The fierce wildfire which swept through the Canadian town of Jasper in recent days melted cars to the road and turned homes to ash.

The first images of the devastation at the famous tourist town have emerged, after a 100m (328ft) firewall swept through late on Wednesday.

It has been difficult to get a sense of the scale of what happened because the fire burned out-of-control for days.

Some 25,000 people were evacuated from the town and the Jasper National Park, in Alberta.

On Friday, authorities from Jasper National Park said 358 of the 1,113 structures in town had been destroyed.

However, all critical infrastructure was protected, including the hospital, library and firehall.

A list of addresses where buildings were damaged is being finalised and will be released “shortly”, authorities said.

One local who does know he has lost his home is Jasper Mayor Richard Ireland, who came back to the town with other officials on Friday.

He stood in front of what remained of his home, reduced to a few charred cement blocks, and said: “Now, it’s well, it’s just memories of family and fire.”

Mr Ireland spoke of a photograph lost to the flames, where he was just a two-year-old sitting on some moving boxes next to a birthday cake at that very house. He had lived at the same address for 67 years.

“So many others are going to go through this same thing,” he told local media.

• Canadians mourn as Jasper, jewel of the Rockies, burns

New images show extraordinary damage at the famous tourist town, nestled in the famous Canadian Rockies.

The heat was so intense it turned parts of a car into a pool of metal, dripping across the road like a silver ice cream on a hot day.

Other photographs show the twisted remains of cars piled on top of each other, and a school bus now black with only a tinge of that iconic yellow remaining.

Hotels and a church were destroyed, and many homes.

Authorities are cautious of confirming what has been levelled, at this stage.

“We are empathetic to the residents and businesses seeking more information on specific details on the extent of damage,” an update from authorities said.

“We know people are seeing images on media and social media but what we know about fire incidents is getting the information right is paramount.”

Fire crews are now taking advantage of cooler weather and recent rainfall.

They are containing the remaining hotspots in smouldering structures and along the wildfire perimeter closest to the townsite.

But winds were expected to pick up and hot, dry weather is forecast to return by Monday.

Sitting just north of the more popular Banff National Park, Jasper National Park is the largest in Canada’s Rocky Mountains.

The Unesco World Heritage Site is home to elk, grizzly bear, moose and bison.

The adjacent town of Jasper has a population of about 5,000, but has some dozen hotels to accommodate the roughly 2.5 million people who pass through to visit the park every year.

Karyn Decore, whose family has owned the historic Maligne Lodge over 60 years, has been receiving condolences from around the country since learning it was destroyed as the fire swept through town.

Ms Decore says her now-destroyed hotel is normally 100% occupied from May to October every year. Now, all of the tourists and staff have evacuated the area, and they don’t know when they may return.

Park officials estimated that a power outage in the town last year, which lasted two weeks, deprived local businesses of some CAD$10m ($7.2m;£5.6m) in revenue.

It remains to be seen how long it will take to restore the resort town, as well as the pristine ecology that helps make the majestic park a pride of Canada.

Meanwhile, there are currently 48 wildfires burning “out of control” around the Alberta province.

Italian high jumper Gianmarco Tamberi has issued a grovelling apology to his wife after losing his wedding ring during the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics.

The 32-year-old world champion was flag-waving for Italy, as the boat carrying its athletes sailed down the River Seine, when the ring slipped off his finger.

“I’m sorry my love, I’m so sorry,” he wrote on Instagram in a post dedicated to his wife, Chiara Bontempi Tamberi.

The athlete blamed “losing too many kilos” and “irrepressible enthusiasm” for the mishap.

“If it had to happen, if I had to lose this ring, I couldn’t imagine a better place,” he wrote, claiming the ring will now “remain forever in the riverbed of the city of love”.

He called the bad luck “poetic” and suggested they throw Chiara’s ring in the river too.

“[Then] they will be together forever and we will have one more excuse to renew our vows and marry again,” he said.

“Only you could turn this into something romantic,” Chiara wrote under her husband’s apology.

The pair have been married since September 2022.

Tamberi was waving Italy’s flag alongside three-time Olympic medal winner Arianna Errigo when the ring fell off, bounced off the boat and disappeared into the river.

He described it as “a few moments that lasted forever”.

Tamberi previously hit the headlines at the Tokyo 2020 Games after he shared the high jump gold medal with Qatar’s Mutaz Essa Barshim. Both opted not to go beyond the 2.37m bar they had cleared.

He has also gained attention for sporting a half-shaven beard during competitions since 2011 as his “trademark” style.

Justin Timberlake’s lawyer has said the popstar was “not intoxicated” when he was arrested by police officers last month for driving under the influence.

The 43-year-old pop star was detained in New York for running a stop sign and failing to stay on the right side of the road.

His first court hearing took place on Friday, where his lawyer Edward Burke said police made “a very significant number of errors” in the case.

“The most important fact to know about this case is that Justin was not intoxicated and should not have been arrested for DWI,” he added.

Speaking outside Sag Harbor Village Justice Court, Mr Burke said Timberlake “respects law enforcement” and cooperated with the police officers at all times.

“But the fact remains, he was not intoxicated and they made an error in arresting him for it. We are confident that this charge will be dismissed.”

Timberlake was not present at the hearing as the date clashed with the start of his Everything I Thought It Was world tour, kicking-off at the Tauron Arena in Krakow.

He will be re-arraigned virtually in court next month.

The arrest occurred in Sag Harbor in the Hamptons, a popular summer destination for celebrities on Long Island.

When officers stopped him, Timberlake’s eyes were “bloodshot and glassy” and a “strong odour of an alcoholic beverage was emanating from his breath”, according to a charging document.

His speech was slowed and he performed poorly on the officers’ sobriety tests, the document said.

He also refused a breathalyser test, it added.

“I had one martini and I followed my friends home,” Timberlake allegedly told the officer who stopped him, according to the BBC’s US partner CBS News.

Timberlake has previously spoken openly about seeking help for excessive drinking.

In New York, penalties for charges related to driving while intoxicated include up to a year in jail, a $1,000 (£786) fine and the suspension of a driver’s licence for at least six months.

Olympic organisers have issued a “deep apology” after South Korea’s athletes were mistakenly introduced as North Korea at the opening ceremony in Paris.

As the excited, flag-waving team floated down the River Seine, both French and English announcers introduced them as the “Democratic People’s Republic of Korea” – the official name of North Korea.

The same name was then used – correctly – when North Korea’s delegation sailed past.

The two Koreas have been divided since the end of World War Two, with tensions between the states further escalating recently.

The subtitle which ran across the bottom of the television broadcast showed the correct title, however.

The South Korean sports ministry said it planned to lodge a “strong complaint with France on a government level” over the embarrassing gaffe.

In a statement, the ministry expressed “regret over the announcement… where the South Korean delegation was introduced as the North Korean team.”

The statement added that the second vice sports minister, Jang Mi-ran, a 2008 Olympic weightlifting champion, had demanded a meeting with Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) issued an apology on its official Korean-language X account, saying: “We would like to offer a deep apology over the mistake that occurred in the introduction of the South Korean delegation during the opening ceremony.”

South Korea, formally known as the Republic of Korea, has 143 athletes in its Olympic team this year, competing across 21 sports.

North Korea has sent 16 athletes. This is the first time it has competed in the games since Rio 2016.

It was early in the day, but already hot. As she wiped sweat from her brow, Chieko Kiriake searched for some shade. As she did so, there was a blinding light – it was like nothing the 15-year-old had ever experienced. It was 08:15 on 6 August 1945.

“It felt like the sun had fallen – and I grew dizzy,” she recalls.

The United States had just dropped an atomic bomb on Chieko’s home city of Hiroshima – the first time a nuclear weapon had ever been used in warfare. While Germany had surrendered in Europe, allied forces fighting in World War Two were still at war with Japan.

Chieko was a student, but like many older pupils, had been sent out to work in the factories during the war. She staggered to her school, carrying an injured friend on her back. Many of the students had been badly burnt. She rubbed old oil, found in the home economics classroom, onto their wounds.

“That was the only treatment we could give them. They died one after the next,” says Chieko.

“Us older students who survived were instructed by our teachers to dig a hole in the playground and I cremated [my classmates] with my own hands. I felt so awful for them.”

Chieko is now 94 years old. It is almost 80 years since the atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and time is running out for the surviving victims – known as hibakusha in Japan – to tell their stories.

Many have lived with health problems, lost loved ones and been discriminated against because of the atomic attack. Now, they are sharing their experiences for a BBC Two film, documenting the past so it can act as a warning for the future.

After the sorrow, new life started to return to her city, says Chieko.

“People said the grass wouldn’t grow for 75 years,” she says, “but by the spring of the next year, the sparrows returned.”

In her lifetime, Chieko says she has been close to death many times but has come to believe she has been kept alive by the power of something great.

The majority of hibakusha alive today were children at the time of the bombings. As the hibakusha – which translates literally as “bomb-affected-people” – have grown older, global conflicts have intensified. To them, the risk of a nuclear escalation feels more real than ever.

“My body trembles and tears overflow,” says 86-year-old Michiko Kodama when she thinks about conflicts around the world today – such as the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the Israel-Gaza war.

“We must not allow the hell of the atomic bombing to be recreated. I feel a sense of crisis.”

Michiko is a vocal campaigner for nuclear disarmament and says she speaks out so the voices of those who have died can be heard – and the testimonies passed on to the next generations.

“I think it is important to hear first-hand accounts of hibakusha who experienced the direct bombing,” she says.

Michiko had been at school – aged seven – when the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima.

“Through the windows of my classroom, there was an intense light speeding towards us. It was yellow, orange, silver.”

She describes how the windows shattered and splintered across the classroom – the debris spraying everywhere “impaling the walls, desk, chairs”.

“The ceiling came crashing down. So I hid my body under the desk.”

After the blast, Michiko looked around the devastated room. In every direction she could see hands and legs trapped.

“I crawled from the classroom to the corridor and my friends were saying, ‘Help me’.”

When her father came to collect her, he carried her home on his back.

Black rain, “like mud”, fell from the sky, says Michiko. It was a mixture of radioactive material and residue from the explosion.

She has never been able to forget the journey home.

“It was a scene from hell,” says Michiko. “The people who were escaping towards us, most of their clothes had completely burned away and their flesh was melting.”

She recalls seeing one girl – all alone – about the same age as her. She was badly burnt.

“But her eyes were wide open,” says Michiko. “That girl’s eyes, they pierce me still. I can’t forget her. Even though 78 years have passed, she is seared into my mind and soul.”

Michiko wouldn’t be alive today if her family had remained in their old home. It was only 350m (0.21 miles) from the spot where the bomb exploded. About 20 days before, her family had moved house, just a few kilometres away – but that saved her life.

Estimates put the number of lost lives in Hiroshima, by the end of 1945, at about 140,000.

In Nagasaki, which was bombed by the US three days later, at least 74,000 were killed.

Sueichi Kido lived just 2km (1.24 miles) from the epicentre of the Nagasaki blast. Aged five at the time, he suffered burns to part of his face. His mother, who received more serious injuries, had protected him from the full impact of the blast.

“We hibakusha have never given up on our mission of preventing the creation of any more hibakusha,” says Sueichi, who is now 83 and recently travelled to New York to give a speech at the United Nations to warn of the dangers of nuclear weapons.

When he woke up after fainting from the impact of the blast, the first thing he remembers seeing was a red oil can. For years he thought it was that oil can that had caused the explosion and surrounding devastation.

His parents didn’t correct him, choosing to shield him from the fact it had been a nuclear attack – but whenever he mentioned it, they would cry.

Not all injuries were instantly visible. In the weeks and months after the blast, many people in both cities began to show symptoms of radiation poisoning – and there were increased levels of leukaemia and cancer.

For years, survivors have faced discrimination in society, particularly when it came to finding a partner.

“‘We do not want hibakusha blood to enter our family line,’ I was told,” says Michiko.

But later, she did marry and had two children.

She lost her mother, father and brothers to cancer. Her daughter died from the disease in 2011.

“I feel lonely, angry and scared, and I wonder if it may be my turn next,” she says.

Another bomb survivor, Kiyomi Iguro, was 19 when the bomb struck Nagasaki. She describes marrying into a distant relative’s family and having a miscarriage – which her mother-in-law attributed to the atomic bomb.

“‘Your future is scary.’ That’s what she told me.”

Kiyomi says she was instructed not to tell her neighbours that she had experienced the atomic bomb.

Since being interviewed for the documentary, Kiyomi has sadly died.

But, until she was 98, she would visit the Peace Park in Nagasaki and ring the bell at 11:02 – the time the bomb hit the city – to wish for peace.

Sueichi went on to teach Japanese history at university. Knowing he was a hibakusha cast a shadow on his identity, he says. But then he realised he was not a normal human being and felt a duty to speak out to save humankind.

“A sense that I was a special person was born in me,” says Sueichi.

It is something the hibakusha all feel that they share – an enduring determination to ensure the past never becomes the present.

Israel’s military has struck a school near Deir al-Balah, a city in central Gaza, killing at least 30 Palestinians and injuring more than 100, according to the Hamas-run ministry of health.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said on Telegram that a Hamas command and control centre was embedded inside the Khadija School.

The IDF added that Hamas used the compound as a hiding place to direct and plan attacks and store weapons.

Gaza’s health ministry said footage showed the victims were civilians and most of them were children. The BBC verified a video that shows children among the injured.

Gaza’s civil defence service said the school was sheltering displaced people. Hamas condemned the attack in a statement on Telegram, saying “displaced, sick and wounded people, most of whom were women and children” were killed.

Verified video from the scene shows a chaotic situation, with people running around a compound covered in rubble. Men carry two bloodied children in their arms while a woman hugs another, and a group carries an injured man on a stretcher. A body lies on the ground covered in a blanket.

The IDF said that before the strike it took steps to reduce the risk to civilians “including the use of appropriate munitions, aerial surveillance and additional intelligence”.

Gaza’s health ministry said 53 people had been killed and 189 injured since Saturday morning due to IDF bombing in Deir al-Balah and the southern city of Khan Younis.

The strike occurred as Israel continues its months-long military campaign in Gaza that has killed more than 39,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s health ministry.

The war started when Hamas attacked Israel on 7 October, killing around 1,200 people and taking 251 hostage.

The Deir al-Balah strike was reported as the IDF ordered civilians on Saturday morning in southern parts of Khan Younis to evacuate to an “adjusted humanitarian area” in al-Mawasi, a region along the coast.

The IDF said it was about to “forcefully operate” after reporting “significant” rocket fire towards Israel from southern Khan Younis and “precise intelligence indicating that Hamas has embedded” infrastructure in the humanitarian area. The Israeli military warned civilians that “remaining in this area has become dangerous”.

The IDF released maps showing a further reduced humanitarian area in al-Mawasi. The military shrank the zone on Monday when it ordered the evacuation of part of the humanitarian area ahead of an operation against Palestinian fighters who had apparently regrouped there.

After the evacuation orders, Gaza’s health ministry said at least 70 people were killed by Israeli strikes around Khan Younis.

Also on Saturday, in the West Bank, a 17-year-old boy was killed and nine people were injured in the Balata refugee camp in Nablus as a result of Israeli military action, the Palestinian Authority’s ministry of health said.

The BBC has contacted the IDF about the reports.

At a moment of unprecedented turbulence in modern American political history, Kamala Harris is having a remarkably smooth ride. It may not last long.

Tony Fabrizio, Donald Trump’s campaign pollster, calls it a “Harris Honeymoon” – where a combination of good press and positive energy have combined to give the Democrat a surge of momentum.

The thing about honeymoons, of course, is that they come to an end. The realities of married life, or in this case the relationship between Ms Harris and the American voting public, has a way of reasserting itself.

For now, the champagne corks are flying for team Harris and Democrats may be experiencing an unfamiliar emotion – hope. But Republicans, after initially being caught somewhat flatfooted by Mr Biden’s historic announcement, are redirecting their fire at the new presumptive nominee.

Here’s a look at three areas on which their recent attacks have focused – and some ways Democrats may try to deflect them.

The travails of Ms Harris’ unsuccessful campaign for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination are well documented. They include a lack of clear messaging, a campaign rife with internal discord and a candidate who was prone to awkward interviews and gaffes.

Something else happened during the then-senator’s ill-fated presidential bid, however. She – like many of the candidates in that race – tacked sharply to the left, to be more in line with Democratic primary voters.

“There was a lot of pressure on those guys from the activist base,” said Matt Bennett, the executive vice-president for public affairs at Third Way, a centrist Democratic think tank. “When you’re competing in a primary, your political priorities are very different than the sprint to the finish in a general election.”

Over the course of 2019 – in debates and interviews – Ms Harris endorsed scrapping private health insurance for a government-run system. She praised policing reform, including redirecting law-enforcement budgets to other priorities. She endorsed decriminalising undocumented entry into the US and entertained abolishing Ice, the immigration and customs enforcement agency. She backed the sweeping Green New Deal environmental legislation and supported a ban on fracking and off-shore drilling.

Now those positions could come back to haunt her.

David McCormick, a Republican candidate for Senate in Pennsylvania, was quick to produce a television advertisement hitting on Ms Harris’ 2019 positions and tying them to his opponent, Democratic Senator Bob Casey.

And Trump has released a video titled “MEET SAN FRANCISCO RADICAL KAMALA HARRIS” that includes many of the policies she backed during that time.

Conservative commentator Matt Walsh called it a “blueprint” for how to attack the vice-president.

“She can argue, correctly, that good leaders change their position on policy and they don’t change her principles,” Mr Bennett, the Democratic strategist, said. “None of her principles have changed.”

If she doesn’t do that convincingly, she could lose support from independent and undecided voters that will determine the outcome of the election in key swing states.

Polls show the Biden campaign had been floundering for months. His immigration policies were unpopular. Even though inflation has eased and the economy is growing, voters still blamed him for higher prices. His ongoing support for Israel in the Gaza War was sapping his support among young voters.

Ms Harris, in her role as vice-president, will at least be somewhat tied to the entirety of the current administration’s record – for better or for worse.

Republicans are already trying to hang the immigration issue around her neck, labelling her as the administration’s “border czar” – an inaccurate but damaging characterisation that was also used by the media. They cite her past statements on immigration and a claim, during an interview in 2022, that the “border is secure”.

“Kamala Harris is currently only known as a failed and unpopular vice-president who knifed her boss in the back to secure a nomination she couldn’t earn, but voters are about to learn, it gets worse,” Taylor Budowich, who runs the political action committee affiliated with the Trump campaign, said in a statement touting $32m in upcoming television advertisements targeting the vice-president.

According to Mr Bennett, Ms Harris won’t be able to fully distance herself from the Biden record, but she might be able to put it in new light for voters, even in the face of Republican attacks.

“What she can do is make this about the future in ways that were going to be very difficult for an 81-year-old guy to do,” he says. “She can argue that Trump wants only to look backward.”

In the first public rally of her presidential campaign, Ms Harris unveiled a particularly pointed line of attack against the former president. Noting that she had served as a courtroom prosecutor and as California’s attorney general, she said she had faced off against “perpetrators of all kinds”.

“So hear me when I say I know Donald Trump’s type,” she concluded.

Craig Varoga, a Democratic campaign consultant and adjunct instructor at American University, calls the vice-president’s law-enforcement background her “superpower” – one that she was not fully able to use on the Democratic campaign trail in 2019, when policing reform was a top issue.

But Trump’s campaign is already showing signs on how they might respond. His campaign manager, Chris LaCivita, made his bones in the Republican Party by taking on another Democratic candidate’s supposed superpower and turning it against him.

Back in 2004, Democratic nominee John Kerry was touting his record as a decorated Vietnam War veteran as proof that he would be an effective commander-in-chief during the Iraq War. Mr LaCivita spearheaded a series of attack adverts questioning Mr Kerry’s patriotism and heroism, featuring sailors who served with Kerry on a Navy swift boat patrolling the rivers and shorelines in Vietnam.

It gave rise to the term “Swift-boating” – which means to disarm a candidate by attacking their perceived strength.

And it looks like Trump’s campaign is gearing up for attacks on the vice-president’s prosecutorial record.

On one hand, they are hitting her for being too tough – particularly on black men for drug crimes – in an attempt to undermine support from her base. On the other, they are citing instances where Ms Harris either chose not to prosecute or allowed the parole of individuals who went on to commit new crimes.

Mr Varoga concedes that Democrats botched their response to the Swift-boat attacks in 2004, but he says they’ve learned their lesson and Ms Harris will be ready for the onslaught.

“If LaCivita thinks he’s going to fool the entire Democratic establishment again, he can live with that delusion and also lose,” he said.

In his memo, Mr Fabrizio said that Ms Harris “can’t change who she is or what she’s done”. He promised that voters will soon view her as Mr Biden’s “partner and co-pilot” and learn about her “dangerously liberal record”.

The upcoming advertising onslaught, along with Trump’s public statements and rally attacks, will be the tip of this Republican spear.

Meanwhile, Ms Harris and her campaign will work to offer their own definition of who the candidate is and what she stands for.

One particularly effective way to do this, according to Mr Varoga, is with her selection of a vice-presidential running mate.

“It’s the first real decision that a candidate for president makes that’s out there for the public to see,” he said. “That will go a long way toward people understanding what kind of future she’s going to pursue.”

If she opts for a more moderate partner, it could make voters more inclined to believe that she will govern from the centre, rather than as the leftist candidate Republicans make her out to be.

In the weeks ahead, the fight to define Ms Harris – through her word, through her votes and through her past campaigns – will go a long way towards determining how the public views her when they head to the ballot box in November.

It will shape whether the honeymoon ends in heartbreak for Democrats or a union that lasts for the next four years.

• SIMPLE GUIDE: Everything you need to know about the vote
• ANALYSIS: Has Harris got what it takes to beat Trump?
• SWING STATES: Where the election could be won and lost
• EXPLAINER: RFK Jr and others running for president
• VOTERS: US workers in debt to buy groceries

Ismael ‘El Mayo’ Zambada is one of the most notorious names in drug war history, synonymous with the fearsome power and corrosive influence of the most important drug cartel in the world.

The last of an original generation of drug cartel leaders, he created the Sinaloa Cartel alongside Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzman from the remnants of the Guadalajara Cartel after it collapsed in 1989.

But unlike his infamous partner who was twice jailed and escaped, El Mayo was able to evade capture for some 35 years. Until now.

US authorities arrested him in El Paso, Texas on Thursday. He has already pleaded not guilty to multiple charges in federal court in Texas.

He was lured to the US as part of an elaborate sting operation, masterminded by the son of his former partner, El Chapo. Joaquin Guzman Lopez, one of the heirs to El Chapo’s operation, was arrested alongside Zambada having led him to believe he was travelling to northern Mexico to look at prospective properties for clandestine airstrips.

“Are you worried of being captured?” Zambada was asked in 2010 by the late Mexican journalist, Julio Scherer García, who had travelled deep into the mountains for an unprecedented interview with the drug lord.

“The idea of being jailed gives me panic,” he answered. “I’m not sure I have what it takes to kill myself. I’d like to think I do and that I’d take my own life.”

When it came to it, however, either he didn’t have the means or the opportunity.

For someone who exercised such caution over so many years, it seems extraordinary that Zambada was duped aged 76. Perhaps it was always going to take something unique to see him in custody.

“It doesn’t surprise me that Zambada didn’t go willingly,” says Mike Vigil, a former DEA agent. “He is in his 70s, in poor health and already said that prison was his greatest fear.”

The arrests – and possible plea deal between the sons of El Chapo, known as Los Chapitos, and the US Government – begs the question of who will take control of the Sinaloa Cartel.

After El Chapo Guzman was arrested and extradited to the US in 2016, a round of bloodletting began as rival factions wrestled for control of territory as well as fought opposing drug gangs who sensed weakness.

Even more shocking, and violent, was the response of the Sinaloa Cartel’s foot soldiers when their leader, Ovidio Guzman Lopez, was arrested in October 2019.

After he was detained, hundreds of gunmen descended on the city of Culiacan and opened fire on civilian, police and military targets with .50 calibre weapons and rocket launchers. Eventually, the authorities handed Ovidio Guzman back to his men to bring the fighting to an end.

He was later re-arrested, extradited and is currently awaiting trial in a US prison.

Mike Vigil thinks a similar explosion of violence, which became known as the Culiacanazo, might be avoided this time around:

“The Sinaloa Cartel has a very strong bench of possible leaders who could take over including El Chapo’s brother,” he says.

In fact, Mr Vigil argues, the “Kingpin strategy” – that is focusing on bringing down individual cartel leaders – is rarely successful.

“Under the administration of (then-Mexican President Felipe) Calderon, it only tended to create internal conflict within the cartels which then led to a bloodbath.”

If that happens this time, suggests former DEA agent Mike Vigil, “the only winner would be their rivals, the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG)”.

That said, moments of flux and possible power vacuums such as this one are deeply unpredictable. The Mexican authorities have already sent additional forces to the state of Sinaloa ahead of any flare-up of violence.

The other obvious question over Zambada’s arrest is: why now?

The operation was planned for months. However, some reports say there was also an opportunistic element to it. When the various elements behind the ruse appeared to be coming together, despite some scepticism among the US authorities, they ultimately decided they had nothing lose by trying it.

The bigger reason behind the timing, though, was revealed by the words of the US Attorney General Merrick Garland in a video message confirming the arrests:

“Fentanyl is the deadliest threat our country has ever faced”, he said promising that the US justice department “will not rest until every single cartel leader, member and associate responsible for poisoning our communities is held accountable.”

Fentanyl overdoses are now the leading cause of death for Americans between the ages of 18 and 45. It is a staggering statistic and one that has perhaps focussed minds in the Biden administration, especially in an election year.

Both Los Chapitos and El Mayo have made billions through fentanyl, which is easy to produce and transport without the need for large coca plantations in the Andes as with the manufacture of cocaine.

Experts say that shutting down the smuggling of fentanyl altogether is virtually impossible. It is simply too profitable to the cartels and too riven into the modern landscape of Mexico’s drug war.

However, US law enforcement wants to hurt the cartels that are producing it, diminish their influence and, wherever possible, dismantle their leadership.

The capture of El Mayo Zambada – even if aging, in poor health and captured in a double-cross – was always going to remain a key part of that strategy.

“It’s so confusing sometimes to be a girl,” sings Charli XCX on her latest album, Brat.

The vulnerable lyrics, existential questions and honest exploration of the complexity and contradictions of womanhood has turned Brat into much more than a collection of music.

For millennials and Gen Z, it reflects a highly relatable way of life.

Brat is, in the words of Charli XCX, a girl who “has a breakdown, but kind of like parties through it”, who is honest, blunt, “a little bit volatile”. In recent weeks, brat has become a mainstream phenomenon.

In the same week that my grandmother told me one of her friends was “giving brat”, Charli tweeted “Kamala IS brat” and the US Democratic presidential nominee rebranded her X profile.

Charli isn’t the only pop girl ditching the bland approach.

The likes of Chappell Roan and Sabrina Carpenter aren’t your typical perfectly polished and carefully manicured pop stars: they’re messy and candid artists that wear their heart on their sleeve. Both have been dominating the charts this summer.

They all stand out because they share a certain perspective on life. They appear honest and authentic, with opinions and life experience.

There are only so many times you can bop to songs with slick beats and meaningless mantras about girl power. Eventually you crave something more, and that’s what this new wave of pop girl is offering.

In Brat, Charli candidly explores what it’s like transitioning into your thirties. In her truth-telling hit Von Dutch she doesn’t care if people gossip about her, while her high-energy anthems 360 and 365 are wild, carefree and tell us that we can still have big nights out (phew!).

At the same time, she offers a personal and introspective reflection on topics such as Motherhood: “I think about it all the time / That I might run out of time / Would it give my life a new purpose?”

The existential questions resonate with most millennial women. Should I be having children? When is the right time? Will it change my life? What if I have other aspirations?

Josee Malon, a 23-year-old social executive from Kent, says she admires Charli because she gives fans “such an insightful look into her creative mindset and her personality and you don’t get this with all musicians”.

“Beyoncé, for example, is private and mysterious, some people think that’s part of her allure and appeal, but for me that works against her. Why would I want to be influenced by someone who gives me zero energy?

“Charli XCX gives 110% energy, she lets you into her life and feels like a friend.”

It’s not just women who are a fan of these pop girls. Spencer Caminsky, a 26-year-old political campaign manager, has followed Charli since 2016 and loves Brat because “it’s so much more raw and direct”.

“It’s all the great things about her past works and now expands upon the more vulnerable aspects of her life that she’s never spoken about – you really feel her emotion and regret.”

Meanwhile, 26-year-old queer pop icon Chappell Roan has built a strong Gen Z following.

Although not the first queer female pop artist, her drag queen outfits, sexually empowered lyrics and scorching-hot melodies make her one of the most mainstream.

Chappell’s music focuses heavily on her queer identity – Pink Pony Club was inspired by her first visit to a gay club, while Good Luck, Babe is about a fling with a girl who insists she’s not really gay.

Jonah Graham, 25, says he’s a fan of Chappell’s “unashamedly queer” music because she “lets people know there is a place for them to come together through big emotions, an irreverent sense of humour and boundless joy”.

But even without having the same experiences that Chappell sings of, the themes of rejection, freedom, acceptance and self-discovery are universal.

Kamala Harris has also leaned into Roan in a bid to appeal to young voters, posting a meme on TikTok quoting Roan’s lyrics: “What we really need is a femininomenon!”

While Ms Harris isn’t part of the demographic that Chappell and Charli resonate most with, and almost certainly isn’t “someone who has a pack of cigs, a Bic lighter and a strappy white top with no bra”, according to Charli’s brat definition, that isn’t the point.

Lucy Ford, a culture critic, told the BBC that “Kamala is brat in the sense that she’s a dominating cultural force right now and there’s been a separation from the album and the cultural hold it has as a vibe”.

Fun and cheeky pop music is something Sabrina Carpenter has become a master in – the 25-year-old has taken Taylor Swift’s confessional style and added a healthy dose of humour.

Her x-rated ad-lib Nonsense outros never fail to cause a stir. “BBC said I should keep it PG / BBC I wish I had it in me/There’s a double meaning if you dig deep,”she sang at Radio 1’s Big Weekend.

“Sabrina is being unabashedly horny in her music,” Ford explains. “It feels like an embrace of fun and silliness and not taking things too seriously.”

In other songs, she flips the typical romantic pop song on its head. This time he’s obsessed with her, and “looks so cute wrapped round my finger”.

Her self-indulgence – and being unapologetic about loving attention – is totally brat. Why should we pretend that knowing someone has a crush on you isn’t a little exciting?

But why is that this summer in particular, fans are craving complex, messy music?

Content writer Olivia Cox has recently got into all three artists and says what makes them stand out is that they each, in their own way, “embrace silliness”.

“It feels like pop music has been taking itself too seriously,” she says.

Rachel Humphreys, a 29-year-old Digital PR Manager from Pontefract says the artists are a “cultural reset” and offer an element of escapism.

The music is a “welcome distraction from the daily pressures of adult-ing”.

Ford says one of the factors at play for why this phenomenon is occurring now, is that it’s a “response to very sentimental, ‘celebrities, they’re just like us’ sentiments in music of the past few years, where artists bear their souls to meet their fans at eye level”.

All of these reasons point to why the dated feminist slogans – like those in Katy Perry’s latest single Woman’s World – don’t resonate with millennials or Gen Z.

Perry’s satirical music video, showing women dancing around a construction site in tiny outfits, using urinals and brandishing sex toys, seems inauthentic compared with music by these Gen Z artists.

But the smart, forthright pop songs we’re listening to now are not as new as we might think.

Mercury Prize nominee CMAT told the BBC “there’s nothing sudden” about this phenomenon.

“Women have always been crafting stories in this funny, tragi-comic way, but the people who wanted to hear it were other women – who, up until recently, were not considered a very [desirable] market.”

She said her own music was criticised a few years ago and labelled “novelty music” because it was humorous.

“There was never a conversation before about it being highbrow or something we should take seriously – because nobody takes women seriously,” she added.

The likes of Madonna and Lady Gaga laid the groundwork for this music, but the modern trend starts with the likes of Lorde, who punctured the absurd positivity of 2010s pop lyrics on Team – “I’m kind of over getting told to put my hands up in the air” and Billie Eilish.

One of her first songs was written from the point of view of a psychopath with a car trunk full of dead bodies.

Her music has carried on being wonderfully weird – every track on her new album Hit Me Hard And Soft plays with that duality.

Dynamics shift, ideas are unresolved and nothing ever settles.

That’s a feeling that many people will have felt a little over the past couple of years.

To achieve longevity, today’s brats will need to intuit when the sands of pop, and of wider culture, will shift again – and get there before everyone else.

Donald Trump’s vice-presidential candidate JD Vance has defended resurfaced comments in which he called Democratic politicians a “bunch of childless cat ladies with miserable lives”.

His remarks, made in 2021, have been roundly criticised this week, with Hollywood actress Jennifer Aniston among those to have hit out at the 39-year-old Republican.

“Obviously it was a sarcastic comment. People are focusing so much on the sarcasm and not on the substance of what I actually said,” Mr Vance told the conservative media personality Megyn Kelly on Friday.

“The substance of what I said, Megyn – I’m sorry, it’s true,” he added.

Mr Vance, who has three children, said he was not criticising people who do not have children in the interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, which he gave while running for the Senate.

“This is about criticising the Democratic Party for becoming anti-family and anti-children,” he told The Megyn Kelly Show.

“The simple point that I made is that having children, becoming a father, becoming a mother, I really do think it changes your perspective in a pretty profound way,” he said.

“I’m making an argument that our entire society has become sceptical and even hateful towards the idea of having kids.”

In the original interview, he questioned why some leading politicians did not have children. One of those he named was Kamala Harris, the presumptive Democratic nominee for November’s election, who is stepmother to her husband Doug Emhoff’s two children.

“The entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children,” he said at the time. “How does it make any sense we’ve turned our country over to people who don’t really have a direct stake in it?”

The Senator from Ohio said the country was being run “by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable too”.

On Friday, Mr Vance said: “I wish her step-children and Kamala Harris and her whole family the very best. The point is not that she’s lesser. The point is that her party has pursued a set of policies that are profoundly anti-child.”

Mr Vance made similar remarks against Democrats in a 2021 speech at the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, in which he also said his criticism was not directed at those who could not have children for biological or medical reasons.

Jennifer Aniston, who has spoken publicly about her struggles while trying to have children through in-vitro fertilisation (IVF), was among those who criticised his comments.

“I truly can’t believe that this is coming from a potential VP of the United States,” she said on Thursday.

Pete Buttigieg, who was another Democratic politician named by Mr Vance in the original interview, also addressed the comments earlier this week, speaking about adopting twins with his husband, Chasten.

“The really sad thing is he said that after Chasten and I had been through a fairly heart-breaking setback in our adoption journey,” Mr Buttigieg told CNN’s The Source programme.

Speaking to Fox News, Trump co-campaign chairman Chris LaCivita rejected any suggestion that Trump might regret his choice of running mate.

“JD was the best pick,” Mr LaCivita said. “The president loves him. We love him.”

Three out of 10 French high-speed trains will be cancelled on Saturday on routes hit by a series of “co-ordinated” arson attacks.

French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal said security forces continued to search for the “saboteurs” responsible after rail networks were paralysed ahead of the opening of the Olympic Games.

National rail company SNCF said services which do run on Saturday will be delayed for up to two hours on major lines running in and out of Paris, while a quarter of Eurostar services will also be cancelled.

France’s transport minister said services would return to normal by Monday morning.

SNCF estimated that about 250,000 passengers were affected on Friday, while junior transport minister Patrice Vergriete said as many as 800,000 could be impacted over three days.

Eurostar – which runs international services from London to Paris and uses a high-speed line in France – said one in four of its trains would not run over the weekend.

Travellers have been advised to postpone their journeys, with disruption expected to last until Monday.

Among Eurostar customers affected on Friday was Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, who had planned to travel to the Games’ opening ceremony via train but was forced to fly instead.

He told the BBC: “I’m not going to pretend it wasn’t frustrating because it was, and for very many people it made travel so much harder.”

There has still been no claim of responsibility for the damage, SNCF said.

The company said its staff had “worked all night under difficult conditions in the rain” to repair damage.

The “strategic” vandalism saw cabling boxes at junctions on the North, Brittany and South-West lines set alight hours before the Olympics opening ceremony was due to begin in the capital.

Saboteurs cut and set fire to specialised fibre optic cables essential for the safe functioning of the rail network, government officials said.

A source linked to the investigation told the AFP news agency that the operation was “well-prepared” and organised by “a single structure”.

Rail workers foiled an attempt to destroy safety equipment on a fourth line.

“At this stage, traffic will remain disrupted on Sunday on the North axis and should improve on the Atlantic axis for weekend returns,” a spokesman for the rail network said on Saturday morning.

The Olympic opening ceremony presents the host country with the opportunity to wow the world with a uniquely spectacular show.

The opening of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games was just that – the organisers ditched the traditional ceremony, and became the first Games to hold the opening event within a city as a whole rather than in a stadium.

Thousands of athletes and performers paraded along the River Seine on a wet evening, before the night sky and the Eiffel Tower were lit up in dramatic technicolour, creating a hugely ambitious, one-of-a-kind spectacle.

Below are some of the most eye-catching photos from the night.

After a three-month journey from Greece to Paris, the Olympic torch was handed to former French footballer Zinedine Zidane, before being passed on to tennis stars Rafa Nadal and Serena Williams.

In an epic climax, French judo great Teddy Riner and sprinter Marie-Jose Perec used the Olympic torch to ignite a cauldron powering an enormous hot air balloon.

The giant, glowing balloon then flew over the city of Paris to signal the start of the greatest show on Earth.

The opening ceremony began with a stunning display of coloured smoke resembling the French flag rising over the Pont d’Austerlitz.

Fans and spectators were in keen attendance, and – for the most part – were undeterred by the wet weather.

French President Emmanuel Macron was watching alongside President of the International Olympic Committee Thomas Bach.

UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer was also spotted watching the ceremony, seemingly well-prepared for the rain.

Various celebrities attended the evening, including American singer Ariana Grande with her British Wicked co-star Cynthia Erivo.

As expected there was a heightened security presence, with tens of thousands of police deployed across the city.

Throughout the event, a mystery masked torchbearer was running and parkour-ing their way through the city on riverside rooftops.

Fleets of team boats, with countries from all around the world, sailed down the Seine, flying their flags with pride.

British diver Tom Daley and rower Helen Glover bore the flag for Team GB.

The event was interspersed with elaborate performances of all kinds, from Lady Gaga, cabaret performers, ballet dancers, acrobats to a finale from Celine Dion, a distant figure on stage halfway up the Eiffel Tower.

Olympic organisers have issued a “deep apology” after South Korea’s athletes were mistakenly introduced as North Korea at the opening ceremony in Paris.

As the excited, flag-waving team floated down the River Seine, both French and English announcers introduced them as the “Democratic People’s Republic of Korea” – the official name of North Korea.

The same name was then used – correctly – when North Korea’s delegation sailed past.

The two Koreas have been divided since the end of World War Two, with tensions between the states further escalating recently.

The subtitle which ran across the bottom of the television broadcast showed the correct title, however.

The South Korean sports ministry said it planned to lodge a “strong complaint with France on a government level” over the embarrassing gaffe.

In a statement, the ministry expressed “regret over the announcement… where the South Korean delegation was introduced as the North Korean team.”

The statement added that the second vice sports minister, Jang Mi-ran, a 2008 Olympic weightlifting champion, had demanded a meeting with Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) issued an apology on its official Korean-language X account, saying: “We would like to offer a deep apology over the mistake that occurred in the introduction of the South Korean delegation during the opening ceremony.”

South Korea, formally known as the Republic of Korea, has 143 athletes in its Olympic team this year, competing across 21 sports.

North Korea has sent 16 athletes. This is the first time it has competed in the games since Rio 2016.

For France’s Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin – the man with the task of securing the Paris Olympics – the sabotage attacks on the high-speed rail network will have come as a blow.

He has vowed the attackers will all be quickly arrested, but so far he has not indicated who might be to blame.

Sports Minister Amélie Oudéa-Castéra promised that the culprits were not going to spoil the party, but they struck the TGV network hours before the opening ceremony – causing chaos for travellers and exposing the vulnerability of a symbol of France’s technical prowess.

Caretaker Prime Minister Gabriel Attal has advised caution in drawing conclusions, but said those behind the attack clearly had a good understanding of what would cause most damage.

Suspicion fell immediately on ultra-left radicals, from security sources briefing French media, but there has been no claim of responsibility from any source.

So far all we know is that the methods used to set fire to critical optical fibres and other cables in ducts along the rail network in the early hours of Friday were reminiscent of previous attacks by the extreme left.

When cable ducts were set alight beside railway lines near Hamburg in Germany last September, an anonymous claim appeared on a left-wing website condemning “capitalist infrastructure”.

That is inconclusive, of course, because the broad nature of the French attacks suggests a degree of co-ordination across four distinct regions that would not normally be associated with the extreme left.

But whoever did target the rail lines stretching out of Paris in the early hours of 26 July, it was clear they had the Games in their sights.

The big TGV arteries to the north, east and west were all choked off and the high-speed line to the south-east would have been brought to a halt too, but for an alert crew of engineers who by chance spotted a team of saboteurs in “vans”.

Regional forces are collecting evidence under the overall command of the national police, the national gendarmerie as well as the anti-terrorist SDAT. Their biggest hope may be in tracking down the failed saboteurs who fled the scene near Vergigny, apparently leaving their intact incendiary devices behind.

There have been attacks on French railways before, including one in January 2023 east of Paris.

Another incident has only just emerged back in early May 2024, on the high-speed line to the south, just outside Aix-en Provence.

It is that attack that bears most similarity to Friday’s sabotage, because it reportedly took place on the day the Olympic flame arrived by ship in the southern port of Marseille. So far no arrests appear to have been made.

Even though it was a botched attempt, reportedly involving makeshift petrol-bombs, France’s security services will be looking at potential links to that attack.

Earlier this year, the interior minister warned of an extremely high “external” threat, potentially of the type of jihadist attack that was inflicted on the Crocus City Hall in Moscow in March.

France has fallen victim in recent years to a wave of deadly jihadist attacks, but none resemble the acts of sabotage inflicted on the rail network. Friday’s incidents caused misery for hundreds of thousands of travellers, but no bloodshed.

Suspicion will inevitably fall on Russia too, a country in the grip of a full-scale invasion of its neighbour Ukraine, and one that has engaged in a high-profile campaign of disinformation against France.

Pro-Kremlin social media accounts have shared a video smearing the Paris Games, ridiculing the quality of water in the River Seine and attacking President Emmanuel Macron and Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo.

Mr Macron is loathed in Moscow because of his outspoken support for Ukraine.

Although Russia has always denied interference, French officials suspect the hand of Moscow in a series of recent incidents aimed at destabilising the French capital. From red hands daubed on the Holocaust Memorial to graffiti on buildings suggesting their balconies might collapse.

Only this week, a Russian was arrested in Paris on suspicion of planning to organise acts of “destabilisation, interference and spying”. The Kremlin says media reports on the man have been “quite curious” but says it has not been directly told about the arrest.

But none of that necessarily implicates Russia in Friday’s co-ordinated attack on what caretaker Prime Minister Gabriel Attal calls “nerve centres” on France’s high-speed railway network.

Because whoever was behind the sabotage knew exactly where to cause maximum disruption. Russia might not have that kind of reach in rural France.

The head of state-owned rail company SNCF, Jean-Pierre Farandou, said the saboteurs had focused on intersections that would have caused the most serious impact.

The arson attack at Courtalain cut off two high-speed lines on the Atlantic artery, one that headed west towards Brittany and another towards Bordeaux in the south-west. The eastern attack knocked out high-speed lines to Metz in one direction and Strasbourg in another.

One French security expert, Romain de Calbiac, told the BBC’s Newshour programme that the attack was remarkably well-planned.

“The French security forces and the entire intelligence community here is very concerned that they might have received internal help from people working or people partnering with the railway network in France,” he said.

“Another option would be that this information came not from inside sources, but potentially from foreign states with a knowledge of how the French network works.”

Earlier this year, SNCF highlighted an increase in the trend for attacks on the rail network and said it was constantly on the look-out for acts of sabotage, “particularly in the run-up to the Olympic and Paralympic Games”.

Although the company said it had detected all the attacks on its systems, it was only able to prevent one from causing significant damage, and that was a stroke of luck.

“Today should have been a party,” said Jean-Pierre Farandou. “All that is ruined.”

“She’s going to rot in jail. No one is going to get her out.”

That was what prison guards told the family of Emirlendris Benítez. She disappeared in Venezuela in August 2018 after she and her partner – a taxi driver – were arrested while giving somebody a lift to the city centre.

She was arbitrarily accused of organising a plot to kill the president and, without a fair trial, given a 30-year prison sentence.

When she was taken to prison, she was pregnant. Guards beat her stomach despite her protestations, and she had a miscarriage.

Her family tell us she has faced torture in prison, including having her nails removed with a hammer.

The human rights group Foro Penal says there were 15,700 politically motivated arbitrary arrests in Venezuela between 2014 and 2023 and hundreds of people remain behind bars.

It is one of many ways the government has cracked down on dissent.

The BBC asked the government and prosecutor for a comment or interview and have received no response.

President Nicolás Maduro has been in power since taking over from his mentor Hugo Chávez in 2013 and is seeking re-election on Sunday.

Photos of him line the streets, and on the last day of campaigning in Caracas hundreds of buses were paid for to transport people from around the country to his final rally where free food parcels were handed out as an incentive to attend.

Venus, a woman at the rally, says Mr Maduro’s PSUV party has given her many “benefits”.

“We are here to support Nicolas Maduro to the end,” she says.

Iván, another supporter, says “to those who oppose us, those who say there is no democracy, that there is a dictatorship here… this revolution will continue to shine”.

Even some supporters of Mr Maduro, though, have fallen victim to the crackdown on dissent.

A family member of Emirlendris, Ana (not her real name), spoke to us on condition of anonymity.

Her family voted for Nicolás Maduro, and Hugo Chávez before him, but say now “everything changed because we realised how justice works in Venezuela”.

“The government is desperate because it knows it has lost. Many people have opened their eyes and are realising the reality we live in in Venezuela. In the name of Almighty God, I hope that a new president wins for a better Venezuela.”

The last election was widely seen as neither free nor fair, many countries refused to recognise Mr Maduro as president, and the US imposed further sanctions on Venezuela.

For the first time in years, the opposition feel they have huge momentum and a lead in the polls – making it harder for the governing party to claim victory.

But the government has deployed a range of tactics with the armed forces, electoral and judicial authorities which it controls to pre-emptively suppress the opposition. They include detaining critics, uninviting EU election observers, and preventing millions of Venezuelans overseas from registering to vote.

Alcides Bracho is a teacher who was detained on 4 July 2022 after going to a protest calling for better salaries.

“We are talking 800 days without an increase, and it is a salary of $3.50 per month,” he recalls.

But after the protest, he was arrested and accused of “terrorism”.

“They came to the house, approximately 22 people with long rifles. Guns that looked like those in action movies or boys’ video games. Without a search warrant.”

He was forced to stand naked for 72 hours while he was held in detention, with no access to food, water or a toilet after being sentenced to 16 years in prison for “conspiracy” and “criminal association”.

“I thought I was going to die.”

“If you want to start a business in Venezuela, let it be a prison. They charge you for everything. The state does not give you food,” he said of the lack of even the most basic things in jail.

He was eventually released in a prisoner exchange with the US last December in which 19 political prisoners were freed in exchange for Alex Saab, an accused money launderer with close links to President Maduro who was indicted in the US.

Despite what happened to him, Mr Bracho wants to keep fighting.

“If we all keep quiet, if no-one does it, there is no fighting.”

“There is an upswing in repression. We are very worried. It’s not like I can start my life again, I don’t have a safe space.”

The opposition leader, María Corina Machado, was banned from running in Sunday’s election, dozens of her team have been detained, and even food stalls that served her have been shut down.

Most television and radio stations are state-run, with many other digital media outlets being blocked.

Bus TV is a campaign of volunteers who read out “real news” on buses around the country.

Andrés Brancovic is one of the volunteers. He thinks “censorship” could affect the election.

“Twitter is one of the most used apps in Venezuela right now, because people can post what they want and see what is happening. But people who just have national TV in their houses – they don’t see what is happening with the opposition.”

“All the news is in favour of the regime,” he says.

Despite having the world’s largest known oil reserves, Venezuela is desperately poor. More than half the population of Venezuela lives in poverty, and nearly eight million people have fled the country – contributing to a migration crisis on the US border.

Jhonatan Marcano lives with his family of five in one small room.

He goes out fishing every day in a rubber tyre, often in dangerous tides, to feed his family.

He cannot afford a boat, nor fuel for one. He relies on the tide to bring him back to land every day.

“I always voted for the people who are in charge. Chávez inspired confidence in me.”

Now, though, he is undecided: “Help doesn’t come, what you need most does not come to you. I’m so disappointed in the party.”

President Maduro blames US sanctions for the country’s woes, but critics also put it down to corruption and economic mismanagement.

There are reasons the West wants to improve relations with Venezuela – the oil and natural resources the country has, the fact Iran, China and Russia rely on Venezuela as an ally in the West, and because they do not want the US migration crisis to worsen.

But it is unlikely sanctions will be lifted and the government recognised if the vote is seen as unfair again.

As their ship started sinking rapidly into the sea, nine crew members onboard a cargo ship in Taiwan realised they did not have enough time to reach their life raft.

They decided to jump off the boat into sea, holding on to each other in groups.

On Thursday afternoon, Taiwan’s coast guard announced that one of the groups – made up of four Myanmar nationals – had been found. The captain of the ship was later on Friday found dead and four others are still missing.

They had all been working on the Tanzania-flagged Fu Shun, which capsized after Typhoon Gaemi made landfall on the island.

The vessel capsized at about 05:45 local time on Thursday (21:45 GMT Wednesday).

The nine Myanmar nationals said they decided to separate into two groups – one of five, and another of four.

All of them were wearing life jackets, but the survivors said they had watched as three of their colleagues in the other group, had their jackets swept away by high waves.

Search and rescue personnel said they had later found the body of the ship’s captain at about 06:55 on Friday. The other four in his group are still missing.

Locals found two of the survivors swept up on a beach in Kaohsiung at about 16:00 and brought them to a police station, while the Taiwanese Coast Guard rescued the other two at another part of the city’s coast later in the evening.

One of the survivors said he had swum backwards to retrieve a waist bag containing his passport, before swimming “with all his life” to reach the shore.

Another burst out crying after calling his family – he later told the coast guard that his wife and mother had thought he was dead after reading the news on Thursday.

Officials had earlier said the high waves and rough waters were hampering rescue efforts.

Photographs shared by the coast guard show the survivors clad in ponchos and towels for warmth, while coast guard staff tend to injuries on their arms and legs.

Eight other cargo ships carrying 79 crew members are still stranded in the stormy waters. The crew are safe, said Taiwan’s Ocean Affairs Council, adding that it is making effort to prevent potential oil spills.

Gaemi was downgraded to a tropical storm on Thursday evening, after leaving a trail of destruction in Taiwan and the Philippines and killing at least 21 people.

The storm made its second landfall in China’s southeastern Fujian province on Thursday evening.

Nearly 300,000 people have been evacuated and public transport suspended across eastern China on Friday.

Meselesh Gosaye, a mother of six, was in her hilltop home in southern Ethiopia’s Gofa district caring for her children when she heard the landslide that left many trapped in the mud.

“There were sounds of people screaming and we rushed down the hill,” she said struggling to contain her tears as she remembered what happened on Sunday.

The locality of Kencho Satcha Gozdi, where Ms Meselech lives, has a number of small villages scattered across the hilly landscape which are at risk of floods and landslides.

The string of settlements are characterised by mud-walled, tin-roofed houses, some on or near the top of the lush slopes. Other villages – including the one buried by the landslide – are clustered at the foot of the hills.

Heavy rains had preceded Sunday’s disaster making the area’s narrow and slippery footpaths dangerous.

But Ms Meselech, her husband and some of her children did not hesitate to race towards the site of the accident.

“When we reached there, we saw the earth [had swallowed] the houses,” she told the BBC.

They joined a throng of villagers who similarly had arrived upon hearing the news and instinctively started digging through the dirt and mud, many of them just with their hands, hoping to rescue those buried underneath.

In the following hours many others came. But they had limited success – a few people were pulled out alive, many more remained trapped.

“It was a sad day,” Ms Meselech said.

Seeing that a lot more manpower and effort were required, officials from the locality began mobilising help.

The next day, at an emergency meeting, they told every able-bodied adult, and older children, to get any farming tools – such as shovels, axes and hoes – they could get their hands on and work in unison.

The site was inaccessible to vehicles with more heavy-duty lifting equipment.

Ms Meselech’s husband and her two eldest sons – aged 15 and 12 – immediately joined the search-and-rescue efforts. Meanwhile she returned home from the meeting to breastfeed her toddler and cook for her other children.

Then she went back downhill to offer help. But what awaited her was a different – and more tragic – scene. There had been a second landslide burying most of those involved in the rescue mission.

Unable to control her emotions, she hastened to the land that engulfed her husband and her children. But someone stopped her reminding her it was still dangerous.

“They said I still had kids at home and I had to survive for them.”

In the following hours, news of the double tragedy was heard across the villages and towns close by.

Hundreds came to help.

Families were scrambling looking for their missing loved ones. Some – including the head of the locality who was mobilising residents after the first landslide – were quickly confirmed dead.

At one point Ms Meselech “saw diggers pulling someone’s body out. I thought it was my husband. I started helping,” she said.

“I thought he was alive. But he had died. He was still holding on to the axe he had when he went to help [those buried in the first landslide].

“His face was unrecognisable. To be sure, I checked his chest pocket because I knew he kept his ID card there. It was him. I screamed.”

When her husband’s body – along with other recovered corpses – was being moved to somewhere safe Ms Meselech could not go along as her two sons were still missing.

“I was torn between going and remaining behind.”

Later the body of her 12-year-old son was recovered. Her 15-year-old had not been found at the time she spoke to the BBC on Thursday.

“How I [suffered] giving birth to my children, raising them, educating them. It’s so sad for me,” she said as grief overwhelmed her.

But Ms Meselech is not alone in her grief. Death has knocked on the doors of many of the families here.

Some 257 people are confirmed to have died in the two landslides. An estimate by the UN says that number could reach 500 as more mud is dug up in the coming days.

Serawit Yohannes, who has his father and half-brother still missing, told the BBC that because most people have loved ones missing or confirmed dead “not even relatives are helping us dig” as they themselves have “two or three family members they have to look for”.

According to the UN, 15,000 people will have to be relocated from these hills to avoid future disasters. That will require a lot of effort and money.

But closure for Ms Meselech will only leave when her son is found.

It will take a long time before the community starts to heal.

• Floods wreak havoc in Kenya, Tanzania and Burundi
• Kenya floods: What a deluge reveals about Nairobi’s vulnerability
• Bus full of passengers swept away by raging waters

It was early in the day, but already hot. As she wiped sweat from her brow, Chieko Kiriake searched for some shade. As she did so, there was a blinding light – it was like nothing the 15-year-old had ever experienced. It was 08:15 on 6 August 1945.

“It felt like the sun had fallen – and I grew dizzy,” she recalls.

The United States had just dropped an atomic bomb on Chieko’s home city of Hiroshima – the first time a nuclear weapon had ever been used in warfare. While Germany had surrendered in Europe, allied forces fighting in World War Two were still at war with Japan.

Chieko was a student, but like many older pupils, had been sent out to work in the factories during the war. She staggered to her school, carrying an injured friend on her back. Many of the students had been badly burnt. She rubbed old oil, found in the home economics classroom, onto their wounds.

“That was the only treatment we could give them. They died one after the next,” says Chieko.

“Us older students who survived were instructed by our teachers to dig a hole in the playground and I cremated [my classmates] with my own hands. I felt so awful for them.”

Chieko is now 94 years old. It is almost 80 years since the atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and time is running out for the surviving victims – known as hibakusha in Japan – to tell their stories.

Many have lived with health problems, lost loved ones and been discriminated against because of the atomic attack. Now, they are sharing their experiences for a BBC Two film, documenting the past so it can act as a warning for the future.

After the sorrow, new life started to return to her city, says Chieko.

“People said the grass wouldn’t grow for 75 years,” she says, “but by the spring of the next year, the sparrows returned.”

In her lifetime, Chieko says she has been close to death many times but has come to believe she has been kept alive by the power of something great.

The majority of hibakusha alive today were children at the time of the bombings. As the hibakusha – which translates literally as “bomb-affected-people” – have grown older, global conflicts have intensified. To them, the risk of a nuclear escalation feels more real than ever.

“My body trembles and tears overflow,” says 86-year-old Michiko Kodama when she thinks about conflicts around the world today – such as the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the Israel-Gaza war.

“We must not allow the hell of the atomic bombing to be recreated. I feel a sense of crisis.”

Michiko is a vocal campaigner for nuclear disarmament and says she speaks out so the voices of those who have died can be heard – and the testimonies passed on to the next generations.

“I think it is important to hear first-hand accounts of hibakusha who experienced the direct bombing,” she says.

Michiko had been at school – aged seven – when the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima.

“Through the windows of my classroom, there was an intense light speeding towards us. It was yellow, orange, silver.”

She describes how the windows shattered and splintered across the classroom – the debris spraying everywhere “impaling the walls, desk, chairs”.

“The ceiling came crashing down. So I hid my body under the desk.”

After the blast, Michiko looked around the devastated room. In every direction she could see hands and legs trapped.

“I crawled from the classroom to the corridor and my friends were saying, ‘Help me’.”

When her father came to collect her, he carried her home on his back.

Black rain, “like mud”, fell from the sky, says Michiko. It was a mixture of radioactive material and residue from the explosion.

She has never been able to forget the journey home.

“It was a scene from hell,” says Michiko. “The people who were escaping towards us, most of their clothes had completely burned away and their flesh was melting.”

She recalls seeing one girl – all alone – about the same age as her. She was badly burnt.

“But her eyes were wide open,” says Michiko. “That girl’s eyes, they pierce me still. I can’t forget her. Even though 78 years have passed, she is seared into my mind and soul.”

Michiko wouldn’t be alive today if her family had remained in their old home. It was only 350m (0.21 miles) from the spot where the bomb exploded. About 20 days before, her family had moved house, just a few kilometres away – but that saved her life.

Estimates put the number of lost lives in Hiroshima, by the end of 1945, at about 140,000.

In Nagasaki, which was bombed by the US three days later, at least 74,000 were killed.

Sueichi Kido lived just 2km (1.24 miles) from the epicentre of the Nagasaki blast. Aged five at the time, he suffered burns to part of his face. His mother, who received more serious injuries, had protected him from the full impact of the blast.

“We hibakusha have never given up on our mission of preventing the creation of any more hibakusha,” says Sueichi, who is now 83 and recently travelled to New York to give a speech at the United Nations to warn of the dangers of nuclear weapons.

When he woke up after fainting from the impact of the blast, the first thing he remembers seeing was a red oil can. For years he thought it was that oil can that had caused the explosion and surrounding devastation.

His parents didn’t correct him, choosing to shield him from the fact it had been a nuclear attack – but whenever he mentioned it, they would cry.

Not all injuries were instantly visible. In the weeks and months after the blast, many people in both cities began to show symptoms of radiation poisoning – and there were increased levels of leukaemia and cancer.

For years, survivors have faced discrimination in society, particularly when it came to finding a partner.

“‘We do not want hibakusha blood to enter our family line,’ I was told,” says Michiko.

But later, she did marry and had two children.

She lost her mother, father and brothers to cancer. Her daughter died from the disease in 2011.

“I feel lonely, angry and scared, and I wonder if it may be my turn next,” she says.

Another bomb survivor, Kiyomi Iguro, was 19 when the bomb struck Nagasaki. She describes marrying into a distant relative’s family and having a miscarriage – which her mother-in-law attributed to the atomic bomb.

“‘Your future is scary.’ That’s what she told me.”

Kiyomi says she was instructed not to tell her neighbours that she had experienced the atomic bomb.

Since being interviewed for the documentary, Kiyomi has sadly died.

But, until she was 98, she would visit the Peace Park in Nagasaki and ring the bell at 11:02 – the time the bomb hit the city – to wish for peace.

Sueichi went on to teach Japanese history at university. Knowing he was a hibakusha cast a shadow on his identity, he says. But then he realised he was not a normal human being and felt a duty to speak out to save humankind.

“A sense that I was a special person was born in me,” says Sueichi.

It is something the hibakusha all feel that they share – an enduring determination to ensure the past never becomes the present.

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

Celine Dion has returned to the stage for the first time since revealing a serious health condition, delivering a typical powerhouse performance at the Paris Olympics opening ceremony.

The Canadian superstar had been rumoured to be singing a duet with Lady Gaga, but instead went solo on the Eiffel Tower to bring the four-hour event to a stirring climax.

It was Dion’s first live performance in four years, and came a year and a half after she revealed a diagnosis of Stiff Person Syndrome (SPS).

SPS is a rare neurological disorder that causes muscles to spasm and can be debilitating. It also affected her distinctive, forceful voice.

The 56-year-old, known as the “queen of power ballads”, has been having therapy to “rebuild” her voice, she told the BBC in June.

On Friday, her delivery of Edith Piaf’s classic L’Hymne à l’Amour gave encouraging signs that the treatment is working.

She was accompanied by a pianist on the first level of the Eiffel Tower, beneath giant illuminated Olympic rings.

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Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said that she “is a Canadian icon, an incredible talent, and she overcame a lot to be there tonight”.

He added: “Celine, it’s great to see you singing again.”

Italian singer Laura Pausini wrote: “My hands were shaking and my eyes were crying as I listened and saw my beloved Celine Dion.”

Her appearance had been hotly anticipated, with crowds of fans waiting outside her hotel in the city in recent days.

Dion has a big following in France. Her 1995 album D’eux is the best-selling French-language album of all time.

Friday’s appearance was the second time that Dion, known for hits including My Heart Will Go On and It’s All Coming Back to Me Now, had participated in an Olympic opening ceremony, after Atlanta 1996.

And her comeback performance came six months after a surprise appearance to present an award at the Grammys.

She has also teased a new residency in Las Vegas.

“We have been working so hard to put this show together – because I’m back,” she told the BBC in June.

She already holds the record for the most successful residency of all time on the Las Vegas strip.

Last month, she discussed her struggles with SPS in a film called I Am: Celine Dion, which Amazon Prime Video said on Thursday had become its most successful documentary ever.

Disgraced Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein has been moved to a New York prison hospital with multiple ailments including Covid and double pneumonia.

Juda Engelmayer, Weinstein’s publicist, said that the 72-year-old had recently tested positive for the virus. He added that his client already has diabetes, high blood pressure, spinal stenosis, and fluid on his heart and lungs.

Weinstein was jailed for 23 years in New York in 2020 for the rape and sexual assault of a former assistant and an actress. The city’s appeals court threw out the conviction in April, finding Weinstein did not get a fair trial.

But the film mogul remains in prison in New York while he awaits a retrial later this year. He was also sentenced to 16 years in prison in a separate rape trial in California, which he is appealing against.

New York City Correction Department records showed on Thursday that Weinstein was at the Bellevue Hospital Prison Ward, where he has been multiple times since his conviction.

CBS News, the BBC’s US partner, said that he underwent a heart procedure at Bellevue to open a blocked artery shortly after his conviction.

He was again taken to the hospital in April. Arthur Aidala, his lawyer, said at the time that Weinstein was “used to drinking champagne and eating caviar and now he’s at the commissary paying for potato chips and M&Ms”.

“Mentally, he’s fine. He’s sharp as a tack. But physically, he’s been breaking down for years.”

The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office has recently said it intends to charge Weinstein for “additional violent sexual assaults” over those he was tried for, after more women agreed to give evidence.

The conviction of the Miramax co-founder was a milestone for the #MeToo movement, in which women accused hundreds of men in entertainment, media, politics and other fields of sexual misconduct.

A jury found he had sexually assaulted former production assistant Miriam Haley in 2006 and raped aspiring actress Jessica Mann in 2013.

The National Wax Museum in Dublin is “committed” to creating a new wax figure of Irish singer Sinéad O’Connor after significant public backlash.

It comes after the museum unveiled a waxwork of the late singer and activist to coincide with the first anniversary of her death.

O’Connor was found dead at the age of 56 in her south London home last July.

The figure was first unveiled on Thursday as a tribute to the singer, but the museum has now said it will be removed in order to create “a more accurate representation”.

Among those who criticised the original figure was O’Connor’s brother, John.

He said he was shocked when he first saw the waxwork online and said it was “inappropriate”.

“It looked nothing like her and I thought it was hideous,” he told Irish broadcaster RTÉ’s Liveline radio programme on Friday.

He added that the figure looked “between a mannequin and something out of the Thunderbirds”.

A statement from the museum said: “In response to the public’s feedback regarding the wax figure, we acknowledge that the current representation did not meet our high standards or the expectations of Sinéad’s devoted fans.

“We have listened closely to the reactions and agree that the figure does not fully capture Sinéad’s unique presence and essence as we intended.”

The museum said O’Connor’s impact on music is “immeasurable” and its goal was to honour the late singer in the “most fitting and respectful manner”.

“With this in mind, we are committed to creating a new wax figure that better reflect’s Sinéad O’Connor’s true spirit and iconic image,” it added.

“Our team of skilled artists will begin this project immediately, ensuring that every detail is meticulously crafted to celebrate her legacy appropriately.”

It said the museum looks forward to unveiling a new figure that “truly honours” O’Connor and her “extraordinary impact”.

Sinéad Marie Bernadette O’Connor was born on 8 December 1966 in the affluent Glenageary suburb of Dublin.

Her debut album in 1987, The Lion and the Cobra, was a storming success, earning O’Connor a Grammy nomination for best female rock vocal performance.

But it was her 1990 Prince cover single Nothing Compares 2 U which saw her catapult to worldwide fame.

O’Connor was outspoken on subjects including religion, women’s rights and racism.

In 1992, she tore up a photo of Pope John Paul II while performing on US television programme Saturday Night Live in protest against child sexual abuse in the Catholic Church.

In 2018, she converted to Islam, changing her name to Shuhada Sadaqat.

However she continued to perform under her birth name.

On 26 July 2023, the musician was found unresponsive at her home in Herne Hill, south London and was later pronounced dead.

A coroner ruled that she died of natural causes.

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

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• Frantic digging at scene of deadly Ethiopia landslides
• Batons, tear gas, live fire – Kenyans face police brutality
• Olympic fencer and Playboy model champions body positivity

Boneless chicken wings do not have to be bone-free, Ohio’s top court ruled, ending a lawsuit filed by a man who fell ill after swallowing a piece of bone from his order.

Michael Berkheimer sued Wings on Brookwood in 2016, saying the restaurant failed to warn him that the boneless wings could in fact contain bones, a piece of which became lodged in his throat and caused an infection.

The court on Thursday ruled that “boneless wing” refers to “cooking style” and is not to be taken literally.

The 4-3 ruling was peppered with dissent, with one judge calling the majority opinion “utter jabberwocky”.

But a majority of the judges considered being cautious of bones in a boneless wing to be common sense.

Writing for the majority, Justice Joseph T Deters said: “A diner reading ‘boneless wings’ on a menu would no more believe that the restaurant was warranting the absence of bones in the items than believe that the items were made from chicken wings, just as a person eating ‘chicken fingers’ would know that he had not been served fingers.”

The chicken wing controversy began in 2016, when Michael Berkheimer was dining with his wife and friends at a restaurant in Hamilton, Ohio.

He ordered what has been described as his “usual” – boneless wings with parmesan garlic sauce – when he noticed a piece go down uncomfortably.

Three days later, he began to feel feverish and went to the emergency room. Doctors discovered a long, thin bone that caused a tear in his oesophagus and a subsequent infection.

Mr Berkheimer later sued the restaurant, accusing them of failing to warn him that the “boneless wings” might contain bones.

In the lawsuit, he also accused the supplier and the farm that produced the chicken of negligence.

Lower courts had dismissed Mr Berkheimer’s suit, which then landed in the state’s supreme court.

A majority of the justices considered it common knowledge that chickens have bones, and sided with the lower courts against him.

“The food item’s label on the menu described a cooking style; it was not a guarantee,” Justice Deters wrote.

However, the dissenting justices felt like the decision should have sat with a jury and not with the court’s justices.

Justice Michael P Donnelly wrote in dissent: “The question must be asked: Does anyone really believe that the parents in this country who feed their young children boneless wings or chicken tenders or chicken nuggets or chicken fingers expect bones to be in the chicken? Of course they don’t.

“When they read the word ‘boneless,’ they think that it means ‘without bones,’ as do all sensible people.”

Tears welled in Tasha Porttin’s eyes as she reminisced on the sheer beauty of the place she’s called home for 10 years.

Jasper’s mountain peaks and the picture-perfect pine trees that frame its vivid baby-blue lakes make it a popular tourist destination attracting millions each year. The natural beauty and small businesses, like the pharmacy she started, make the quaint alpine town in Canada’s Alberta province a jewel of the nation.

It’s a “place that has the biggest heart of any community I’ve met”, she said through tears. “It grabs people and never lets go.”

Those memories have now been replaced by an evolving nightmare. An out-of-control blaze has levelled about 33% of the buildings in the Canadian Rockies resort town, and fire crews are still working to douse the flames that have already burned 89,000 acres (36,000 hectares).

Rain tamped down the fire on Thursday night, and no new blazes have started in the last day, officials said in an update on Friday. But winds were expected to pick up and hot, dry weather is forecast to return by Monday.

Out of a total of 1,113 structures in the town of Jasper, 358 have been destroyed, according to town officials, who added that it may be weeks before residents can return home.

But “all critical infrastructure in Jasper was successfully protected” – including schools, a hospital, and a water treatment plant.

Jasper Mayor Richard Ireland said his own home may have been destroyed by the fire. “Where the fire did the most damage, that’s where my home is”.

“How I will react remains to be seen.”

The mayor said despite preparation and years of training, the nature of the fire “humbled the humans on the ground”.

He added that “nature prevailed” with 100m (328 ft) high walls of flames that were metres wide.

Ms Porttin rushed to flee the area in a camping trailer that her husband bought less than a month ago. She has been monitoring the fire, waiting with concern as buildings nearby crumble.

“I have seen images of it standing,” she said of her business. “Unfortunately, the buildings next to it are not. That’s pretty much all I know.”

“It’s just surreal to think our downtown is not the way we left it.”

Canadians and elected officials have described a deep sense of grief and a devastating cultural loss as the area continues burning.

Sitting just north of the more popular Banff National Park, Jasper National Park is the largest in Canada’s Rocky Mountains.

The Unesco World Heritage Site is home to elk, grizzly bear, moose and bison.

The adjacent town of Jasper has a population of around 5,000, but has around a dozen hotels to accommodate the roughly 2.5 million people who pass through to visit the park.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called the area a “special and cherished place” for many Canadians.

Karyn Decore, whose family has owned the historic Maligne Lodge over 60 years, has been receiving condolences from around the country since learning it was destroyed as the fire swept through town.

In an interview on Friday, she said she has always loved sharing the Canadian “icon” with international visitors, calling it “one of the most famous national parks in the world”.

“People understand the beauty, and the power, and the magic of Jasper National Park,” she says, recalling her lifetime of wildlife viewing, mountain biking, fishing and skiing in Jasper.

Ms Porttin said she loves watching visitors fall in love with Jasper. Most who end up moving to the town have a similar-sounding origin story.

“Most people say I came for a summer, and I stayed the rest of my life,” she says. “It grabs people and never lets go.”

Town residents, she says, enjoy meeting people from around the world as they come and “fall in love with the place that we love”.

Ms Porttin said she rushed to leave as the blaze closed in. She said the recently bought camping trailer was already stocked with some necessary supplies.

“Without that,” she said, “I don’t know what we would have done.”

Along with her four-year-old, she had only 30 minutes to pack on Monday.

Her husband was away, so a friend who owned a truck came over, and hooked up the trailer so they could all flee.

The two families spent two nights camped out together before her husband was able to join them.

“As much as you think you’re prepared, you’re never prepared to leave,” she said.

The destruction is expected to have a steep economic cost, as tourists stay away during the height of travel season.

Ms Decore says her now-destroyed hotel is normally 100% occupied from May to October every year. Now, all of the tourists and staff have evacuated the area, and they don’t know when they may return.

Park officials estimated that a power outage in the town last year, which lasted two weeks, deprived local businesses of some $10m in revenue.

It remains to be seen how long it will take to restore the resort, as well as the pristine ecology that helps make the majestic park a pride of Canada.

Meanwhile, there are currently 51 wildfires burning “out of control” around the Alberta province, forcing some 17,000 Albertans to flee.

Italian high jumper Gianmarco Tamberi has issued a grovelling apology to his wife after losing his wedding ring during the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics.

The 32-year-old world champion was flag-waving for Italy, as the boat carrying its athletes sailed down the River Seine, when the ring slipped off his finger.

“I’m sorry my love, I’m so sorry,” he wrote on Instagram in a post dedicated to his wife, Chiara Bontempi Tamberi.

The athlete blamed “losing too many kilos” and “irrepressible enthusiasm” for the mishap.

“If it had to happen, if I had to lose this ring, I couldn’t imagine a better place,” he wrote, claiming the ring will now “remain forever in the riverbed of the city of love”.

He called the bad luck “poetic” and suggested they throw Chiara’s ring in the river too.

“[Then] they will be together forever and we will have one more excuse to renew our vows and marry again,” he said.

“Only you could turn this into something romantic,” Chiara wrote under her husband’s apology.

The pair have been married since September 2022.

Tamberi was waving Italy’s flag alongside three-time Olympic medal winner Arianna Errigo when the ring fell off, bounced off the boat and disappeared into the river.

He described it as “a few moments that lasted forever”.

Tamberi previously hit the headlines at the Tokyo 2020 Games after he shared the high jump gold medal with Qatar’s Mutaz Essa Barshim. Both opted not to go beyond the 2.37m bar they had cleared.

He has also gained attention for sporting a half-shaven beard during competitions since 2011 as his “trademark” style.

At a moment of unprecedented turbulence in modern American political history, Kamala Harris is having a remarkably smooth ride. It may not last long.

Tony Fabrizio, Donald Trump’s campaign pollster, calls it a “Harris Honeymoon” – where a combination of good press and positive energy have combined to give the Democrat a surge of momentum.

The thing about honeymoons, of course, is that they come to an end. The realities of married life, or in this case the relationship between Ms Harris and the American voting public, has a way of reasserting itself.

For now, the champagne corks are flying for team Harris and Democrats may be experiencing an unfamiliar emotion – hope. But Republicans, after initially being caught somewhat flatfooted by Mr Biden’s historic announcement, are redirecting their fire at the new presumptive nominee.

Here’s a look at three areas on which their recent attacks have focused – and some ways Democrats may try to deflect them.

The travails of Ms Harris’ unsuccessful campaign for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination are well documented. They include a lack of clear messaging, a campaign rife with internal discord and a candidate who was prone to awkward interviews and gaffes.

Something else happened during the then-senator’s ill-fated presidential bid, however. She – like many of the candidates in that race – tacked sharply to the left, to be more in line with Democratic primary voters.

“There was a lot of pressure on those guys from the activist base,” said Matt Bennett, the executive vice-president for public affairs at Third Way, a centrist Democratic think tank. “When you’re competing in a primary, your political priorities are very different than the sprint to the finish in a general election.”

Over the course of 2019 – in debates and interviews – Ms Harris endorsed scrapping private health insurance for a government-run system. She praised policing reform, including redirecting law-enforcement budgets to other priorities. She endorsed decriminalising undocumented entry into the US and entertained abolishing Ice, the immigration and customs enforcement agency. She backed the sweeping Green New Deal environmental legislation and supported a ban on fracking and off-shore drilling.

Now those positions could come back to haunt her.

David McCormick, a Republican candidate for Senate in Pennsylvania, was quick to produce a television advertisement hitting on Ms Harris’ 2019 positions and tying them to his opponent, Democratic Senator Bob Casey.

And Trump has released a video titled “MEET SAN FRANCISCO RADICAL KAMALA HARRIS” that includes many of the policies she backed during that time.

Conservative commentator Matt Walsh called it a “blueprint” for how to attack the vice-president.

“She can argue, correctly, that good leaders change their position on policy and they don’t change her principles,” Mr Bennett, the Democratic strategist, said. “None of her principles have changed.”

If she doesn’t do that convincingly, she could lose support from independent and undecided voters that will determine the outcome of the election in key swing states.

Polls show the Biden campaign had been floundering for months. His immigration policies were unpopular. Even though inflation has eased and the economy is growing, voters still blamed him for higher prices. His ongoing support for Israel in the Gaza War was sapping his support among young voters.

Ms Harris, in her role as vice-president, will at least be somewhat tied to the entirety of the current administration’s record – for better or for worse.

Republicans are already trying to hang the immigration issue around her neck, labelling her as the administration’s “border czar” – an inaccurate but damaging characterisation that was also used by the media. They cite her past statements on immigration and a claim, during an interview in 2022, that the “border is secure”.

“Kamala Harris is currently only known as a failed and unpopular vice-president who knifed her boss in the back to secure a nomination she couldn’t earn, but voters are about to learn, it gets worse,” Taylor Budowich, who runs the political action committee affiliated with the Trump campaign, said in a statement touting $32m in upcoming television advertisements targeting the vice-president.

According to Mr Bennett, Ms Harris won’t be able to fully distance herself from the Biden record, but she might be able to put it in new light for voters, even in the face of Republican attacks.

“What she can do is make this about the future in ways that were going to be very difficult for an 81-year-old guy to do,” he says. “She can argue that Trump wants only to look backward.”

In the first public rally of her presidential campaign, Ms Harris unveiled a particularly pointed line of attack against the former president. Noting that she had served as a courtroom prosecutor and as California’s attorney general, she said she had faced off against “perpetrators of all kinds”.

“So hear me when I say I know Donald Trump’s type,” she concluded.

Craig Varoga, a Democratic campaign consultant and adjunct instructor at American University, calls the vice-president’s law-enforcement background her “superpower” – one that she was not fully able to use on the Democratic campaign trail in 2019, when policing reform was a top issue.

But Trump’s campaign is already showing signs on how they might respond. His campaign manager, Chris LaCivita, made his bones in the Republican Party by taking on another Democratic candidate’s supposed superpower and turning it against him.

Back in 2004, Democratic nominee John Kerry was touting his record as a decorated Vietnam War veteran as proof that he would be an effective commander-in-chief during the Iraq War. Mr LaCivita spearheaded a series of attack adverts questioning Mr Kerry’s patriotism and heroism, featuring sailors who served with Kerry on a Navy swift boat patrolling the rivers and shorelines in Vietnam.

It gave rise to the term “Swift-boating” – which means to disarm a candidate by attacking their perceived strength.

And it looks like Trump’s campaign is gearing up for attacks on the vice-president’s prosecutorial record.

On one hand, they are hitting her for being too tough – particularly on black men for drug crimes – in an attempt to undermine support from her base. On the other, they are citing instances where Ms Harris either chose not to prosecute or allowed the parole of individuals who went on to commit new crimes.

Mr Varoga concedes that Democrats botched their response to the Swift-boat attacks in 2004, but he says they’ve learned their lesson and Ms Harris will be ready for the onslaught.

“If LaCivita thinks he’s going to fool the entire Democratic establishment again, he can live with that delusion and also lose,” he said.

In his memo, Mr Fabrizio said that Ms Harris “can’t change who she is or what she’s done”. He promised that voters will soon view her as Mr Biden’s “partner and co-pilot” and learn about her “dangerously liberal record”.

The upcoming advertising onslaught, along with Trump’s public statements and rally attacks, will be the tip of this Republican spear.

Meanwhile, Ms Harris and her campaign will work to offer their own definition of who the candidate is and what she stands for.

One particularly effective way to do this, according to Mr Varoga, is with her selection of a vice-presidential running mate.

“It’s the first real decision that a candidate for president makes that’s out there for the public to see,” he said. “That will go a long way toward people understanding what kind of future she’s going to pursue.”

If she opts for a more moderate partner, it could make voters more inclined to believe that she will govern from the centre, rather than as the leftist candidate Republicans make her out to be.

In the weeks ahead, the fight to define Ms Harris – through her word, through her votes and through her past campaigns – will go a long way towards determining how the public views her when they head to the ballot box in November.

It will shape whether the honeymoon ends in heartbreak for Democrats or a union that lasts for the next four years.

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• SWING STATES: Where the election could be won and lost
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• VOTERS: US workers in debt to buy groceries

The fierce wildfire which swept through the Canadian town of Jasper in recent days melted cars to the road and turned homes to ash.

The first images of the devastation at the famous tourist town have emerged, after a 100m (328ft) firewall swept through late on Wednesday.

It has been difficult to get a sense of the scale of what happened because the fire burned out-of-control for days.

Some 25,000 people were evacuated from the town and the Jasper National Park, in Alberta.

On Friday, authorities from Jasper National Park said 358 of the 1,113 structures in town had been destroyed.

However, all critical infrastructure was protected, including the hospital, library and firehall.

A list of addresses where buildings were damaged is being finalised and will be released “shortly”, authorities said.

One local who does know he has lost his home is Jasper Mayor Richard Ireland, who came back to the town with other officials on Friday.

He stood in front of what remained of his home, reduced to a few charred cement blocks, and said: “Now, it’s well, it’s just memories of family and fire.”

Mr Ireland spoke of a photograph lost to the flames, where he was just a two-year-old sitting on some moving boxes next to a birthday cake at that very house. He had lived at the same address for 67 years.

“So many others are going to go through this same thing,” he told local media.

• Canadians mourn as Jasper, jewel of the Rockies, burns

New images show extraordinary damage at the famous tourist town, nestled in the famous Canadian Rockies.

The heat was so intense it turned parts of a car into a pool of metal, dripping across the road like a silver ice cream on a hot day.

Other photographs show the twisted remains of cars piled on top of each other, and a school bus now black with only a tinge of that iconic yellow remaining.

Hotels and a church were destroyed, and many homes.

Authorities are cautious of confirming what has been levelled, at this stage.

“We are empathetic to the residents and businesses seeking more information on specific details on the extent of damage,” an update from authorities said.

“We know people are seeing images on media and social media but what we know about fire incidents is getting the information right is paramount.”

Fire crews are now taking advantage of cooler weather and recent rainfall.

They are containing the remaining hotspots in smouldering structures and along the wildfire perimeter closest to the townsite.

But winds were expected to pick up and hot, dry weather is forecast to return by Monday.

Sitting just north of the more popular Banff National Park, Jasper National Park is the largest in Canada’s Rocky Mountains.

The Unesco World Heritage Site is home to elk, grizzly bear, moose and bison.

The adjacent town of Jasper has a population of about 5,000, but has some dozen hotels to accommodate the roughly 2.5 million people who pass through to visit the park every year.

Karyn Decore, whose family has owned the historic Maligne Lodge over 60 years, has been receiving condolences from around the country since learning it was destroyed as the fire swept through town.

Ms Decore says her now-destroyed hotel is normally 100% occupied from May to October every year. Now, all of the tourists and staff have evacuated the area, and they don’t know when they may return.

Park officials estimated that a power outage in the town last year, which lasted two weeks, deprived local businesses of some CAD$10m ($7.2m;£5.6m) in revenue.

It remains to be seen how long it will take to restore the resort town, as well as the pristine ecology that helps make the majestic park a pride of Canada.

Meanwhile, there are currently 48 wildfires burning “out of control” around the Alberta province.

Olympic organisers have issued a “deep apology” after South Korea’s athletes were mistakenly introduced as North Korea at the opening ceremony in Paris.

As the excited, flag-waving team floated down the River Seine, both French and English announcers introduced them as the “Democratic People’s Republic of Korea” – the official name of North Korea.

The same name was then used – correctly – when North Korea’s delegation sailed past.

The two Koreas have been divided since the end of World War Two, with tensions between the states further escalating recently.

The subtitle which ran across the bottom of the television broadcast showed the correct title, however.

The South Korean sports ministry said it planned to lodge a “strong complaint with France on a government level” over the embarrassing gaffe.

In a statement, the ministry expressed “regret over the announcement… where the South Korean delegation was introduced as the North Korean team.”

The statement added that the second vice sports minister, Jang Mi-ran, a 2008 Olympic weightlifting champion, had demanded a meeting with Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) issued an apology on its official Korean-language X account, saying: “We would like to offer a deep apology over the mistake that occurred in the introduction of the South Korean delegation during the opening ceremony.”

South Korea, formally known as the Republic of Korea, has 143 athletes in its Olympic team this year, competing across 21 sports.

North Korea has sent 16 athletes. This is the first time it has competed in the games since Rio 2016.

A husband, wife and their daughter who performed together in American gospel group The Nelons have been killed in a plane crash along with four other people.

Jason and Kelly Nelon Clark died alongside Amber Nelon Kistler on Friday when their aircraft came down over Wyoming on its way to a performance.

Autumn Nelon Streetman – who also performs in the Grammy Award-nominated group but was not on board – confirmed the death of her parents and sister on Instagram.

She thanked fans for their “prayers, love and support” hours after the fatal crash.

Amber’s husband Nathan Kistler, the family’s assistant Melodi Hodges, pilot Larry Haynie and his wife Melissa Haynie were also killed, according to the group’s management.

Gaither Management said the passengers were making their way to Seattle to join a cruise ship The Nelons were due to perform on.

Officials in the area where the plane came down said it happened at about 13:00 local time, north of the town of Gillette. Local media said it triggered a wildfire.

A National Transportation Safety Board spokesman said preliminary reports indicate the aircraft crashed after an “auto pilot issue”.

The band’s management said Autumn – the youngest member of the family act – was awaiting the arrival of her parents and sister in Seattle when she was informed.

In a post on Instagram, Autumn said: “Thank you for the prayers that have been extended already to me, my husband, Jamie, and our soon-to-be-born baby boy, as well as Jason’s parents, Dan and Linda Clark.”

Rex Nelon, the father of Kelly Nelon Clark, founded the group in the 1970s.

They have been nominated for three Grammy awards and were inducted into the Gospel Music Association Hall of Fame in 2016.

The group’s biggest hits include I Shall Not Be Moved, Come Morning and We Shall Wear a Robe and Crown.

Kelly was also an actress and appeared in the ABC fantasy drama Resurrection.

Celine Dion has returned to the stage for the first time since revealing a serious health condition, delivering a typical powerhouse performance at the Paris Olympics opening ceremony.

The Canadian superstar had been rumoured to be singing a duet with Lady Gaga, but instead went solo on the Eiffel Tower to bring the four-hour event to a stirring climax.

It was Dion’s first live performance in four years, and came a year and a half after she revealed a diagnosis of Stiff Person Syndrome (SPS).

SPS is a rare neurological disorder that causes muscles to spasm and can be debilitating. It also affected her distinctive, forceful voice.

The 56-year-old, known as the “queen of power ballads”, has been having therapy to “rebuild” her voice, she told the BBC in June.

On Friday, her delivery of Edith Piaf’s classic L’Hymne à l’Amour gave encouraging signs that the treatment is working.

She was accompanied by a pianist on the first level of the Eiffel Tower, beneath giant illuminated Olympic rings.

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Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said that she “is a Canadian icon, an incredible talent, and she overcame a lot to be there tonight”.

He added: “Celine, it’s great to see you singing again.”

Italian singer Laura Pausini wrote: “My hands were shaking and my eyes were crying as I listened and saw my beloved Celine Dion.”

Her appearance had been hotly anticipated, with crowds of fans waiting outside her hotel in the city in recent days.

Dion has a big following in France. Her 1995 album D’eux is the best-selling French-language album of all time.

Friday’s appearance was the second time that Dion, known for hits including My Heart Will Go On and It’s All Coming Back to Me Now, had participated in an Olympic opening ceremony, after Atlanta 1996.

And her comeback performance came six months after a surprise appearance to present an award at the Grammys.

She has also teased a new residency in Las Vegas.

“We have been working so hard to put this show together – because I’m back,” she told the BBC in June.

She already holds the record for the most successful residency of all time on the Las Vegas strip.

Last month, she discussed her struggles with SPS in a film called I Am: Celine Dion, which Amazon Prime Video said on Thursday had become its most successful documentary ever.

Ismael ‘El Mayo’ Zambada is one of the most notorious names in drug war history, synonymous with the fearsome power and corrosive influence of the most important drug cartel in the world.

The last of an original generation of drug cartel leaders, he created the Sinaloa Cartel alongside Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzman from the remnants of the Guadalajara Cartel after it collapsed in 1989.

But unlike his infamous partner who was twice jailed and escaped, El Mayo was able to evade capture for some 35 years. Until now.

US authorities arrested him in El Paso, Texas on Thursday. He has already pleaded not guilty to multiple charges in federal court in Texas.

He was lured to the US as part of an elaborate sting operation, masterminded by the son of his former partner, El Chapo. Joaquin Guzman Lopez, one of the heirs to El Chapo’s operation, was arrested alongside Zambada having led him to believe he was travelling to northern Mexico to look at prospective properties for clandestine airstrips.

“Are you worried of being captured?” Zambada was asked in 2010 by the late Mexican journalist, Julio Scherer García, who had travelled deep into the mountains for an unprecedented interview with the drug lord.

“The idea of being jailed gives me panic,” he answered. “I’m not sure I have what it takes to kill myself. I’d like to think I do and that I’d take my own life.”

When it came to it, however, either he didn’t have the means or the opportunity.

For someone who exercised such caution over so many years, it seems extraordinary that Zambada was duped aged 76. Perhaps it was always going to take something unique to see him in custody.

“It doesn’t surprise me that Zambada didn’t go willingly,” says Mike Vigil, a former DEA agent. “He is in his 70s, in poor health and already said that prison was his greatest fear.”

The arrests – and possible plea deal between the sons of El Chapo, known as Los Chapitos, and the US Government – begs the question of who will take control of the Sinaloa Cartel.

After El Chapo Guzman was arrested and extradited to the US in 2016, a round of bloodletting began as rival factions wrestled for control of territory as well as fought opposing drug gangs who sensed weakness.

Even more shocking, and violent, was the response of the Sinaloa Cartel’s foot soldiers when their leader, Ovidio Guzman Lopez, was arrested in October 2019.

After he was detained, hundreds of gunmen descended on the city of Culiacan and opened fire on civilian, police and military targets with .50 calibre weapons and rocket launchers. Eventually, the authorities handed Ovidio Guzman back to his men to bring the fighting to an end.

He was later re-arrested, extradited and is currently awaiting trial in a US prison.

Mike Vigil thinks a similar explosion of violence, which became known as the Culiacanazo, might be avoided this time around:

“The Sinaloa Cartel has a very strong bench of possible leaders who could take over including El Chapo’s brother,” he says.

In fact, Mr Vigil argues, the “Kingpin strategy” – that is focusing on bringing down individual cartel leaders – is rarely successful.

“Under the administration of (then-Mexican President Felipe) Calderon, it only tended to create internal conflict within the cartels which then led to a bloodbath.”

If that happens this time, suggests former DEA agent Mike Vigil, “the only winner would be their rivals, the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG)”.

That said, moments of flux and possible power vacuums such as this one are deeply unpredictable. The Mexican authorities have already sent additional forces to the state of Sinaloa ahead of any flare-up of violence.

The other obvious question over Zambada’s arrest is: why now?

The operation was planned for months. However, some reports say there was also an opportunistic element to it. When the various elements behind the ruse appeared to be coming together, despite some scepticism among the US authorities, they ultimately decided they had nothing lose by trying it.

The bigger reason behind the timing, though, was revealed by the words of the US Attorney General Merrick Garland in a video message confirming the arrests:

“Fentanyl is the deadliest threat our country has ever faced”, he said promising that the US justice department “will not rest until every single cartel leader, member and associate responsible for poisoning our communities is held accountable.”

Fentanyl overdoses are now the leading cause of death for Americans between the ages of 18 and 45. It is a staggering statistic and one that has perhaps focussed minds in the Biden administration, especially in an election year.

Both Los Chapitos and El Mayo have made billions through fentanyl, which is easy to produce and transport without the need for large coca plantations in the Andes as with the manufacture of cocaine.

Experts say that shutting down the smuggling of fentanyl altogether is virtually impossible. It is simply too profitable to the cartels and too riven into the modern landscape of Mexico’s drug war.

However, US law enforcement wants to hurt the cartels that are producing it, diminish their influence and, wherever possible, dismantle their leadership.

The capture of El Mayo Zambada – even if aging, in poor health and captured in a double-cross – was always going to remain a key part of that strategy.

Israel’s military has struck a school near Deir al-Balah, a city in central Gaza, killing at least 30 Palestinians and injuring more than 100, according to the Hamas-run ministry of health.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said on Telegram that a Hamas command and control centre was embedded inside the Khadija School.

The IDF added that Hamas used the compound as a hiding place to direct and plan attacks and store weapons.

Gaza’s health ministry said footage showed the victims were civilians and most of them were children. The BBC verified a video that shows children among the injured.

Gaza’s civil defence service said the school was sheltering displaced people. Hamas condemned the attack in a statement on Telegram, saying “displaced, sick and wounded people, most of whom were women and children” were killed.

Verified video from the scene shows a chaotic situation, with people running around a compound covered in rubble. Men carry two bloodied children in their arms while a woman hugs another, and a group carries an injured man on a stretcher. A body lies on the ground covered in a blanket.

The IDF said that before the strike it took steps to reduce the risk to civilians “including the use of appropriate munitions, aerial surveillance and additional intelligence”.

Gaza’s health ministry said 53 people had been killed and 189 injured since Saturday morning due to IDF bombing in Deir al-Balah and the southern city of Khan Younis.

The strike occurred as Israel continues its months-long military campaign in Gaza that has killed more than 39,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s health ministry.

The war started when Hamas attacked Israel on 7 October, killing around 1,200 people and taking 251 hostage.

The Deir al-Balah strike was reported as the IDF ordered civilians on Saturday morning in southern parts of Khan Younis to evacuate to an “adjusted humanitarian area” in al-Mawasi, a region along the coast.

The IDF said it was about to “forcefully operate” after reporting “significant” rocket fire towards Israel from southern Khan Younis and “precise intelligence indicating that Hamas has embedded” infrastructure in the humanitarian area. The Israeli military warned civilians that “remaining in this area has become dangerous”.

The IDF released maps showing a further reduced humanitarian area in al-Mawasi. The military shrank the zone on Monday when it ordered the evacuation of part of the humanitarian area ahead of an operation against Palestinian fighters who had apparently regrouped there.

After the evacuation orders, Gaza’s health ministry said at least 70 people were killed by Israeli strikes around Khan Younis.

Also on Saturday, in the West Bank, a 17-year-old boy was killed and nine people were injured in the Balata refugee camp in Nablus as a result of Israeli military action, the Palestinian Authority’s ministry of health said.

The BBC has contacted the IDF about the reports.

The Olympic opening ceremony presents the host country with the opportunity to wow the world with a uniquely spectacular show.

The opening of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games was just that – the organisers ditched the traditional ceremony, and became the first Games to hold the opening event within a city as a whole rather than in a stadium.

Thousands of athletes and performers paraded along the River Seine on a wet evening, before the night sky and the Eiffel Tower were lit up in dramatic technicolour, creating a hugely ambitious, one-of-a-kind spectacle.

Below are some of the most eye-catching photos from the night.

After a three-month journey from Greece to Paris, the Olympic torch was handed to former French footballer Zinedine Zidane, before being passed on to tennis stars Rafa Nadal and Serena Williams.

In an epic climax, French judo great Teddy Riner and sprinter Marie-Jose Perec used the Olympic torch to ignite a cauldron powering an enormous hot air balloon.

The giant, glowing balloon then flew over the city of Paris to signal the start of the greatest show on Earth.

The opening ceremony began with a stunning display of coloured smoke resembling the French flag rising over the Pont d’Austerlitz.

Fans and spectators were in keen attendance, and – for the most part – were undeterred by the wet weather.

French President Emmanuel Macron was watching alongside President of the International Olympic Committee Thomas Bach.

UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer was also spotted watching the ceremony, seemingly well-prepared for the rain.

Various celebrities attended the evening, including American singer Ariana Grande with her British Wicked co-star Cynthia Erivo.

As expected there was a heightened security presence, with tens of thousands of police deployed across the city.

Throughout the event, a mystery masked torchbearer was running and parkour-ing their way through the city on riverside rooftops.

Fleets of team boats, with countries from all around the world, sailed down the Seine, flying their flags with pride.

British diver Tom Daley and rower Helen Glover bore the flag for Team GB.

The event was interspersed with elaborate performances of all kinds, from Lady Gaga, cabaret performers, ballet dancers, acrobats to a finale from Celine Dion, a distant figure on stage halfway up the Eiffel Tower.

Donald Trump’s vice-presidential candidate JD Vance has defended resurfaced comments in which he called Democratic politicians a “bunch of childless cat ladies with miserable lives”.

His remarks, made in 2021, have been roundly criticised this week, with Hollywood actress Jennifer Aniston among those to have hit out at the 39-year-old Republican.

“Obviously it was a sarcastic comment. People are focusing so much on the sarcasm and not on the substance of what I actually said,” Mr Vance told the conservative media personality Megyn Kelly on Friday.

“The substance of what I said, Megyn – I’m sorry, it’s true,” he added.

Mr Vance, who has three children, said he was not criticising people who do not have children in the interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, which he gave while running for the Senate.

“This is about criticising the Democratic Party for becoming anti-family and anti-children,” he told The Megyn Kelly Show.

“The simple point that I made is that having children, becoming a father, becoming a mother, I really do think it changes your perspective in a pretty profound way,” he said.

“I’m making an argument that our entire society has become sceptical and even hateful towards the idea of having kids.”

In the original interview, he questioned why some leading politicians did not have children. One of those he named was Kamala Harris, the presumptive Democratic nominee for November’s election, who is stepmother to her husband Doug Emhoff’s two children.

“The entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children,” he said at the time. “How does it make any sense we’ve turned our country over to people who don’t really have a direct stake in it?”

The Senator from Ohio said the country was being run “by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable too”.

On Friday, Mr Vance said: “I wish her step-children and Kamala Harris and her whole family the very best. The point is not that she’s lesser. The point is that her party has pursued a set of policies that are profoundly anti-child.”

Mr Vance made similar remarks against Democrats in a 2021 speech at the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, in which he also said his criticism was not directed at those who could not have children for biological or medical reasons.

Jennifer Aniston, who has spoken publicly about her struggles while trying to have children through in-vitro fertilisation (IVF), was among those who criticised his comments.

“I truly can’t believe that this is coming from a potential VP of the United States,” she said on Thursday.

Pete Buttigieg, who was another Democratic politician named by Mr Vance in the original interview, also addressed the comments earlier this week, speaking about adopting twins with his husband, Chasten.

“The really sad thing is he said that after Chasten and I had been through a fairly heart-breaking setback in our adoption journey,” Mr Buttigieg told CNN’s The Source programme.

Speaking to Fox News, Trump co-campaign chairman Chris LaCivita rejected any suggestion that Trump might regret his choice of running mate.

“JD was the best pick,” Mr LaCivita said. “The president loves him. We love him.”