in crisis he’s nowhere to be seen,” said Graham Smith, leader of the anti-monarchy group, Republic.

That was rejected by historian and author Sir Anthony Seldon, who said the King should not get immediately involved in debates over the riots.

“He is head of state, and it’s appropriate that while the crisis is going on, the head of government, the prime minister, handles the crisis management and says what is needed to be said.

“The time for the King to speak, if at all, is when everything has calmed down again,” Sir Anthony told the BBC.

Another practical sensitivity about carrying out any immediate royal visits to riot-hit areas has been a worry about adding pressure to police on the ground.

For two weeks, the world has come to play in Paris. One of the planet’s most stunning cities has played host to the “crème de la crème” of Olympic royalty.

National leaders and celebrities have joined the sports stars to strut their stuff, their every move beamed across the globe by the broadcasters gathered here.

But as the athletes like to say, it is often the fans who really complete the Games.

That has been all the more true in 2024, with spectators allowed to return to the Olympics en masse for the first time since Covid struck.

They have not been awarded medals, but with their quirky displays of passion, patriotism and downright peculiarity, they have provided plenty of highlights.

Here are five of the most memorable sights from the French capital that you probably won’t have seen on TV.

Lamp posts, cycle stands, bins, post boxes: it seemed there was no piece of street furniture that spectators were unwilling to climb to catch sight of the action.

It was the first Saturday of sport, and many Parisians were starting to warm to the Games. The cycling time-trial contests were unfolding along some of the city’s most beautiful boulevards – and big crowds were beginning to gather.

The most acrobatic – or foolhardy – spectators started scaling any available object to get a better view – performing feats of acrobatics not seen until the Games’s official climbing contest began a week or so later.

The sight of residents dangling precariously out of their windows left you wondering what George-Eugène Haussmann, the man who carefully rebuilt Paris in the 19th Century, would make of it all.

A legion of picture-takers lined up to get their photos taken with “Asterix and Obelix” after a judo final in the nearby Champ de Mars Arena.

If there was a gold for fancy-dress, the French pair would have been in serious contention thanks to their depictions of the legendary comic-book Gaulish warriors.

The two men – real names Sebastian and Thomas-Felix – said the Games were showcasing French culture and bringing people together in a party atmosphere. At least everyone could “cry together” after losing the men’s 60kg judo final, they said.

Paris might be known for high fashion, but some of the fortnight’s other head-turning looks have included an Egyptian pharaoh costume, various national dresses and headwear inspired by the Games’s smiling red-cap mascots.

There was also this man:

Some of the most rousing renditions of the French national anthem heard in Paris have not been in the sporting arenas, but have instead been spontaneous singalongs by wandering French fans draped in their tricolore flags.

A version of La Marseillaise belted out on a busy metro train after the opening ceremony surpassed the more mumbly performance heard in the rain-soaked stands of the Trocadéro during the official event.

The chanting seemed to encapsulate a nation’s relief that the ceremony had been pulled off successfully after so many worries about security and organisation.

Later in the Games, social media users observed a perfect pun could be achieved by substituting the tune’s marching line with the surname of France’s most decorated athlete in Paris.

“Marchons! Oui, marchons!” is the original. The alternative references swimming sensation Léon Marchand: “Marchand! Oui, Marchand!” Expect to hear it at the next Olympics in 2028.

The coin-operated telescopes found 115m (380ft) up the Eiffel Tower are typically used by tourists to marvel at some of Paris’s other top sights, such as the details on the faraway Arc de Triomphe or the Notre-Dame cathedral.

But the city’s world-famous monuments have felt quieter than normal, briefly outshone by exhilarating spectacles of sporting endeavour.

On a woozy Monday afternoon, those sightseers who had assembled on the tower’s second-floor viewing platform discovered a clever ruse: the telescopes could be used to spy on a beach volleyball match happening down below.

It was possible to witness a thrilling comeback for Spain’s women over the Netherlands. It was just one creative way curious bystanders managed to get a glimpse of the sporting action, with all but the priciest tickets often sold out.

Many of the Games’s volunteers have had a ball in Paris, if the gleeful dancing by a troupe near the Stade de France on one balmy night is anything to go by.

Standing on the concourse of a nearby railway station, the group pulled off a well-choreographed routine to Toto’s Africa – all the while waggling their giant foam fingers as they directed punters to the platforms below with megaphones.

Some 45,000 people are said by organisers to have given up their time to help deliver the Olympics and Paralympics – herding people around metro stops, attending to athletes, and chaperoning others around bewildering security cordons. They have even been photographed spraying fans with water to cool them down.

In their distinctive turquoise and pink garb, they have frequently been the Games’s unsung heroes, and could certainly be allowed a brief evening boogie.

The family of an 11-year-old girl allegedly killed by a US diplomat in Zimbabwe in a road accident in June have told the BBC they want him to return to the country and apologise to them in person.

Ruvarashe Takamhanya is believed to have been run over by a vehicle driven by the diplomat as she was on her way to school in Dema, a town 40km (24 miles) south-east of the capital, Harare.

Her parents say they realise the US diplomat has diplomatic immunity but an apology might help them recover from the pain and give them a sense of closure.

“Our thoughts are with the family and loved ones of the girl,” a US State Department spokesperson told the BBC, adding that its Harare embassy was co-operating with local officials.

The embassy “recognises the devastation of this accident for all involved”, the spokesperson said.

Ruvarashe was heading to school with her best friend on a Monday morning when she was hit as she crossed the main road that runs through Dema, the BBC has been told.

Her mother, Juliana Vito, said she found out about the accident from neighbours and ran to the scene.

“I thought she was going to wake up. Till now I keep thinking it’s just a dream. I’m deeply hurt,” the 24-year-old told the BBC.

She said that the driver of the car was not there when she got to the crash site – and had not reached out directly to the family since.

His colleagues apologised on his behalf, she said, and told her that that he left the scene because he was “affected by the accident”.

“I felt like he wasn’t really sorry,” she said. “I wish he came directly so I could pour my heart out.”

The girl’s father, Silvester Takhamanya, told the BBC they were given $2,000 (£1,575) by the US embassy to cover funeral arrangements.

The US State Department spokesperson confirmed the embassy had provided “support to the girl’s family” and said representatives attended the funeral.

But the family feel abandoned in their grief.

“We are trying to be brave,” Mr Takamhanya told the BBC.

Ruvarashe’s parents say she lived up to her name, which means “flower of God” in the Shona language, describing her as sweet, kind and intelligent.

“People were always amazed by her,” her mother, who is a baker, said proudly.

Police spokesman Paul Nyathi told the BBC the diplomat had initially said he wanted to rest after the accident, which happened on 3 June, and that he would then make contact with investigators.

But investigations had stalled as the diplomat left Zimbabwe not long after the accident, according to Mr Nyathi.

Zimbabwe’s presidential spokesman George Charamba has expressed outrage at his conduct.

“When a diplomat is involved in a fatal traffic accident, uses the pretext of counselling, which he thinks is only available in his country, and then decides to stay away from police, he or she moves from being a diplomat to a fugitive,” he told the state-run Herald newspaper last month.

Government spokesperson Nick Mangwana was more tactful in his response to the BBC.

But he explained the Vienna Convention, on which diplomatic immunity is founded, “gives both privileges and responsibilities”.

“Whilst what happened was an unfortunate fatal accident which resulted in the tragic loss of the life of one of our nationals, there is an expectation that the parties involved would take responsibility and do the right thing by the family of the victim as well as by the laws of this country.

“It is part of diplomats’ responsibility to abide by and comply with the laws of the host country.”

The US State Department spokesperson said the embassy would continue to communicate with the police and other officials as they complete their investigation.

Mr Mangwana said the incident should not affect diplomatic relations with the US: “As a government, we do not believe that the diplomat concerned set out to kill our national. It was an accident regardless of his culpability for it.”

Ruvarashe’s parents, who do not live together, tend to struggle day to day and had high hopes for their daughter’s future.

“She loved school so much. She wanted to be an air hostess,” said Mr Takamhanya.

Ruvarashe’s ambition had been a joy for her mother, who said she had dropped out of school when she had become pregnant with her.

“I still can’t believe she is gone. She was my only child. I thought she was going to take care of me one day,” Ms Vito said.

“I’m just surviving but my life and my hope is gone. I’m dying day by day.”

She said she looked on Ruvarashe as a best friend, adding that her daughter had also often helped look after her as her health was “deteriorating”.

Compensation would definitely help the family, but more than anything Ruvarashe’s parents want the driver of the car that killed their daughter to sit down with them and explain what happened.

“He should come back and say sorry,” said Mr Takamhanya.

• What is diplomatic immunity?
• I cannot forgive Mugabe’s soldiers – massacre survivor
• Is Zimbabwe zigzagging into further currency chaos?
• ‘You see skeletons’ – the deadly migrant crossing
• Zimbabwe’s cholera crisis fuelled by chronic water shortages

Pressure is mounting on Kenyan police officers to deliver on their promise to help bring Haiti’s rampant gangs under control, six weeks after setting foot in the Caribbean nation.

When the first contingent of 200 elite Kenyan police officers flew into Haiti’s capital Port-au-Prince on 25 June, they filed confidently off their Kenyan Airways flight clad in helmets and combat gear, carrying their weapons and holding high the Kenyan national flag.

They chanted in Swahili while they psyched themselves up on the airport tarmac, as did a second batch of 200 Kenyan officers who landed three weeks later.

“Let’s go!” and “We’re moving!” came the cries.

Hopes were high that the Kenyan police would bring much-needed muscle to Haiti’s beleaguered National Police (PNH), as they struggled to hold back a deadly offensive by Haitian criminal gangs that have terrorised the capital and large swathes of the country for more than three years.

The Kenyans are the advance guard core of a UN-mandated, multinational force that will seek to restore peace to Haiti.

They were initially welcomed and feted by Haitian government leaders, and by many in Haiti’s media too.

Radio Independante FM posted on X a welcome greeting in the country’s Creole language for the Kenyans, saying:

“Haiti is the country of all Africans. Since you are black Haiti is your home… You Kenyan soldiers are at home and must be welcomed to help fight these wasters [the gangs] that prevent us from living in our country”.

However, weeks after the much anticipated deployment, which had already been delayed by legal challenges in Kenya and logistical hitches, many Haitians seem frustrated and disillusioned that the force, along with their Haitian police colleagues, have not moved more quickly and decisively against the gangs, their bosses and their known hideouts.

Frustrated commentary, expressing impatience and disappointment, is on the rise in Haitian media and social media circles.

There has been chorus of calls for “actions not words” and “concrete results”.

Some of the sharpest criticism accuses the Kenyans of “theatrics” and being mere “tourists”.

Critics point out that – despite high-profile joint patrols by Kenyan and Haitian police in Port-au-Prince where they have exchanged fire with suspected gangmen – the gangs only seem to have tightened their grip on the capital’s south-western and north-eastern suburbs since the Kenyan mission began.

Gang members have attacked and burned or partially destroyed police stations and continue to prey on major highways out of the capital and inland.

There is a feeling among some that the Kenyan force has been too slow to make its presence felt.

“What are the Kenyans waiting for to act against the bandits?,” asked local news outlet AyiboPost in an article posted to X on 11 July, a fortnight after the East Africans landed.

Some two weeks later, online news website Le Filet Info was commenting pointedly: “The presence of the Kenyan police in the country does not manage to frighten the bandits.

“They continue to massacre members of the civilian population.”

The Kenyan contingent has already experienced its first casualty since arriving in Haiti.

On 30 July, a Kenyan policeman received a gunshot injury in the shoulder in Port-au-Prince when a Kenyan patrol engaged gang members.

That same day, the Haitian police chief Rameau Normil, accompanied by the Kenyan force commander Godfrey Otunge, appeared to try to counter unfavourable local media commentary by announcing that more than 100 “bandits” had been killed by the Haitian and Kenyan police in operations conducted under a state of emergency declared in the most gang-plagued zones since mid-July.

Such statements however have not succeeded in placating public scepticism.

Confidence was not improved by the publication online of videos showing top Haitian government officials, as well as Kenyan and Haitian police escorting them, making a hasty retreat on 29 July, amid a barrage of gunfire, from the abandoned General Hospital in downtown Port-au-Prince they had just visited.

Both Haitian and Kenyan police had said this facility was firmly under their control.

Despite such criticism Haiti’s interim Prime Minister Garry Conille told BBC HARDtalk he welcomed the support given how undermanned the Haitian police are.

“We do need the help… yet it’s coming in too slow and Haitians are growing impatient,” he acknowledged.

The prime minister also batted off those who questioned the deployment of Kenyan officers given their heavy-handed handling of recent anti-government riots at home.

“The respect for our laws and operational procedures have been very very good and we’re very happy with the accompaniment we’re receiving,” he said, emphasising that the role of the Kenyans was to support and accompany the police – not operate independently.

Nonetheless the Kenyans have faced open defiance from prominent Haitian gang leaders.

Only days after the arrival of the first group of Kenyans, Jimmy “Barbecue” Chérizier, an outspoken leader of the “Viv Ansanm” (Live Together) gangs coalition, appeared in a provocative video lasting almost eight minutes that was posted on X.

Leading his masked foot soldiers in a strutting, chanting war dance through his Delmas 6 stronghold, they held their automatic weapons aloft.

“Here’s Kenya [the Kenyans], bullets [for them],” they chanted in Creole at one point.

Other gang leaders, including Wilson “Lanmo Sanjou” Joseph, the boss of the “400 Mawozo” gang, and youthful gang chief “Ti Bebe Bougoy”, have also been appearing in videos taunting both Haitian authorities and the Kenyans, while the gangs continue to boast of their attacks.

In mid-July, the Kenyan contingent of the multi-national force launched their own X account, @MSSMHaiti, in a bid to set the tone of the public narrative of their mission in Haiti.

Its daily reports on the Kenyans’ activities range from receiving visiting dignitaries at their base, to human rights lessons, and upbeat accounts of “reassurance” patrols on the streets of Port-au-Prince.

But the determined optimism of the @MSSMHaiti stream, particularly references to “significant success” and “gradual return to normalcy”, appears to have rankled many in Haiti.

Some Haitians have denounced the Kenyan reports as, at best, overblown – and, at worst, “propaganda”.

• Haiti vows to restore order with Kenya-led force’s help
• Haiti forms new government as gang violence persists
• Batons, tear gas, live fire – Kenyans face police brutality
• Haiti situation ‘catastrophic’ and growing worse – UN
• Inside the world of Kenya’s ‘killer cop’

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 can be caused by conditions called DSDs: differences in sex development.

Listen to Sofia read this article

There 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.

Both fighters were said to have failed International Boxing Association gender eligibility tests last year – but there has been conflicting information whether XY chromosomes or elevated testosterone were found.

While representatives of the fighters and the IOC insist the fighters were “born women, raised as women and always competed as women”, critics, including some of their opponents at Paris 2024, have speculated that perhaps the fighters have DSD.

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 DSD who have 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 Prof 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.

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.

What do monkeys, wolves, pelicans, goats and elephants have in common?

We’re not at a zoo – these are all animals that Banksy has painted around London this week.

Each day, the elusive street artist has unveiled a new artwork in a different location in the capital, posting it on Instagram at 13:00 BST.

Banksy, famous for his enigmatic, often powerful artworks, has chosen not to caption his animals online.

He also hasn’t explained why they’re all painted in the same black stencil style.

All his agent would tell the BBC was that there was “no comment on the theme”, adding there “may or may not” be more animal paintings to follow.

This has left people to speculate about their meaning.

James Peak, presenter of the BBC’s The Banksy Story, thinks the message behind the paintings is less obvious than some of his previous works.

“It’s interesting that the meaning is more hidden than usual,” he tells the BBC.

“There’s often a message that is more clear and immediate in his work: maybe this time around he wants us to work it out for ourselves?”

Peak adds that Banksy’s animals show his trademark use of negative space, saying he’s “using the built environment as part of the art”, for “maximum impact from minimum effort”.

Peak also explains that the silhouettes for most of the animals this week are plain black, “with no adornments or shading”.

“The monkeys look like they’re swinging from the bridge,” he notes, “the pelicans are nicking the fish from the fish shop.”

Banksy’s work is often political.

During Glastonbury, he set out a blow-up boat, filled with dummies in lifejackets, during a set from Bristol-based post-punk band Idles. It was controversial and the then Conservative home secretary James Cleverly called it “vile”.

Bansky responded, saying: “The real boat I fund, the MV Louise Michel rescued 17 unaccompanied children from the central Med last night. As punishment the Italian authorities have detained it – which seems vile and unacceptable to me.”

But he’s kept silent this time around.

Fan theories online have ranged from the goat being about the Israel-Gaza war to the animals being compared to far-right rioters across the UK.

Peak also highlights “other theories that all the animals are maybe threatened or near extinction”.

“The monkeys may be escaping gentrification and further development in the Brick Lane area. The elephants may be isolated and lonely,” he said.

The goat could represent Palestinians losing their footing – or may suggest “we may be distracted or preoccupied with the ‘Greatest of All Time’ and the Olympics – instead of big global issues”.

But what do people on the street think?

At 08:00 BST on Friday, Brick Lane is relatively quiet – the hum of tourists who usually descend for food, fashion and street art are nowhere to be seen yet.

But there are a few who take advantage of the lack of traffic, stopping in the middle of the street to take selfies and photos.

The three primates on a railway line have been associated with the three wise monkeys in the Japanese proverb – “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil”.

But in Banksy’s work, the monkeys are not covering their eyes, ears or mouths.

A group of women are excited to see the artwork, and a passerby stops and offers to take their photo together.

They tell the BBC they love Banksy because of the mystery surrounding his identity (Banksy’s identity has always remained a secret, though on The Banksy Story, a 2003 interview was unearthed, where the artist confirmed his name was Robbie).

“I love his work because it’s secret, it’s undercover, and it’s always topical – it’s not random,” Caz says.

“I think it might be in relation to what’s going on in the country at the moment,” says Sally, “a statement.”

About five minutes later, another man stops to take a photo on a professional camera – he says he’s going on a tour of London to catch the artworks which have appeared so far.

A couple of hours later, and it’s slightly busier in Walthamstow, where the fifth Banksy turned up on Friday: two pelicans eating fish, on the side of a chip shop.

It wasn’t officially announced on social media until 13:00, but the suspected work had been circulating online.

When I arrived there was a small huddle of people, mainly TV reporters and excited locals who were asking each other if the work is real.

“It brings character to the area – I’ve never seen people standing like this before,” says Hather Ali, one of the people who asked if it was a legitimate Banksy.

He lives next door to the fish shop and says he is going to check his CCTV footage from the night before, to see if he can see the secretive artist in action.

On Monday, following the first work in Richmond, media outlets published pictures of two men in a cherry picker – a mechanical platform at the end of a hydraulic lifting system.

One, who was masked, is believed to be Banksy.

Marcia McKnight has been living on the street for two decades and can see the artwork from her house.

“I’m in heaven, this is fantastic for my street, for the local neighbourhood,” she says, adding it’s “amazing” for the family-run chippy.

“I’ve lived here 20 years, so I’ve seen the regeneration [of Walthamstow] happening.

“So it’s actually nice that we’ve got a piece of art, rather than a tower block or block of flats going up,” she adds.

Marcia thinks the artwork comes on the back of the anti-racism gathering in Walthamstow on Wednesday – thousands of people took to the streets chanting, clapping and preaching a message of peace.

“I would suspect [that’s what it’s about], as Walthamstow had one of the biggest anti far-right rallies.”

Although many people think the work is related to the UK riots, Peak still thinks it may have an environmental message.

Throughout his career, Banksy has created work centred around the environment – in 2002, he did a poster for Greenpeace featuring characters from The Jungle Book.

In 2003, he was responsible for a grim reaper, which was painted on the side of Thekla, a boat and nightclub venue in Bristol.

Or, says Peak, the latest artworks could be more straightforward than all the theories.

“It may be simply that he loves drawing animals and he’s having a great brat summer in London, proving he can still pop up and deliver something that gets the world talking, before he disappears again into the night.”

The moment India won a bronze medal in hockey at Paris Olympics, the players burst into wild celebrations.

But PR Sreejesh quietly walked to one end of the field and bowed down in front of the goalpost – his home for almost two decades.

He will miss that home, but India will miss him even more. The goalkeeper, who played his last international match on Thursday, leaves an illustrious legacy behind him.

The “Wall of India”, as he is popularly known, played a crucial role in India’s podium finish. His team were up 2-1 and Spain were fighting hard for an equaliser but Sreejesh thwarted their attempts, especially in the dying minutes of the match.

The instincts and the tactful dives he is known for were on full display. His impact on the game can be understood from the fact that the Spaniards earned nine penalty corners, but couldn’t convert any. Sreejesh and his defence team put their bodies on the line to protect their lead until the end.

The former Indian captain can also be credited with bringing India into contention for a medal. The knock-out match against Great Britain went into a penalty shootout and once again it was down to the Wall to protect his team – he did exactly that with two masterful saves.

He was in tears after India lost the semi-final to Germany as he knew the elusive gold medal was out of his grasp, but he quickly turned his attention to the bronze medal match. On Thursday, he was crying again – but this time in joy.

Indians cried with him and social media was flooded with tributes to the man who carried the country’s hopes and dreams for nearly two decades.

India is known to be cricket crazy and players from other sports often don’t get the same attention, fame or money. And for a hockey goalkeeper, it’s even harder to be acknowledged.

“It’s difficult to love a goalkeeper. He is invisible, and is only in the limelight when he makes a blunder. When I was young, I didn’t know who India’s goalkeeper was then,” he told the Indian Express in 2021.

Sreejesh never chased attention or stardom; he just liked to get on with the job. It was this attitude that kept him going despite a bitter-sweet debut.

He had already made waves in the junior circuit with his quick reflexes and ability to judge a ball’s trajectory in nano seconds.

But his debut in the senior team in 2006 at the South Asian Games didn’t go that well. He performed well in the tournament but missed a crucial save in the final against India’s arch-rival Pakistan. The criticism that followed was a steep learning curve for him.

The next few years were tough as he didn’t get a permanent place in the team. Indian hockey also went through a bad phase during this period, with the team failing to even qualify for the Beijing Olympics in 2008.

But Sreejesh continued to work hard on his skills and his moment of redemption came in 2011. It was the final of the Champions Trophy and Pakistan was once again the opposing side.

He looked much more self-assured and made two crucial penalty saves to win the game for India.

Sreejesh was thrust into the limelight immediately after the match. He travelled with the team to the London Olympics in 2012 but India ended their campaign without a medal.

Despite the team’s dismal performance, the custodian of the Indian goalpost continued to perform well. His next shining moment came when he was again faced with Pakistan in the 2014 Asian Games final. He saved two penalties to end India’s 16-year gold medal drought at the Games.

But if there is one moment that sums up his character, grit and determination, it has to be the bronze medal match against Holland in the Hockey World League in 2015.

He was badly injured, his thighs were covered in ice packs, his thumb was close to broken and his shoulder was covered in protective surgical tapes. He could barely walk the night before the match.

He joked that he looked like a mummy as he took his position at the goalpost. But behind all the pain and the humour was a resolve to win a medal for India in a major international tournament after more than three decades. His stunning saves in the penalty shootout helped India win the match against a superior team.

His place as a legend in Indian hockey was now cemented. He was soon asked to lead the team at the Rio Olympics. They didn’t win a medal but reached the quarter-final – bettering their performance from London.

But he never let success get to his head, remaining humble and approachable and living his life without the trappings of glamour usually associated with sport stars. This endeared him to his teammates and also Indians at large.

An injury in 2017 threatened to end his career. Defying all odds, he made a comeback after two surgeries and several months of rehabilitation.

But his performance took time to peak and critics said his famed reflexes had slowed down. Younger goalkeepers were also making a claim for his spot. But he stayed away from the noise and continued to work hard.

He was once again ready to end another drought – a 41-year wait for a hockey medal at the Olympics. He helped India win a bronze medal at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics with his astute understanding of the game.

He was able to ride through many storms in his career largely due to his upbringing.

Sreejesh was born into a farming family in the southern state of Kerala.

He loved sports but didn’t enjoy running as much. So after trying out other sports and different playing positions in hockey, he chose goalkeeping as it didn’t involve much running.

He did well at the state level and was called for the national trials in Delhi in 2003.

The 15-year-old arrived in the Indian capital after a train journey of more than 48 hours. He spoke little Hindi – the language spoken by most players at the camp.

Staying with mostly Hindi-speaking boys in the hostel, he embraced the challenge and learnt the language – including some pretty colourful words that were often heard during tense matches in later years.

He was selected for the team but didn’t have a good kit to protect himself. His father then sold his cow to raise 10,000 rupees ($119; £93) to pay for the kit.

Life came full circle on Thursday when his father was surrounded by hundreds of people in his house to watch his son win yet another accolade for India in his last match.

For Sreejesh, his two children will now become his priority, along with his new role as the head coach of the Indian junior hockey team.

“It’s time for my kids to start their journey and I’m done, and their life starts,” he told Olympics.com.

When asked about his legacy, he prefers not to talk about his achievements.

“I want people to remember me as a good person who always had a smiling face,” the Hindustan Times quoted him.

“And for the youngsters and kids, when they pad up and step on to the hockey field, they should feel I want to become a keeper like Sreejesh.”

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

Battling choppy waves and high winds, three engineers pulled ashore a yellow submarine in Scotland this week.

With sheets of water pouring from its body, the UK’s most famous robot – Boaty McBoatface – was winched up after 55 days at sea.

“It’s a bit slimy, and ocean smells have seeped in. There’s a few things growing on it,” says Rob Templeton, now dismantling the 3.6m robot in Leverburgh, on the Isle of Harris.

Boaty has completed a more-than-2,000km scientific odyssey from Iceland that could change what we know about the pace of climate change.

It was hunting for marine snow – “poo, basically” in the words of one researcher. This refers to tiny particles that sink to the ocean floor, storing huge amounts of carbon.

The deep ocean, referred to as the “twilight zone”, is enormously mysterious. Acting as the eyes and ears of the scientists, Boaty went there on the longest journey yet for its class of submarine. BBC News had exclusive access to the expedition.

The public originally picked the name Boaty McBoatface for a polar ship in 2016. That didn’t happen, but instead the name was quietly given to a fleet of six identical robots at the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton.

This latest epic trip from Iceland was a major engineering test. “Boaty has absolutely passed. It’s a massive relief,” says Rob.

It has been an around-the-clock operation, with the engineers sending text messages to the robot via satellite. “We tell it dive here, travel there, turn on that sensor,” he says.

It is exciting technology but the science that Boaty was doing could be part of a game-changer in how scientists understand climate change.

They want to understand something called the biological carbon pump – a constant and huge movement of carbon inside the oceans.

Tiny plants that absorb carbon grow near the ocean’s surface. Animals, often microscopic, eat the plants and then poo. Those particles – the marine snow – sink to the ocean floor. That keeps the carbon locked in and reduces the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, one of the drivers of human-induced climate change.

But that carbon pump is still largely a mystery to scientists. And they are deeply concerned the warming of our oceans caused by climate change is disrupting that cycle.

Packed with sensors and instruments in its belly, Boaty turned into a mobile lab to help the scientists.

Cruising at 1.1metres per second and diving thousands of metres, Boaty had more than 20 sensors monitoring biological and chemical conditions like nutrients, oxygen levels, photosynthesis and temperature.

It is all for a major research project called BioCarbon, run by the National Oceanography Centre, University of Southampton and Heriot-Watt in Edinburgh.

I spoke to two of the scientists, Dr Stephanie Henson and Dr Mark Moore, when they were at sea in Iceland in June on the project’s first cruise.

Skies were clear and the water glistened, making conditions perfect for dropping instruments hundreds of metres down and hauling up traps filled with sediment or microscopic marine life.

“We are measuring what’s been happening in the upper ocean with the phytoplankton, the plants that grow there. We are looking at the little zooplankton, the animals that eat them. And we’ve been measuring the fecal pellets, the poo that the animals produce,” Stephanie explained.

“Our climate would be significantly warmer if the carbon pump wasn’t there,” Stephanie said.

Without it, atmospheric carbon dioxide levels would be about 50% higher, she says.

But current climate modelling does not get the carbon pump right, she says.

“We want to know how strong it is, what changes its strength. Does it change from season to season, and year to year?” she says.

The waters off Iceland attract huge amounts of plant and marine life in spring, making it ideal for scientists to test how life interacts with carbon dioxide, explains Mark.

There are tentative signs from the research that the carbon pump might be slowing down, the scientists explain. The team recorded much smaller “blooms” of the tiny plants and animals that feed on them than they expected in spring.

“If that trend were to continue in future years it would mean the biological (carbon) pump could be weakening which could result in more carbon dioxide being left in the atmosphere,” Stephanie said.

In the months to come, they will be processing their results – they have already shared some initial images of the amazingly tiny life seen under the microscope.

They hope their work will feed into the huge climate models that predict how and when global temperature will rise, and which places will be most affected.

Dr Adrian Martin, who is running the BioCarbon project, explains the research aims to better understand how the oceans are storing carbon because of a controversial field of study called geoengineering.

Some scientists and entrepreneurs believe we can artificially change the ocean, for example by altering its chemistry, in the hope it would absorb more carbon. But these are still very experimental and have lots of critics. Opponents worry geoengineering will do unexpected harm or not address climate change quickly enough.

“If you’re going to make interventions that could be global disturbances of the ocean ecosystem, you need to understand the consequences. Without that, you are not informed to make that decision,” he says.

With the first phase of the research over, Boaty is on its way home to Southampton.

In a few weeks the scientists will go back to Iceland – to compare life there in spring to the autumn.

Their discoveries could mean we better understand how our warming planet will change and find solutions to limit the damage.

A fisherman from Devon has landed the first shark of its kind – one made of Lego lost at sea off a cargo ship 27 years ago.

Richard West, a 35-year-old fisherman living in Plymouth, found the plastic toy on the top of his fishing nets 20 miles (32km) south of Penzance on Tuesday.

He contacted the project Lego Lost at Sea, whose founder Tracey Williams confirmed the piece to be the first-ever reported shark from the 51,800 Lego sharks lost off the Tokio Express cargo ship on 13 February 1997.

A freak wave in a severe gale swept 62 shipping containers into the sea 20 miles (32km) off Land’s End, one of which held 4,756,940 pieces of Lego, much of it sea-themed.

Mr West was trawling on board the Defiant FY848, which sails between Plymouth, Brixham and Newlyn, for monkfish, sole and doreys, when he landed his unique catch.

He said: “I could tell straight away what it was because I had Lego sharks in the pirate ship set when I was little. I loved them.

“It’s been 25 years since I’ve seen that face.”

He contacted Ms Williams who told him it was the first recorded Lego shark found from the spilled cargo that she had encountered.

She told him the official Lego inventory showed that 22,200 dark grey Lego sharks and 29,600 light grey ones were in the lost container.

Mr West said: “I was so excited. I was more happy about finding the shark that anything else I caught this week.

“It’s priceless – it’s treasure!”

Ms Williams said: “This Lego shark is one of 51,800 lost overboard from the Tokio Express and the only one we’ve ever seen.

“Richard and I now have joint custody of the shark.”

The Lego sharks featured in several Lego sets from 1997, including Shark Cage Cove, Shark Attack and Deep Sea Bounty, she explained.

She asked anyone else who has found Lego from the spill to get in touch with the Lego Lost at Sea project so it could be added to the project’s map, which is recording sightings for a scientific paper on the Lego spill.

Recently Lego from the container lost overboard has been found not just in Cornwall but in the Isle of Man, the Channel Islands, Wales and Ireland, she added.

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Taxi drivers are often hoping to pick up a five star review, but Olympic chauffeur Elisabeth Lomholdt is hoping she gets a chance to pick up real life stars.

The volunteer driver from Denmark is spending the summer behind the wheel, zig-zagging between venues across Paris.

So far she hasn’t seen a medallist, instead taking officials to and from the Games but says she’s had no shortage of interesting conversations.

“The longer the ride, the better,” the 25-year-old tells BBC Newsbeat. “I feel so inspired after hearing people’s stories.”

Elisabeth, who lives in Copenhagen, says: “Every time I have passengers, I have one question, because I’m really interested in learning what the biggest sports are from their country.

“Because in Denmark, it’s mostly soccer and handball and in all other countries, those are not the main sports.”

Elisabeth has been living in Paris for five weeks and says when she first arrived, “a lot of people told me, ‘you’re crazy that you want to drive in Paris’.”

Traffic in the French capital can be notoriously difficult to navigate.

“When you drive in Paris, people, mostly the motorcycles, put on the light and just go beep, beep, beep, and they just continue in between cars,” says Elisabeth.

“What I’m used to is like roundabouts with lanes, stuff like that. Here, there are no lanes.

“You just have to kind of adapt.”

Lots of people volunteer straight after graduating but Elisabeth might have the best stories.

She loves sport, but more than that she says she was drawn to the opportunity to see behind the scenes at such an enormous event when she first applied more than a year-and-a-half ago.

“It’s not what you see on televisions, it’s all that, all the things that are in the back,” she says.

“Like, how is it structured? I think that’s really interesting.”

Elisabeth is one of 45,000 people volunteering at the Paris Olympics out of more than 300,000 who applied.

“It’s really inspiring how our help is such a big part of the Olympics,” she says.

“The Olympics wouldn’t be the Olympics without volunteers.”

Paris 2024 pledged to be the most sustainable Games yet.

That’s why TikTok has been full of videos of athletes bouncing on cardboard beds and vegan options in the canteen.

Organisers also made plans when it came to getting around the city, making all the venues accessible by public transport and creating 400km (250 miles) of new bike lanes.

But even Elisabeth’s taxi has had a sustainable makeover. The car she drives is part of an electric fleet and fewer have been commissioned than in previous Games.

The 25-year-old hopes to see more people inspired to volunteer their time.

“I know we don’t get paid, but it gives you so much more than what money is,” she says.

“It gives you perspectives on life.”

And with the closing ceremony on Sunday, Elisabeth still has a chance to pick up her dream passengers.

“I think it would be fun to have some of the Danish athletes,” she says.

“But I am biased.”

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

Three German tourists face possible financial penalties after being accused of defacing property at Joshua Tree National Park in California.

Park authorities accused the trio of firing paintballs at signs, bathrooms and dumpsters throughout the park.

They said the damage was discovered on Sunday after a park ranger found “fresh yellow paintball splatter on structures and signs” during a campground patrol.

Park rangers then questioned the tourists, who admitted that they had fired paintballs in the park with a compressed paintball gun and slingshots, authorities said.

Vandalism of a US national park carries a maximum penalty of $5,000 (£3,919), as well as the possibility of a prison sentence for up to six months, according to the National Park Service (NPS).

“Defacing or altering the NPS landscape, no matter how small, is against the law,” said Joshua Tree National Park’s acting chief ranger Jeff Filosa in a statement on Thursday.

“It diminishes the natural environment that millions of people travel the world to enjoy,” he said, adding that “the park is regularly tasked with removing graffiti of all types, using time and resources that could be better dedicated to other priorities”.

According to the NPS, park rangers confiscated three slingshots, a paintball marker, paintballs and other equipment as evidence from the tourists.

They also found that at least 11 roadway signs near the west entrance of the park had been shot with yellow paintballs.

Staff have since been tasked with cleaning up the park.

The park service did not name the tourists but has said that they were visiting from Germany.

Over three million people visit Joshua Tree National Park each year, according to the NPS, drawn by its “funky” Joshua trees, animal life and vistas.

It spans nearly 800,000 acres (1,250 sq miles), making it larger than the entire state of Rhode Island.

The Joshua tree, a yucca, lives for an average of 150 years. During a partial US government shutdown in 2019, a small number of the park’s eponymous trees were destroyed by vandals.

Conservationists warned at the time that because the trees grow so slowly it could take more than a hundred years to reverse that damage.

In 2021, a California couple was fined $18,000 for cutting down 36 Joshua trees north of the park to build a new home.

There have been other instances of vandalism at national parks across the US.

On its website, the NPS stated that it “is extremely difficult”, “costly and time consuming” to remove graffiti and other damage from park property.

Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has signed a decree blocking access to social media platform X, formerly Twitter, for 10 days following a public spat with owner Elon Musk.

The two men have traded barbs since Mr Maduro was declared the winner of last month’s disputed presidential election.

Mr Musk has described the Venezuelan leader as a “dictator” and a “clown”, while Mr Maduro has accused Mr Musk of inciting “hatred, fascism, [and] civil war”.

Recent weeks have seen anti-government protests flare up over the election result and hundreds of people have been arrested by Venezuela’s security forces.

The vote, held on 28 July, has been described as “undemocratic” by independent observers, and the main opposition has said it has evidence that its candidate, Edmundo González, won by a wide margin.

Mr Maduro has claimed that the country’s electoral authority, the National Electoral Council (CNE), was the target of a “cyber coup” during the election and accused Mr Musk of staging an “attack” on his re-election bid.

The Carter Center, which observed the election at the invitation of the Venezuelan government, said it saw “no evidence” of any cyberattack.

In a speech broadcast on state television on Thursday night, Mr Maduro said X would be “withdrawn from circulation” by the state agency in charge of telecommunications.

“Elon Musk is the owner of X and has violated all the rules,” he said.

“He has violated the rules by inciting hatred, fascism, civil war, death, confrontation of Venezuelans and has violated all Venezuelan laws.”

In posts on X ahead of the presidential election, Mr Musk voiced support for the main opposition, saying: “It is time for the people of Venezuela to have the chance for a better future.”

Following the results, he alleged that there had been “major election fraud by Maduro” and wrote: “Shame on Dictator Maduro”.

He also compared Mr Maduro’s intelligence to that of a donkey and said “the people of Venezuela have had enough of this clown”.

The CNE has declared Mr Maduro the winner of the election but is still yet to release the official vote tallies.

Opposition calls for the release of the tallies have been echoed by the governments of Brazil, Colombia and Mexico.

The government of the US, Argentina, Uruguay, and Ecuador have all recognised Mr González as the winner of the vote.

In its assessment, the Carter Center said the election “did not meet international standards of electoral integrity and cannot be considered democratic”.

Venezuela’s Supreme Court has summoned representatives of all parties and candidates to submit their own vote tallies by Friday.

Mr Maduro has said he will attend the court on Friday, but Mr González has said that attending the hearing would make him “totally vulnerable due to powerlessness and violation of due process”.

“I [would] put at risk not only my freedom but, more importantly, the will of the Venezuelan people,” he said.

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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Israel has agreed to send negotiators to a new round of talks over a ceasefire and hostage release deal, after a diplomatic push from the United States, Egypt and Qatar.

The three nations released a joint statement on Thursday pushing for the talks to take place between Israel and Hamas on 15 August in Doha or Cairo. Hamas is yet to respond.

The statement said a “framework agreement” was ready and that it had “only the details of implementation left to conclude”.

The push for new talks will be seen as an attempt by the US and its partners to stop regional tensions from spiralling out of control, after Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was assassinated in Tehran last week.

Iran, blaming Israel, has vowed a response – though Israel has not commented directly on the killing.

The statement invited Israel and Hamas to restart talks “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 proposed a deal that would start with a full ceasefire and the release of a number of hostages. The UN Security Council endorsed that framework.

European Union chief Ursula Von der Leyen said she “strongly” supported the efforts to broker a ceasefire agreement.

“We need a ceasefire in Gaza now. That’s the only way to save lives, restore hope for peace, and secure the return of hostages,” she wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy said the UK “fully endorses” the plan for talks, adding that it welcomed “the tireless efforts of our partners in Qatar, Egypt and the United States”.

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 defence”.

“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 official Osama Hamdan said in June that the group was pushing for a “permanent ceasefire, a complete withdrawal [of Israeli troops] from the Gaza Strip” and a swap-deal involving Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails.

But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has previously 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.

A plane has crashed in the Brazilian state of São Paulo, killing all 61 people on board.

The twin-engine turboprop was flying from Cascavel in the southern state of Paraná to Guarulhos airport in São Paulo city when it came down in the town of Vinhedo, Voepass airline says.

Footage circulating on social media shows a plane descending vertically, spiralling as it falls.

The ATR 72-500 was carrying 57 passengers and four crew. Local authorities say there were no survivors.

Brazil’s President, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, expressed solidarity with the families and friends of the victims.

São Paulo’s state Governor, Tarcísio Gomes de Freitas, declared three days of mourning.

The authorities said the flight recorders had been retrieved. ATR, the French-Italian plane maker, said it would co-operate with the investigation.

The plane landed in a residential area but no-one on the ground was injured.

Officials say only one home in a local condominium complex was damaged.

Video showed a large area on fire and smoking wreckage in an area full of houses.

Police and fire services are at the scene.

According to tracking website Flightradar24, the plane left Cascavel at 11:56 local time (14:56 GMT). The last signal received from the aircraft was about an hour and a half later.

Brazil’s civil aviation agency said the plane, which was built in 2010, had been “in good operating condition, with valid registration and airworthiness certificates”.

The four crew members on board at the time of the accident were all duly licensed and had valid qualifications, it added.

The Uopeccan Cancer Hospital in Cascavel told BBC Brasil that two of its trainee doctors were among the passengers who died.

The moment the passenger plane crashed was witnessed by local residents.

“When I heard the sound of the plane falling, I looked out my window at home and saw the moment it crashed,” Felipe Magalhaes told Reuters news agency, adding that the sight had left him “terrified”.

Another resident, Nathalie Cicari, told CNN Brasil she had been having lunch when she heard a “very loud noise very close by”, describing it like the sound of a drone but “much louder”.

“I went out on the balcony and saw the plane spinning. Within seconds, I realised that it was not a normal movement for a plane.”

It is Brazil’s worst plane crash since 2007, when a TAM Express plane crashed and burst into flames at São Paulo’s Congonhas airport, killing 199 people.

President Lula paid tribute to the victims at an event where he was speaking.

“I have to be the bearer of very bad news and I would like everyone to stand up so that we can have a minute of silence,” he told his audience.

He posted on social media that news of the crash was “very sad”. “All my solidarity to the families and friends of the victims,” he said.

The nearby town of Valinhos sent 20 emergency personnel to the crash site as part of a joint operation, local authorities said.

“Twenty men were mobilised, including three vehicles from the Valinhos Municipal Civil Guard and one vehicle from the Civil Defense,” Valinhos City Hall said in a statement.

ATR said in a statement that it had been informed of an accident involving an ATR 72-500.

“Our first thoughts are with all the individuals affected by this event,” it said.

“The ATR specialists are fully engaged to support both the investigation and the customer.”

Ukrainian troops remained in Russia’s western Kursk region on Friday night, as its surprise cross-border offensive into Russia came to the end of a fourth day.

The Russian defence ministry said it was “continuing to repel” Ukraine’s military, which it claimed had lost more than 280 personnel in the past 24 hours – a figure that has not been independently verified.

Reports suggest that Ukrainian troops are operating more than 10km (six miles) inside Russia – the deepest cross-border advance by Kyiv since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Ukraine has not openly admitted the incursion, but President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Thursday that Moscow must “feel” the consequences for its invasion.

Fighting in Kursk has edged gradually closer to a nuclear power plant, prompting the UN nuclear agency to release a statement urging the two sides to “exercise maximum restraint”.

International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Rafael Grossi appealed to all sides to take measures “to avoid a nuclear accident with the potential for serious radiological consequences”.

• Steve Rosenberg: Ukraine’s incursion shows Russia’s war is not going to plan
• State of emergency declared as Ukraine launches raid into Russia
• Russia must feel war consequences, says Zelensky amid Ukrainian attack

Some residents of the Kursk region were evacuated by authorities, with a group pulling into Moscow’s central train station on Friday. One unnamed resident told AFP news agency: “It’s terrible. They are bombing.”

Overnight, Ukraine’s military said it had struck a military airfield deep inside Russia, destroying a warehouse containing hundreds of glide bombs.

The targeting of the Lipetsk air base, more than 350km (217 miles) from Ukraine’s border, is the kind of operation Kyiv has been wanting to do for some time.

The weaponry it managed to destroy in the attack is the very kind Russia has used to terrorise Ukrainian towns, cities and military positions for most of its invasion.

The military’s statement also said the airfield was known for housing Russia’s Su-34, Su-35 and MiG-31 war planes.

Russian authorities nearby said a state of emergency was in place in the area, confirming what they described as “detonations” at an “energy infrastructure facility”. Residents of four nearby villages were being evacuated.

Hours after Ukraine’s strikes, Russia responded by striking a shopping centre in the Ukrainian town of Kostyantynivka, close to the frontline in the eastern Donetsk region, killing at least 14 people and injuring 43, Ukrainian officials say.

Residential buildings, shops and more than a dozen cars were also damaged in the attack.

Shortly after Ukraine’s offensive was launched on Tuesday, the Russian defence ministry said its forces were managing to suppress “raid attempts by enemy units”.

But a video checked by BBC Verify shows a different picture, with a 15-vehicle Russian convoy damaged, burned and abandoned on a road through the town of Oktyabr’skoe, roughly 38km (24 miles) from the border on the Russian side.

The early morning footage also shows Russian soldiers, some injured, possibly dead among the vehicles.

A “federal state of emergency” has been declared in the Kursk region – a move that underlines how grave the current situation is.

Russia said that up to 1,000 Ukrainian troops, supported by tanks and armoured vehicles, entered the Kursk region as the offensive began.

Despite the deployment of reserve troops and orders to evacuate, Russia has been unable to slow the momentum of this Ukrainian advance.

This is more than the probing attacks we have seen in the past.

It is a committed assault which has shocked Russia’s military and the Kremlin. For the last 18 months, it has been Moscow dictating the dynamics of this war.

Now it is having to contain this attack, as well as domestic criticism for not preventing it in the first place.

Despite long-time Western worries of an escalation, the consensus among Ukraine’s allies is that this operation falls within its right to defend itself.

While he is yet to directly reference the assault, President Zelensky said in a video address late on Thursday: “Russia has brought the war to our land and should feel what it has done.”

But with his Ukrainian forces still outnumbered by the Russians on the battlefield, the line between masterstroke and miscalculation is a fine one.

The Russian rouble was down 2.5% against the dollar on Friday, with traders telling AFP news agency that Ukraine’s Kursk offensive was one of the reasons behind the fall.

From the outside, Adam Britton seemed like a passionate – albeit quiet and nerdy – advocate for animals.

Over decades, the 53-year-old built a colourful reputation as one of the world’s leading crocodile experts.

He swam with the apex predators in the wild, lent his pet crocodile Smaug to countless films and documentaries, and even hosted Sir David Attenborough at his home in Darwin, Australia; all the while preaching the need for greater respect for the creatures.

But Britton has now been dubbed one of the world’s worst animal abusers, this week sentenced to over a decade in jail for filming himself sexually abusing and torturing dozens of dogs. Along with 56 charges of animal cruelty and bestiality, he also admitted to four counts of accessing child abuse material.

The news sent ripples of shock and disgust around the globe, leaving some of those who knew Britton questioning how he became the “Monster of McMinns Lagoon” – a reference to the sprawling property where he committed his crimes.

Several described to the BBC a shy but friendly man, others an arrogant attention-seeker who took credit for work that was not his own. But there was one point on which they all agreed: when combing through their memories for clues of Britton’s depravity, they found nothing.

“It truly seems like a Ted Bundy type situation where you would never imagine such a thing being possible,” former colleague Brandon Sideleau says.

Born in West Yorkshire in 1971, court documents state that Britton had concealed a “sadistic sexual interest” in animals since he was a child and began molesting horses at the age of 13.

But beyond that, little is known about his youth in the United Kingdom.

On his blog, Britton said he was inspired to become a zoologist by three people – his mum, who was an “avid naturalist”; his biology teacher Val Richards; and Sir David, his role model.

He studied a Bachelor of Science at the University of Leeds, graduating in 1992, then in 1996 finished a PhD in Zoology – on the hunting methods of bats – at the University of Bristol.

But his dream was always to escape the UK and research crocs, he said in a 2008 interview. He’d been fascinated with them since childhood and wanted to help reframe the increasingly fraught relationship between humans and the reptiles.

“If people don’t understand [them], you don’t really have much hope of trying to convince people they are worth conserving,” he told entertainment news site Den of Geek.

So in the mid-1990s, Britton turned up on the dusty plains of the Northern Territory (NT), home to the biggest saltwater crocodile population on the planet.

There, Grahame Webb – a pioneer in the field – took the “very, very enthusiastic” young man under his wing at Crocodylus Park, a small zoo and research facility.

Britton gravitated towards filming projects, but also took part in research, including a 2005 study on the potent antibiotic powers of crocodile blood which made global headlines.

In 2006, he left to start a rival crocodile consultancy business alongside his wife, and later also took on an adjunct research role at Charles Darwin University.

Over Britton’s decades in Darwin’s croc research fraternity, many peers who initially thought he was shy but “nice enough” came to view him as an anti-social “odd man out”.

“He was quite up himself… so he wasn’t a particularly popular person, but he was reasonably good at his job,” says John Pomeroy, who organised research field work for Crocodylus Park.

Prof Webb had seen himself as a mentor of sorts, one who gave Britton his start in the industry and the opportunity to build filming expertise, but Britton burned all bridges when he quit.

He was an egotist who passed much of the work of the team at Crocodylus Park as his own, Prof Webb alleges, and then poached their clients.

“There’s scientists and then there’s scientists,” Prof Webb tells the BBC.

“He knew everyone, and he had a lot of knowledge, but that’s different. Librarians have a lot of knowledge too.

“Guys like Adam are just trying to get on the bloody news.”

Mr Sideleau – who, with Britton, co-founded an attack database called CrocBITE in 2013 – tells the BBC a similar story. Britton “loved to take credit” for the archive but had “never contributed a single incident” to it, Mr Sideleau says. He merely paid for the website domain.

But in the broader community, Britton and his pet crocodile became stars.

After leaving Crocodylus Park, he established himself as a go-to expert on croc behaviour and made his leafy estate in McMinns Lagoon – at one point home to eight crocodiles – a global filming destination.

“He had international standing unlike anyone else,” one former friend and wildlife researcher – who asked not to be named – tells the BBC.

When Sir David’s Life in Cold Blood documentary series came knocking in 2006, Britton built a specialised enclosure for Smaug that allowed the programme to capture ground-breaking footage of crocodiles mating.

It was a “dream come true” to work with his idol, Britton told the Daily Telegraph years later.

Given how difficult it is to film many crocodile behaviours in the wild, a circus of TV crews cycled through McMinns Lagoon.

“If you’ve ever seen an underwater shot of a saltwater crocodile, there’s a good chance it’s Smaug,” Britton told the NT News in 2018.

Steve Backshall filmed scenes for his Deadly 60 documentary, Man vs Wild’s Bear Grylls paid a visit, and even movie producers had Britton’s number.

His expertise was also sought after abroad. He helped measure the world’s longest crocodile, captured in the Philippines in 2011, and in 2016 accompanied TV host Anderson Cooper on a dive with wild crocodiles in Botswana for an episode of CBS’s 60 Minutes.

“He was a leader in his field… a nice guy,” Australian director and writer Andrew Traucki tells the BBC.

Mr Traucki worked with Britton when filming croc horror film Black Water in 2008, as well as its 2019 sequel. He described spending many enjoyable hours on Britton’s property, kept company by his “awesome” Swiss Shepherds.

By that time, the zoologist was exploiting his own pets and manipulating other dog owners into giving him theirs, the court heard.

Using online marketplace Gumtree Australia, he would find people who were often reluctantly giving their pets away and promise to provide a “good home”.

If anyone reached out for updates, he would tell them “false narratives” and send them old photos.

Most of the time the dogs were already dead, having experienced indescribable suffering inside a shipping container fitted out with recording equipment which Britton called his “torture room”.

Over the 18 months leading up to his arrest, he tortured at least 42 dogs, killing 39 of them.

“This is the thing that’s sort of haunted me since I’ve heard… you would have never picked him for that,” Mr Traucki says.

The news similarly rocked the broader community. Hundreds of people around the world joined social media groups dedicated to following his case, and some turned up to his court hearings arguing he should be put to death – despite the penalty being outlawed in Australia since 1985.

A small crowd even travelled to Darwin to see Britton be sentenced, crying inside the courtroom as his details of his crimes – too graphic to publish – were read aloud.

They wanted to be a voice for the pet owners swindled by Britton, most of whom are still too traumatised and guilt-ridden to speak out, as well as a visible symbol of the community’s horror.

“I would look at that man and think, ‘What an intelligent and kind man’, and then to learn of what he had done… I didn’t sleep for three weeks,” one of the attendees Natalie Carey says.

With the benefit of hindsight, several people who knew Britton say there were fleeting moments when he appeared to lack empathy.

But all say there was genuinely no indication he was violent or cruel.

“It wasn’t like we saw him pulling the wings of grasshoppers just to watch them suffer. He wasn’t one of those people,” Prof Webb says.

“It’s just sad when you realise that someone you know has been so [messed] up mentally and you weren’t sharp enough to see it and do something about it.”

“You do feel a sense of responsibility.”

Mr Britton’s lawyer argued he had suffered from a rare disorder causing intense, atypical sexual interests since he was a child.

But in his apology letter, Britton accepted “full responsibility” for the “pain and trauma” he had caused and promised to seek treatment.

“I will find a path towards redemption,” he wrote.

On the face of it, the earthquake that struck southern Japan on Thursday was not a big deal.

The magnitude 7.1 quake did little damage and the tsunami warning was quickly scaled back.

But the earthquake was swiftly followed by a warning – one which had never been given before.

There was, Japan’s meteorological agency said, an increased risk of a “major earthquake”. Japan’s prime minister has cancelled a planned trip to a summit in Central Asia to be in the country for the next week.

For many in Japan, thoughts turned to the “big one” – a once-in-a-century quake that many had grown up being warned about.

Worst-case scenarios predict more than 300,000 dead, with a wall of water potentially 30m (100ft) striking along the East Asian nation’s Pacific coast.

Which sounds terrifying. And yet, the overwhelming feeling that Masayo Oshio was left with was confusion.

“I am baffled with the advisory and don’t know what to make of it,” she admitted to the BBC from her home in Yokohama, south of the capital, Tokyo.

“We know we cannot predict earthquakes and we have been told the big one is coming one day for so long, so I kept asking myself: is this it? But it does not seem real to me.”

So, what is the “big one”, can it be predicted – and is it likely to strike any time soon?

Japan is a country used to earthquakes. It sits on the Ring of Fire and, as a result, experiences about 1,500 earthquakes a year.

The vast majority do little damage, but there are some – like the one which struck in 2011 measuring magnitude 9.0, sending a tsunami into the north-east coast and killing more than 18,000 people.

But the one that authorities fear may strike in this more densely populated region to the south could – in the absolute worst-case scenario – be even more deadly.

Earthquakes along the Nankai Trough – an area of seismic activity which stretches along Japan’s Pacific coast – have been already been responsible for thousands of deaths.

In 1707, a rupture along its entire 600km length caused the second-biggest earthquake ever recorded in Japan and was followed by the eruption of Mount Fuji.

These so-called “megathrust” earthquakes tend to strike every hundred years or so, often in pairs: the last ones were in 1944 and 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, with worst-case scenarios suggesting it would cause trillions in damage, and potentially kill hundreds of thousands.

And this long-anticipated event is, according to geologists Kyle Bradley and Judith A Hubbard, “the original definition of the ‘Big One’”.

“The history of great earthquakes at Nankai is convincingly scary” so as to be concerning, the pair acknowledged in their Earthquake Insights newsletter on Thursday.

Not according to Robert Geller, professor emeritus of seismology at the University of Tokyo.

“The issuance of the warning yesterday has almost nothing to do with science,” he told the BBC.

This, he argues, is because while earthquakes are known to be a “clustered phenomenon”, it is “not possible to tell in advance whether a quake is a foreshock or an aftershock”.

Indeed, only about 5% of earthquakes are “foreshocks”, say Bradley and Hubbard.

However, the 2011 earthquake was preceded by a 7.2 magnitude foreshock, they note – one which was largely ignored.

The warning system was drawn up after 2011 in an attempt to prevent a disaster of this scale again, and Thursday was the first time the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) used it.

But, crucially, while it told people to be prepared, it did not tell anyone to evacuate. Indeed, they were keen to play down any massive imminent risk.

“The likelihood of a new major earthquake is higher than normal, but this is not an indication that a major earthquake will definitely occur,” the JMA said.

Even so, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida announced he had cancelled his plans to travel out of Japan to “ensure our preparations and communications are in order”.

He added that he feared people would be “feeling anxious”, given it was the first time such an advisory had been issued.

Masayo Oshio does not seem to be, however.

“I feel that the government is overplaying it,” she said.

Prof Geller was more scathing, saying the advisory was “not a useful piece of information”.

The system allows for either a warning or a lower-level alert to be sent out. Thursday was an alert, advising people to be prepared to evacuate.

And, anecdotally, it seems to have worked. Even in a country used to receiving alerts on their phones, the “Nankai Trough” effect – and threat of the “Big One” – made people stop and take notice.

“One thing I did when I saw the advisory was to check what we have at home and make sure we are prepared, since I have not done that for a while,” admitted Masayo Oshio.

And this has been replicated along the Pacific coast.

In Nichinan, Miyazaki Prefecture, near the epicentre of Thursday’s 7.1, officials were inspecting the conditions of already-opened evacuation shelters. In Kochi Prefecture, western Japan, 10 municipalities opened at least 75 evacuation shelters by Friday morning , according to Kyodo news agency.

The thermal plant operator Jera Co., a joint venture between Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc. and Chubu Electric Power Co., said it was on emergency alert, reaffirming communication routes with fuel carriers and evacuation protocols for piers.

In the town of Kuroshio, also in Kochi, elderly residents and others were urged to evacuate voluntarily to safer locations. Officials of Wakayama Prefecture, western Japan, confirmed evacuation routes in co-operation with local municipalities.

Prof Geller – for all his scepticism – says it is a good opportunity to “make sure you’re doing all the routine precautions you should be doing anyway”.

“Have a week’s worth of water on hand, some canned food, and then maybe have some batteries for your flashlight,” he advises.

San Francisco’s former mayor Willie Brown has dismissed as “fiction” Donald Trump’s story that they once endured a scary helicopter trip together.

The former president said on Thursday that he and Mr Brown had gone “down” in a helicopter together and Mr Brown had been “a little concerned”.

“We thought maybe this was the end,” Trump said. “We were in a helicopter… and there was an emergency landing. This was not a pleasant landing.”

Trump later insisted the story was true in a call to the New York Times, saying he was “probably going to sue” without elaborating.

Mr Brown, 90, told US media he had never shared a helicopter with Trump, adding: “I don’t think I’d want to ride on the same helicopter with him.”

Trump, 78, appeared to be confusing Mr Brown with Jerry Brown, California’s former governor, with whom he shared a helicopter ride in 2018 to visit the aftermath of the Paradise wildfires. Gavin Newsom, the current state governor, was also on the flight.

Both men told US media there had been no emergency landing or danger. “I call complete BS,” Mr Newsom told The New York Times.

Trump told his story in response to a question about Willie Brown’s relationship with Kamala Harris, 59, in the mid-1990s while she was a California prosecutor.

Trump was asked whether he thought the relationship had played a role in Ms Harris’s career journey.

“Well, I know Willie Brown very well,” Trump said, before speaking of the flight and claiming the former mayor had told him “terrible things” about Ms Harris.

“He had a big part in what happened with Kamala,” Trump said.

The former mayor also denied this.

“That’s so far-fetched, it’s unbelievable,” he told local TV station KRON. “I could not envision thinking of Kamala Harris in any negative way.

“She’s a good friend a long time ago, absolutely beautiful woman, smart as all hell, very successful, electorally speaking.

“He was doing what Donald does best, his creative fiction.”

A spokesperson for Jerry Brown also told US media that the former governor had not discussed Ms Harris on the helicopter flight in 2018.

Trump’s remarks at an hour-long news conference at his Mar-a-Lago estate come as a recent national poll shows Ms Harris is beating him among likely voters.

The two have visited a number of battleground states this week alongside their vice-presidential candidates to speak to voters.

Eyewitnesses have described seeing the moment a passenger plane crashed in the Brazilian state of São Paulo killing all 61 people onboard.

“When I heard the sound of the plane falling, I looked out my window at home and saw the moment it crashed,” Felipe Magalhaes told Reuters news agency.

He ran out of his house in the town of Vinhedo to see where the plane had fallen. “Terrified and not knowing what to do, I jumped over the wall,” he said.

Nathalie Cicari lives near to where the plane crashed and said she was having lunch when she heard a “very loud noise very close by”.

She described it as being similar to the sound of a drone but “much louder”.

“I went out on the balcony and saw the plane spinning,” Ms Cicari told CNN Brasil.

“Within seconds, I realised that it was not a normal movement for a plane.”

The moment of impact was “terrifying”, she said. She was not hurt despite having to evacuate her house which was filled with a huge plume of black smoke after the crash.

Another witness called Pietro told Reuters he had seen “a lot of people” breaking into a condominium “to make videos”.

“What I saw was the wreckage of the plane, all that was left was the cabin,” he said.

At Cascavel Airport in the southern state of Paraná, where the plane had taken off bound for São Paulo city, a handful of passengers who missed the Voepass flight spoke of their feelings.

Adriano Assis said that when he had arrived at the airport there was a lack of information on take-off and nobody was at the counter to answer questions.

When someone did arrive, they told him he could not board yet, he said.

“I even argued with him, but he ended up saving my life,” Mr Assis told a local newspaper, as reported by Brazilian news agency Globo.

Another passenger, Jose Felipe, was initially going to book on to a Latam flight but instead went to try and board the Voepass plane.

“We thought we were going to go through Latam, but Latam was closed,” Mr Felipe told Reuters.

“I arrived early, waited, waited, waited, waited and nothing.”

“When it was 11:00 I came to look for [information] here,” he went on.

“Then they told me, ‘You’re not getting on this plane anymore because you’re past the boarding [time] limit.’

“So I fought, I even pushed a little bit, I told him, ‘Let me get on, I have to leave on this plane and he said, ‘No, I can rebook your ticket.’

“Man, it’s such an overwhelming feeling. I’m here shaking, my legs are here… Only God and I were aware of this moment.”

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 can be caused by conditions called DSDs: differences in sex development.

Listen to Sofia read this article

There 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.

Both fighters were said to have failed International Boxing Association gender eligibility tests last year – but there has been conflicting information whether XY chromosomes or elevated testosterone were found.

While representatives of the fighters and the IOC insist the fighters were “born women, raised as women and always competed as women”, critics, including some of their opponents at Paris 2024, have speculated that perhaps the fighters have DSD.

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 DSD who have 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 Prof 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.

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.

Katie Price has been arrested at Heathrow Airport for failing to attend court and taken into police custody.

An arrest warrant was issued for the former model on 30 July after she failed to attend a court hearing relating to her bankruptcies.

The Metropolitan Police said a 46-year-old woman had been arrested at Heathrow at 19:45 BST.

Ms Price was bailed hours after being held and will appear before a judge at the Royal Courts of Justice later on Friday.

She was detained after returning to the UK.

Photos have emerged showing her with bandages around her face, near police vans at the airport.

The PA news agency understands Ms Price, who was born in Brighton but lives in Surrey, was bailed by an out-of-hours magistrate later on Thursday evening.

She was declared bankrupt in November 2019 and again in March this year.

At a hearing in February, she was ordered to pay 40% of her monthly income from the website OnlyFans for the next three years, in relation to her first bankruptcy.

She was declared bankrupt for a second time in March because of an unpaid tax bill of more than £750,000.

Previously, Insolvency and Companies Court Judge Catherine Burton said Ms Price had received “very clear warnings” she must attend the hearing on 30 July.

She had been due to face questions about her finances in the specialist bankruptcy court in London from barristers representing the trustee of her two bankruptcies.

The judge at the previous hearing said she risked arrest if she did not attend further court dates, adding that evidence must be provided if she could not appear.

But the court heard it had been reported that Ms Price had travelled to Turkey.

Issuing the arrest warrant, Judge Burton said that Ms Price had provided no explanation for her absence from the court hearing.

Judge Burton added that an arrest warrant was not issued “lightly” but Ms Price had offered only “piecemeal co-operation” and had failed to provide the “most basic information” in relation to her bankruptcies.

For two weeks, the world has come to play in Paris. One of the planet’s most stunning cities has played host to the “crème de la crème” of Olympic royalty.

National leaders and celebrities have joined the sports stars to strut their stuff, their every move beamed across the globe by the broadcasters gathered here.

But as the athletes like to say, it is often the fans who really complete the Games.

That has been all the more true in 2024, with spectators allowed to return to the Olympics en masse for the first time since Covid struck.

They have not been awarded medals, but with their quirky displays of passion, patriotism and downright peculiarity, they have provided plenty of highlights.

Here are five of the most memorable sights from the French capital that you probably won’t have seen on TV.

Lamp posts, cycle stands, bins, post boxes: it seemed there was no piece of street furniture that spectators were unwilling to climb to catch sight of the action.

It was the first Saturday of sport, and many Parisians were starting to warm to the Games. The cycling time-trial contests were unfolding along some of the city’s most beautiful boulevards – and big crowds were beginning to gather.

The most acrobatic – or foolhardy – spectators started scaling any available object to get a better view – performing feats of acrobatics not seen until the Games’s official climbing contest began a week or so later.

The sight of residents dangling precariously out of their windows left you wondering what George-Eugène Haussmann, the man who carefully rebuilt Paris in the 19th Century, would make of it all.

A legion of picture-takers lined up to get their photos taken with “Asterix and Obelix” after a judo final in the nearby Champ de Mars Arena.

If there was a gold for fancy-dress, the French pair would have been in serious contention thanks to their depictions of the legendary comic-book Gaulish warriors.

The two men – real names Sebastian and Thomas-Felix – said the Games were showcasing French culture and bringing people together in a party atmosphere. At least everyone could “cry together” after losing the men’s 60kg judo final, they said.

Paris might be known for high fashion, but some of the fortnight’s other head-turning looks have included an Egyptian pharaoh costume, various national dresses and headwear inspired by the Games’s smiling red-cap mascots.

There was also this man:

Some of the most rousing renditions of the French national anthem heard in Paris have not been in the sporting arenas, but have instead been spontaneous singalongs by wandering French fans draped in their tricolore flags.

A version of La Marseillaise belted out on a busy metro train after the opening ceremony surpassed the more mumbly performance heard in the rain-soaked stands of the Trocadéro during the official event.

The chanting seemed to encapsulate a nation’s relief that the ceremony had been pulled off successfully after so many worries about security and organisation.

Later in the Games, social media users observed a perfect pun could be achieved by substituting the tune’s marching line with the surname of France’s most decorated athlete in Paris.

“Marchons! Oui, marchons!” is the original. The alternative references swimming sensation Léon Marchand: “Marchand! Oui, Marchand!” Expect to hear it at the next Olympics in 2028.

The coin-operated telescopes found 115m (380ft) up the Eiffel Tower are typically used by tourists to marvel at some of Paris’s other top sights, such as the details on the faraway Arc de Triomphe or the Notre-Dame cathedral.

But the city’s world-famous monuments have felt quieter than normal, briefly outshone by exhilarating spectacles of sporting endeavour.

On a woozy Monday afternoon, those sightseers who had assembled on the tower’s second-floor viewing platform discovered a clever ruse: the telescopes could be used to spy on a beach volleyball match happening down below.

It was possible to witness a thrilling comeback for Spain’s women over the Netherlands. It was just one creative way curious bystanders managed to get a glimpse of the sporting action, with all but the priciest tickets often sold out.

Many of the Games’s volunteers have had a ball in Paris, if the gleeful dancing by a troupe near the Stade de France on one balmy night is anything to go by.

Standing on the concourse of a nearby railway station, the group pulled off a well-choreographed routine to Toto’s Africa – all the while waggling their giant foam fingers as they directed punters to the platforms below with megaphones.

Some 45,000 people are said by organisers to have given up their time to help deliver the Olympics and Paralympics – herding people around metro stops, attending to athletes, and chaperoning others around bewildering security cordons. They have even been photographed spraying fans with water to cool them down.

In their distinctive turquoise and pink garb, they have frequently been the Games’s unsung heroes, and could certainly be allowed a brief evening boogie.

The ousted Bangladeshi Prime Minister, Sheikh Hasina, will return to the country when elections are declared, her son Sajeeb Wazed Joy says.

Ms Hasina, who resigned and fled the country earlier this week following a massive unrest, is currently in India.

Bangladeshi media say more than 500 people were killed in weeks of demonstrations against Ms Hasina. Many of them were shot by the police.

Thousands were injured in the worst violence Bangladesh has seen since its war of independence in 1971.

• Sheikh Hasina’s final hours as a hated autocrat
• The Nobel winner tasked with leading a nation out of chaos

“Absolutely, she will come [to Bangladesh],” Mr Wazed tells the BBC, saying his mother will return as and when the interim government decides to hold the polls.

The military-backed interim government, headed by Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus, was sworn in on Thursday along with 16 advisers.

Two of the student protest leaders are among the advisers.

Mr Wazed is an information technology expert who now lives in the US.

He worked as an IT adviser for Ms Hasina for several years during her tenure as prime minister from 2009 to 2024.

“She will certainly go back,” her son says.

“Whether she comes back into politics or not, that decision has not been made. She is quite fed up with how she was treated.”

The student-led movement started as a protest against quotas in civil service jobs last month before becoming massive unrest to oust Ms Hasina following a brutal police crackdown.

Mr Joy is confident that when the polls are held, the Awami League, the party of Ms Hasina, will emerge victorious.

“I am convinced that If you have elections in Bangladesh today, and if they are free and fair and if there’s a level playing field, then the Awami League will win,” he says.

Ms Hasina became prime minister for a fourth consecutive term in a controversial election held in January 2024.

The main opposition parties boycotted the election saying under Ms Hasina’s government there could not be “any free and fair election”.

Her son termed the current interim government as unconstitutional and said elections should be held within 90 days.

However, he was a bit circumspect about his political ambitions or whether he would return to the country to stand for the leadership of the Awami League, following in the footsteps of his grandfather, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the founding leader of Bangladesh, and Ms Hasina.

“No decision has been made in this regard. I never had political ambitions,” he says.

But he adds that he was upset over the way the protesters had ransacked and set fire to their ancestral homes, including the museum dedicated to his grandfather in Dhaka.

“Under these circumstances, I am quite angry, I will do whatever it takes,” he says.

He says he is in touch with party supporters who are very upset and outraged over what happened in the past few weeks.

“If 40,000 protesters or so can force the government to resign, then what happens if protests are held by the Awami League, which has millions of supporters?” he asserts.

Ms Hasina and her sister (Rehana Siddiq) have been stranded in Delhi since Monday.

India has been a strong supporter of the Bangladeshi leader.

There have been reports she is trying to seek asylum in the UK, the United Arab Emirates or Saudi Arabia.

“Those questions about her visa and asylum, they are all rumours,” her son says.

“She’s not applied anywhere. She’s staying put for the time being, watching how the situation unfolds in Bangladesh.

“Her ultimate goal is always to go back home in Bangladesh.”

Asked about well-documented human rights violations and extra-judicial killings during his mother’s 15-year tenure, he says some mistakes were made.

“Of course, there were individuals in our government who made mistakes, but we always righted the ship,” he adds.

“We had one minister’s son, who was a member of the special police force. He is in jail convicted of extra-judicial killings. That’s unprecedented.”

“My mother tried to do the right thing in terms of arrests,” her son insists.