A raft of global institutions – including major banks, media outlets and airlines – have reported suffering a mass IT outage.

The US state of Alaska has warned its emergency services are affected, while several of the country’s airlines have grounded their flights around the globe.

Australia – which has been particularly hard hit – has seen broadcast networks scrambling on air as systems failed and supermarkets crippled. Sky News UK went completely off air as a result of the issues.

The cause of the outage is unclear, but many of those impacted have linked it to Microsoft PC operating systems.

An official Microsoft 365 service update posted to X earlier in the day said ” we’re investigating an issue impacting users ability to access various Microsoft 365 apps and services”.

However, a Microsoft spokesperson told the BBC on Friday that “the majority of services were recovered” hours earlier.

A spokesperson for Australia’s Home Affairs Minister said the outage appears to be related to an issue at global cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike, and the country’s cybersecurity watchdog said there is no information to suggest it an attack.

“Our current information is this outage relates to a technical issue with a third-party software platform employed by affected companies,” they said in a statement.

Alaskan officials said many 911 and non-emergency call centres are not working properly.

United, Delta and American Airlines – which are all based in the United States – have issued a “global ground stop” on all of their flights. And in Australia, carriers Virgin Australia and Jetstar have also had to delay or cancel flights.

Australian telecom firm Telstra has said triple-0 call centres – the main emergency contact in the country – are not affected, but that it is working with other state emergency services providers to implement backup processes.

Social media users have reported queues at Australian stores like Woolworths, with payment systems downed, and trouble accessing financial institutions like the National Australia Bank.

Joe Biden’s campaign faced further pressure on Thursday amid reported concerns from Barack Obama about the presidential election, a darkening mood among Democrats and polls suggesting Donald Trump was pulling ahead.

Some Democrats painted a bleak picture. One senior party official told the BBC that many in the party felt Mr Biden’s stepping down was “inevitable”.

Polling on Thursday by the BBC’s US partner, CBS News, showed him five points behind Trump – the widest margin recorded this campaign.

But Mr Biden’s campaign batted away reports of high-level Democratic concern as “baseless”, insisting he would remain the nominee.

Mr Obama was reported by the Washington Post to have privately stated Mr Biden’s chances were greatly diminished. Spokespeople for the former president have declined to comment.

It followed several reports that former house speaker Nancy Pelosi and the two most senior Democrats in Congress, Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer, had advised Mr Biden to consider his candidacy for the good of the party. All have rejected the reports.

But a senior Democrat source told BBC News that the mood in Washington was grim, adding: “We are all waiting for the inevitable decision.”

Adam Smith, a Democratic congressman for Washington state, painted a similarly grim picture. Asked by BBC Radio 4’s The World Tonight whether the party was “coming to the end” of Mr Biden’s candidacy, he said: “That is my sense”.

“I mean, I don’t know. But without question, I think that is the direction that this is heading right now.”

Mr Biden has faced a torrid few weeks since his poor showing in the first presidential debate late last month. He is currently in isolation in Delaware while he recovers from a Covid infection.

By contrast, Donald Trump officially accepted his party’s presidential nomination at the Republican national convention in Milwaukee on Thursday evening.

He struck a confident tone in his first speech since surviving an assassination attempt. Delegates and supporters at the convention have been in high spirits all week.

Mr Biden has so far taken a defiant tone in response to Democratic pressure for him to step aside as his party’s candidate. He continues to enjoy the public support of many politicians, including members of the powerful Congressional black caucus.

Mr Schumer, the Senate Majority Leader and Mr Jeffries, the ranking Democrat in the House of Representatives, are reported to have told Mr Biden last week that their colleagues in Congress were “concerned” that his troubles would hit their own chances of re-election.

Mr Schumer said the reports were “idle speculation”, while Mr Jeffries said his was “a private conversation that will remain private”.

CNN meanwhile reported that Mrs Pelosi had told Mr Biden that polls show he cannot win. She later slammed the reporting as a “feeding frenzy”, but did not deny that a conversation with Mr Biden had taken place.

Jamie Raskin, a congressman from Maryland, wrote to Mr Biden, comparing him to a baseball pitcher at the end of his career – saying there was “no shame” in retiring “to the overflowing appreciation of the crowd when your arm is tired out”.

But TJ Ducklo, a Biden campaign senior adviser, slammed reports of grandee concern as “baseless conjecture from anonymous sources”.

“Joe Biden is his party’s nominee,” he wrote on X. “He’s running for re-election.”

Deputy campaign manager Quentin Fulks said Mr Biden was “not wavering on anything. The president has made his decision. I don’t want to be rude, but I don’t know how many more times we can answer that.”

Mr Biden has mild upper respiratory symptoms associated with Covid but does not have a fever, presidential doctor Kevin O’Connor said on Thursday,

The White House said he was expected to meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after he arrives in the US on Wednesday.

A High Security Alert has been issued for the whole of Bangladesh, as violent clashes between students and police continue.

The capital Dhaka is in the midst of a near-total internet blackout, with phone lines also down.

On Thursday evening, several thousand protestors stormed the state broadcaster BTV, vandalising furniture, smashing windows and lights and setting parts of it on fire.

Bangladesh’s information minister told the BBC that broadcasts had been stopped and most employees had left the building in the capital.

A post on BTV’s official Facebook page had earlier warned “many” were trapped inside the building, and appealed for help from the fire service to put the blaze out.

A senior BTV journalist, who didn’t want to be named, told the BBC: “The situation was so bad we didn’t have any other option but to leave the place. Some of our colleagues were trapped inside. I don’t know what happened to them.”

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina appeared on the network on Wednesday night, appealing for calm after days of violent protests which have left at least 19 people dead, possibly many more, and hundreds injured.

Students have been holding rallies demanding change to a system which reserves a third of public sector jobs for the relatives of veterans of the country’s war for independence from Pakistan in 1971.

The students are arguing that the system is discriminatory, asking for recruitment based on merit.

The government has been trying to quell the protests, on Thursday switching off the country’s mobile internet in an attempt to slow the students.

Instead, it became the deadliest day so far, according to news agency AFP. According to its count citing hospitals, a total of 32 people have died during the protests.

The BBC’s Bengali service has confirmed 19 deaths so far – 13 of them on Thursday. Among the dead was a 32-year-old journalist for the Dhaka Times.

Sheikh Hasina had condemned protesters’ deaths as “murder” in her Wednesday television appearance, but her words were largely dismissed by protest organisers, who rejected government offers of talks.

“The government has killed so many people in a day that we cannot join any discussions in the current circumstances,” said Nahid Iqbal, a leader of the anti-quota protest.

Another student, Aleem Khan, 22, told the BBC: “The Prime Minister is asking for an end to the violence with one hand whilst, with the other hand, attacking students using pro-ruling party groups and the police.”

Thursday saw tear gas and rubber bullets deployed by officers, as students created human blockades in the streets.

The students who stormed BTV had earlier “torched” a police station, according to an official at the network.

“They chased the police officers when they took refuge at the BTV office,” the official told AFP. “Angry protesters then caused mayhem here.”

Elsewhere, BBC Bengali spoke to a group of medical students who were taking shelter inside a medical college compound after they were attacked by pro-ruling party groups.

One of the students, Sumi, told the BBC: “I am here to protest against discrimination within the civil service and now that so many students have been killed by the police, I am also protesting against that.

“Our protest is peaceful, but the way in which we were attacked made me feel like we were going to be killed by pro-ruling party groups.”

Former North Korean diplomat Tae Yong-ho has been named the new leader of South Korea’s presidential advisory council on unification.

This makes him the highest-ranking defector among the thousands who have resettled in the South – and the first to be given a vice-ministerial job.

Tae, 62, was Pyongyang’s deputy ambassador to the United Kingdom before he fled to South Korea in 2016.

Pyongyang has denounced him as “human scum” and accused him of embezzling state funds and other crimes.

Mr Tae became the first former North Korean to win a seat in South Korea’s 2020 National Assembly.

He failed to secure a second term in parliamentary elections in April, but in his new role, he will be be advising South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol’s office on peaceful Korean unification.

“He is the right person to help establish a peaceful unification policy based on liberal democracy and garner support from home and abroad,” the presidential office said on Thursday.

Born in Pyongyang in 1962, Mr Tae entered the foreign service at the age of 27 and spent almost 30 years working under three generations of the ruling Kim dynasty.

He said in earlier statements that he left North Korea because he did not want his children to have “miserable lives”. He also cited disgust with Kim Jong Un’s regime and expressed admiration for South Korea’s democracy.

In a memoir published this year, Mr Tae wrote about the excesses of the North Korean elite and the depths of the personality cult built around the Kims.

Since his defection, he has advocated for the use of “soft power” to weaken the Kim regime and called for prisoner swaps between the North and the South.

Tensions between the Koreas have risen over the past few months, with Seoul resuming propaganda broadcasts towards the North on Friday, in response to Pyongyang floating thousands of trash-carrying balloons into the South.

Reports based on satellite imagery also suggest that North Korea may be strengthening its military presence and building walls along its border with the South.

As of December last year, some 34,000 individuals have defected from the North to the South, according to estimates from Seoul’s Unification Ministry.

Many do so by crossing into China and then to South Korea. In South Korea, they automatically receive citizenship and are given some resettlement money.

Earlier this week, Seoul’s spy agency cofirmed another high-profile defection of a former diplomat most recently stationed in Cuba.

Local reports identified the man as 52-year-old Ri Il Kyu and quoted him as saying that he fled because of “disillusionment with the North Korean regime and a bleak future”.

“Every North Korean thinks at least once about living in South Korea,” the Chosun Ilbo newspaper quoted him as saying.

Last Sunday, South Korea marked its very first North Korean Defectors’ Day, during which Mr Yoon Suk Yeol promised better financial support for defectors and tax incentives for companies that hire them.

After a tumultuous few weeks that have upended American politics, Donald Trump pitched a message of unity and strength as he accepted the Republican presidential nomination for the third time on Thursday night.

Trump appeared after Kid Rock delivered a version of his song American Bad Ass, an introduction from Ultimate Fighting Championship chief Dana White, a shirt-ripping endorsement from wrestling legend Hulk Hogan and a singalong version of his rally anthem God Bless the USA.

His name was written in giant lights behind him as he strode on stage.

But after that bombastic introduction, the former president seemed relatively subdued as he spoke – often veering off-script – to the Republican faithful for more than 90 minutes.

He told the hushed crowd in detail about the recent attempt on his life, suggesting he had been saved by divine intervention.

But despite stressing a message of national togetherness he could not resist sharp jibes at Democratic party leaders.

Here are five takeaways:

Trump began his speech by recounting his experience of last Saturday’s attack.

“As you already know, the assassin’s bullet came within a quarter of an inch of taking my life,” he told the assembled Republican delegates.

He said he turned his head slightly to view a chart about immigration projected on a teleprompter screen.

“In order to see the chart, I started to – like this – turn to my right, and was ready to begin a little bit further turn, which I’m very lucky I didn’t do, when I heard a loud whizzing sound and felt something hit me, really, really hard, on my right ear.

“I said to myself, ‘Wow, what was that – it can only be a bullet.'”

Trump called the Secret Service agents who rushed the stage “very brave”.

“I stand before you in this arena only by the grace of almighty God,” he said. “Many people say it was a providential moment. It probably was.”

He credited the crowd at the rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, for not panicking and causing a stampede.

“They just didn’t want to leave me, and you can see that love written all over their faces,” he said.

• Follow live updates on this story
• Melania Trump watches husband’s convention speech in rare appearance
• Republicans put abortion disagreements aside at ‘unity’ convention
• What Republicans want from a second Trump presidency
• Watch: Hulk Hogan and Melania join Trump at Republican convention

Although his speech contained sharp criticism of Joe Biden’s policies on several fronts, Trump made just one direct mention of his rival’s name, calling him one of the worst presidents in history, as he frequently does at rallies.

“The damage he has done to this country is unthinkable,” he said, “just unthinkable.”

Uncertainty continues to swirl around the future of Mr Biden’s candidacy. On Wednesday, he was diagnosed with Covid-19 and is recuperating at his home in Delaware.

Mr Biden has vowed to stay in the race, despite reports that leading Democrats, including Barack Obama, are now questioning his position, and a growing number of Congressional lawmakers have urged him to step aside for a new candidate.

Trump pledged to build the rest of the southern border wall, “most of which I have already built”. That claim isn’t accurate, with fewer than 500 miles constructed during his first term.

He also painted a picture of massive inflation, saying “groceries are up 50%, gasoline is up 60 to 70%, mortgage rates have quadrupled”.

Inflation is major issue to American voters, but since Mr Biden took office in January 2021 prices have risen by a total of about 20%.

Trump also mentioned at several points his baseless assertion that fraud in the 2020 election cost him the presidency.

The convention ended with the usual family gathering on stage. But Trump’s clan is more than just a show – they are now truly Republican power brokers with the potential makings of a dynasty.

Trump’s sons, Eric and Don Jr, were given high-profile speaking slots, and Don Jr was reportedly a key influence over his father’s vice-presidential pick.

Earlier in the week Eric’s wife, Lara Trump, took to the stage. As co-chair of the Republican National Committee, she will play a key role in the election campaign.

The convention also heard from little-known members of the clan, such as his eldest granddaughter, Kai Trump, a keen golfer. Aged 17, she will not be eligible to vote in November.

Other Trumps had much lower profiles. Melania Trump turned up on the final night in a rare public appearance, but she did not take to the podium to speak as US candidates’ wives usually do on such occasions.

Neither did Trump’s daughter Ivanka, who – with her husband Jared Kushner – only attended the convention on the final day. Once a close adviser to her father, she left politics after her father departed the White House.

Trump generally attempted to continue the overall theme of national unity that kept coming up this week at the party convention – but at several points he digressed into sharp attacks on Democrats and their policies.

Early on in the speech he told the crowd: “Together, we will launch a new era of safety, prosperity and freedom for citizens of every race, religion, colour, and creed.”

“I am running to be president for all of America, not half of America, because there is no victory in winning for half of America.”

Still, he could not resist ad-libbed lines criticising top Democrats and the leadership of the United Auto Workers, one of the country’s largest unions. In addition to his criticism of President Biden, he called Nancy Pelosi – the former House speaker – “crazy”.

Referring to the legal cases against him, he said: “They’ve got to stop that because they’re destroying our country.”

Trump also demanded that “the Democrat Party should immediately stop weaponising the justice system”.

Much as it has been throughout his political career, immigration was at the top of the agenda.

He called illegal immigration an “invasion that is killing hundreds of thousands of people a year” and promised the “largest deportation operation in the history of our country – even larger than that of President Dwight D Eisenhower many years ago”.

More than one million Mexican immigrants were deported from the US in 1954.

In a lengthy section of one of the longest convention speeches in memory, he blamed immigrants for crime, and said: “We have become a dumping ground for the world, which is laughing at us, they think we’re stupid.”

A US police officer has been fired for saying that an Indian student’s life was of “limited value” after she died last year.

The Seattle Police Department said that officer Daniel Auderer’s comments about Jaahnavi Kandula’s death were “vile” and callous”, The Seattle Times reported.

Kandula, 23, was fatally struck down in January by another police vehicle while she was crossing a street near her university.

Daniel Auderer – who was responding to the incident – was recorded laughing and saying that she was a “regular person” and the city should “just write a cheque”.

The footage was captured on his body camera while he had made a call to a colleague.

“But she is dead,” the officer was heard saying before laughing. “No, it’s a regular person. Yeah, just write a cheque,” he said, before laughing again.

“Eleven thousand dollars. She was 26, anyway. She had limited value,” he added.

The video was widely circulated on social media and sparked outrage online.

On Wednesday, Seattle Police Department’s interim chief Sue Rahr announced the policeman’s termination through a department-wide email.

His actions had brought shame on the entire department and the police profession, she wrote.

Interim chief Rahr added that his “cruel and callous laughter” and the pain it had inflicted on Kandula’s family could not outweigh Daniel Auderer’s good reputation among his colleagues and his years of service to the community.

“For me to allow the officer to remain on our force would only bring further dishonour to the entire department. For that reason, I am going to terminate his employment,” she said.

Daniel Audered had been placed under investigation after the incident.

The Office of Police Accountability – the agency that investigates police misconduct – had recommended his termination for unprofessional conduct and showing bias in recorded statements, the Seattle Times reported.

Jaahnavi Kandula was a graduate student at Northeastern University in Seattle.

The officer who rammed her with his patrol vehicle was going at 74mph (119km/h) and she was thrown more than 100ft (30m), US media reports said.

The Israeli military says it is investigating an apparent drone attack that hit central Tel Aviv in the early hours of Friday.

In a statement, it said an initial inquiry indicated the explosion had been caused by the falling of an “aerial target”, which was not intercepted because of human error.

Israeli emergency services say the explosion left one person dead and several lightly injured.

Yemen’s Houthi militants have claimed responsibility for the attack.

The group – which is backed by Iran – announced earlier on social media that they would reveal details about a military operation that had targeted Tel Aviv.

The Israeli military added it was increasing air patrols, while the city’s mayor said they were on high alert, local media reported.

“The whole building shook,” Alon, a local resident, told Haaretz.

“My neighbours’ windows shattered, so I was sure something had hit the building. It was only when I went outside that I realised that several buildings had been damaged.”

The incident also came after the Israeli military confirmed it had killed a senior commander of the Hezbollah militia in southern Lebanon.

Hezbollah and Israel have traded fire across the border since Hezbollah launched rockets a day after Israel began its military offensive on Gaza in response to Hamas’s deadly attack on Israel on 7 October.

Both Hezbollah and the Houthis say they are acting in solidarity with the Palestinians.

Donald Trump’s elusive wife Melania has appeared in public for the first time since the former president narrowly missed an assassin’s bullet.

Wearing Republican red she walked, alone, into the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee accompanied by classical music – a marked contrast from the country music anthems and rock ballads we’ve been hearing all week.

Glossy and glamorous, she looked more like she was walking down a catwalk than into a political convention. She seemed as inscrutable and distant as ever.

She joined him on stage after his lengthy acceptance speech, walking to the podium just before balloons rained down on thousands in the crowd. Donald Trump greeted her with a hug and the pair shared a kiss on the cheek.

He then grabbed her hand and walked across the stage as other members of the Trump family joined them.

Ever since her husband was first elected in 2016, Melania Trump has broken all the rules of normal American presidential politics.

In the White House during Trump’s first term, she was a reclusive figure compared to other first ladies, focusing on a narrow set of interests. The US national archives descibes her as having been an “ambassador for kindness” and an advocate for children’s issues.

And since her husband left office, she has refused to be seen by her husband’s side on many occasions when the public would expect her to be present.

She wasn’t there when he had his mugshot taken in Atlanta. She wasn’t there in New York when he became the first former president to be convicted of a crime. And she wasn’t there when he officially won his party’s presidential nomination, for the third time, on Monday.

• Follow live updates on this story
• Five takeaways from Trump’s convention speech
• Watch: ‘It can only be a bullet’ – Trump describes moment he was shot at
• Republicans put abortion disagreements aside at ‘unity’ convention
• The Trump family: A guide to an American dynasty

“Melania does what Melania wants,” said Mary Jordan, who wrote The Art of her Deal, a biography on the former first lady. “She is fiercely independent and won’t do something just because other people do it. She doesn’t feel any obligation to do it.”

We are now all accustomed to the fact that she doesn’t turn up at many of Donald Trump’s events, but on Monday, when he walked into the arena here in Milwaukee to a roaring welcome, greeted like a Messiah after his survival of the assassination attempt, her absence felt particularly obvious.

It was certainly noticed by the Republicans gathered here, but that didn’t mean they weren’t excited for her appearance, when it finally came.

Melania is the most enigmatic first lady in modern history and we rarely hear what she thinks.

An exception was the lengthy statement she released after the shooting targeting her husband, which read as though she may have dictated it directly.

“A monster who recognized my husband as an inhuman political machine attempted to ring out Donald’s passion – his laughter, ingenuity, love of music, and inspiration,” she said.

“The core facets of my husband’s life – his human side – were buried below the political machine. Donald, the generous and caring man who I have been with through the best of times and the worst of times.”

It is traditional at party conventions for the candidate’s spouse to give a speech and tell heavily-scripted anecdotes about family life.

On Wednesday evening, Usha Vance – the wife of Trump’s newly-minted running mate JD Vance – did just that. She called her husband a “meat and potatoes” man, but – in an apparent sign of his devotion – said he now cooked her Indian vegetarian food.

And while Donald Trump’s oldest son Don Jr, middle son Eric, daughter-in-law Lara and granddaughter Kai have all spoken at this convention, Melania has declined the opportunity to speak. She very clearly does not do anything she does not want to do.

When she did introduce her husband at the 2016 convention when he first ran for president – things went horribly wrong.

She was criticised for plagiarising the speech Michelle Obama gave in 2008 when she introduced her husband Barack at the Democratic convention. Melania’s speechwriter later accepted the blame.

First ladies are always heavily scrutinised for the image they project, the causes they adopt, and the clothes they wear.

But Melania Trump is the first who was previously a professional model. She looks fabulous in photographs and is well aware of the power of her image. By offering so few photo opportunities, she makes each one infinitely more powerful.

“She is very savvy and has cultivated the mystery woman mystique by going underground and then when she does come out, it’s a much bigger deal,” says Ms Jordan.

“She doesn’t appear very often, but she does show up when Donald Trump really needs her.”

After Saturday’s attempt on his life, Melania felt MIA. But on Thursday night, as she slowly walked the stairs to the VIP section, paused at the top and waved to all corners of the arena, she showed her mastery of the power of an image.

Her absence may, at times, be her strength.

The father of the gunman who tried to assassinate Donald Trump called police before the Saturday shooting because he was concerned about his son, according to media reports.

The call is one of a number of red flags revealed in recent days that law enforcement was notified about before gunshots rang out at Trump’s Pennsylvania rally on Saturday. Law enforcement – specifically the US Secret Service – has faced mounting questions about security with calls by some lawmakers that the head of the agency should resign.

Matthew Crooks’ father called police because he was worried about his son and his whereabouts, a law enforcement source told the BBC’s news partner CBS. It’s unclear when the call was made but it was before the shooting.

It is unclear what his father told police. Fox News reported that Crooks’ parents, Mary and Matthew, told officers “they were worried” about their son and that he had disappeared without any advance notice.

His parents are both co-operating in the investigation, the FBI has said.

Law enforcement sources have told US media that the gunman had conducted online searches into a major depressive disorder and the Democratic National Convention scheduled for August.

He had also saved images of Trump, President Joe Biden, Attorney General Merrick Garland, FBI Director Chris Wray and a member of the British Royal Family, according to reports from the Washington Post and Associated Press.

Investigators are still trying to trace a potential motive for the 20-year-old gunman, who was shot dead by Secret Service snipers after opening fire. His attack left one member of the audience dead and several others wounded.

The preliminary investigation has found that Crooks climbed onto the roof of a nearby building outside the rally by climbing onto an air conditioning unit. The units were located next to the building, the unnamed official told CBS.

• Witness says he saw gunman on roof near Trump rally
• Trump gunman flagged by Secret Service 20 minutes before shooting
• Trump to address buoyant Republicans in first speech since shooting

A counter sniper flagged a suspicious man using a rangefinder to the US Secret Service some 20 minutes before the attack started, according to members of Congress briefed by law enforcement this week.

A rangefinder is an instrument that can be used to help measure the distance to a target.

Local police initially spotted the gunman, who was acting strangely and had a backpack, about an hour before the shooting. They lost him in the crowd, but he was spotted again by the sniper.

Officers were alerted by radio about a suspicious person and searched the area where Crooks had perched his rifle on a rooftop.

Finding no one, one officer decided to check the roof. The officer was hoisted on to the roof by a colleague and came face-to-face with the suspect, Butler Township Manager Tom Knights told CBS.

The suspect pointed a rifle at him and the officer, who was in a “defenceless” position, let go from the roof and fell to the ground.

He then alerted others to the gunman. Moments later, the shooting started.

• What we know about the Trump attacker
• Democratic mood darkens as Biden faces new pressure

No weapon was spotted by law enforcement when Crooks was seen in the crowd and officials are trying to determine how no one saw his AR-style rifle.

Investigators are examining various theories, including that he had stashed it earlier in the day near the air conditioning units or that he was somehow able to smuggle it inside his backpack.

Retracing his footsteps in the hours before the attack will be key to understanding how the shooting unfolded, officials say.

Officials told CBS that the semi-automatic rifle he used had been legally purchased by Crook’s father in 2013.

When the gunman was found, he was carrying a remote detonator and his car contained explosives, law enforcement sources have told US media.

It continues to remain unclear what motivated the attack, and whether any political ideology is to blame.

• Around 17:11: local officers spot Crooks and notify other law enforcement but then lose track of him, according to briefings between police and lawmakers
• 17:45: A counter sniper officer calls in with a report and a photo of a man – who turned out to be Crooks – acting suspiciously around a building near the rally, according to local media reports
• 17:52: US Secret Service become aware of a suspicious person with a rangefinder on the ground, according to sources familiar with the briefing to lawmakers
• 18:03: Trump begins speaking at the rally
• Around 18:09: Rallygoers spot Crooks on the roof and attempt to tell law enforcement
• 18:11: Crooks opens fire. He is fatally shot by Secret Service counter snipers 26 seconds later

Edna Wales, a Republican delegate from Florida, does not support abortion. As a Roman Catholic, the procedure goes against her moral values.

But her policy position, she told the BBC at a street fair at the Republican National Convention, was that it should be left to the states. “I truly feel that,” she said.

Given that outlawing abortion nationwide has been an animating issue for religious Republicans for decades, it was a surprising position to hear at this weeklong gathering. Yet Ms Wales’ stance is the same one that Donald Trump, the party’s nominee for president, now espouses.

The former president has boasted of appointing a US Supreme Court bench that overturned the constitutional right to abortion. The 2022 decision upended the landscape of abortion access in the US, with some Republican-led states swiftly outlawing or restricting the procedure while other Democratic-controlled states took steps to protect access.

After months of back and forth, Trump has made something of a public retreat from the issue, saying abortion should now be left to the states. While the party appears in lockstep with their nominee – a key theme of this week’s convention has been “unity” – under the surface, some daylight has emerged between Trump’s Republican Party and the most ardent members of the anti-abortion movement who want to see the procedure ended nationally.

“I think where, potentially, President Trump currently is, and the pro-life movement is, it could be a schism,” said Marc Short, who was chief-of-staff to former vice-president Mike Pence – one of the party’s staunchest anti-abortion politicians.

• Abortion rate highest since 2002, report finds
• Supreme Court allows emergency abortions in Idaho

Trump’s position may well be a political calculation, given polls suggest the majority of Americans support abortion access. The end of Roe v Wade has also given Democrats a potent political issue to campaign on: protecting access. They performed better than expected during the 2022 midterm elections, and many pollsters and pundits credited the abortion issue for this.

Trump’s supporters at the convention in Milwaukee told the BBC they appreciated the pragmatism at play. “I understand how he has to be so careful of how he handles [abortion] because of his run for president,” Ms Wales said.

She said she believed pressure from the right on Trump was unfair, because “a lot of people are against abortion. You know, a lot of people are for abortion, and that is a very touchy subject”.

Internal tensions over the issue spilled into the open with the release of the 2024 Republican Party platform, which outlines its policies and positions on various key issues.

Its abortion section in 2016, and again in 2020, promised to appoint anti-abortion judges, to axe federal funding for Planned Parenthood and called for a “human life amendment” to be added to the Constitution.

This year, the abortion section underwent a heavy edit.

It cut the abortion section from 775 words to 90. The four-sentence pledge promises to stand for life and oppose “late-term abortion”.

• Follow live updates on this story
• Five takeaways from Trump’s convention speech
• Watch: ‘It can only be a bullet’ – Trump describes moment he was shot at
• Melania Trump watches husband’s convention speech in rare appearance
• The RNC and Trump’s 90-minute speech… in 90 seconds

It also states the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution “guarantees that no person can be denied Life or Liberty without Due Process, and that the States are, therefore, free to pass Laws protecting those Rights”. It then adds: “Because of us, that power has been given to the States and to a vote of the People.”

Republicans in Milwaukee expressed little issue with the new language and fell in line behind their nominee. “I agree it has to be up to the states,” said Maria Rodriguez of Georgia, who described herself as a “pro-life Christian” who switched to the Republican Party due to its opposition to abortion.

“I just don’t feel like it’s something that should be done nationally,” said Jackie Canon, a delegate from Louisiana. “I feel like it should be done state by state.”

But the changes also inspired some anger.

Mr Short told the BBC religious conservatives were “disappointed” by the platform position on abortion, and some had viewed the end of Roe v Wade as a “first step”.

His former boss, Mike Pence, was one of them, calling the platform a “profound disappointment” that removed “historic pro-life principles that have long been the foundation of the platform”.

“They rolled us,” Gail Ruzicka, who was on the RNC platform committee, told WISN Milwaukee. “I’m extremely disappointed that we do not have any pro-life language.”

At a glance, the 2024 abortion platform seemed to reflect Trump’s new, more moderate stance that puts the onus on the states. Those paying close attention saw something different.

“This particular platform is not going to win any prizes for eloquence,” said Kristi Hamrick, vice-president of policy for Students for Life, one of the largest anti-abortion organisations in the country. But, she said, the platform gave us “what we asked for”.

“The 14th Amendment is the legal foundation upon which we need to build a new, more pro-life America,” she said. “That’s a win.”

The 14th Amendment has, for years, been raised by anti-abortion activists to claim that foetuses should be granted the same rights as other Americans. In this thinking, a federal abortion ban already exists within the constitution, and no new amendment or law is needed.

“Invoking the 14th Amendment to protect ‘every life’ is clearly a call to foetal personhood,” Rachel Rebouché, dean and law professor at Temple University Law school, and a leading scholar in reproductive health law. “That’s got to be the end game.”

In other words, what looked like a softening of language on abortion could in fact be read as a possible pathway to outlawing it nationwide.

Most national leaders in the anti-abortion movement joined Ms Hamrick in applauding the platform. Marjorie Dannenfelser of Susan B Anthony Pro-Life America, John Mize of Americans United for Life and Ralph Reed of the Faith and Freedom Coalition all signed a letter pledging their support for the platform.

Experts say any confusion was likely intentional, a marker of a party juggling a socially conservative base, while also working to appeal to moderate voters who largely support abortion access.

“In reality there are these two mutually incompatible constituencies that the GOP is trying to appeal to on abortion,” said Mary Ziegler, a historian and law professor at the University of California, Davis, and a leading expert on the abortion debate.

“I think the platform was designed to placate all these people… and you can’t really do that by being clear,” she said. “I think confusion is the best strategy that’s emerged.”

Even sceptical Republicans here in Milwaukee are falling in line behind Trump on abortion, a sign of the grip he holds on the Republican Party.

Former US Senator Rick Santorum, a prominent anti-abortion politician, told the BBC on the convention floor that he was “obviously disappointed” in the new party platform “but Donald Trump is a strong pro-life president”.

He anticipated there may be more arguments over abortion in the party in the years to come, but with Trump about to be crowned the nominee, he said now was not the time.

“I’m not sure it’s much of a battle right now,” he said.

“If Greece is the cradle of the Olympics, Paris represents its home.”

So begins a somewhat partisan account of the city’s long association with the Games, published ahead of its failed bid (to London) for 2012.

Paris, wrote the author hopefully, is where the Olympic movement “rediscovered its vigour after an interminable historical amnesia,” and where there took place “so many important steps in its modern-day growth.”

Step one was the founding congress of the International Olympic Committee, chaired by the French aristocrat Pierre de Coubertin at Sorbonne university in June 1894.

And then came steps two and three: the second and eighth Olympic Games, both organised in the French capital.

Today there are still traces of both those Games. Here and there, if you look, their “legacy” is still very much alive.

Exhibit one is the magnificent vélodrome in the Bois de Vincennes known as the Cipale (short for Municipale), which continues in use 124 years after the first Paris Games.

Cycling was one of the most popular sports back in 1900, but the Cipale was also used for gymnastics, football, rugby … and cricket.

It was on this hallowed turf that the (until now) only ever Olympic cricket match took place – between England and France.

England won – but that still means France is the title holder of the Olympic silver. That will presumably end in 2028 when cricket returns for Los Angeles – but who knows?!

There have been renovations at La Cipale over the years but apart from the roof, the viewing stand is unchanged.

So is the concrete track with its raised curves at either end, and there – forgotten behind the bushes in the corner – the original urinals, the relief of generations of hard-pressed cycling fans!

The 1900 Games were strange ones, and are only just accepted today as part of the Olympic canon.

Talking of cannons, one of the unusual events was artillery firing. There were also boules, fishing, crossbow-firing, barrel-rolling and long-distance ballooning. The winner of that one landed near Kyiv.

The difficulty was that the Games took place at exactly the same time as the Paris World Fair, and many people – including competitors – thought the sports were part of the World Fair.

But they served an important purpose in establishing – after the first Greek edition in 1896 – that the Games were to be international, and not forever Hellene.

And they helped advance the growing idea that sports were something to be taken seriously, and not just a frivolous pastime.

The work of the French scientist Etienne Jules Marey was significant in this regard. Famous for his photographic studies of sportsmen in action, he persuaded many 1900 athletes to perform at his outdoor studio (under what is now Court 1 at Roland-Garros).

Less brilliantly, he also sent round an anthropological questionnaire to Olympic participants seeking elucidation on such vital points as: the colour of their beards; the physical strength of their grandfathers; and whether they’d been fed as babies on breast or bottle.

The 1900 Games were the first to see the participation – in golf, tennis, sailing and croquet – of (a few) women. By 1924, the sports of swimming, diving and fencing had been added, and 135 women took part.

The main legacy of the 1924 Games is the Colombes stadium in the north-western Paris suburbs, where the opening ceremony and much of the subsequent sporting action were staged.

The stadium – built on a former horse-racing track – went on to have a famed life, becoming for much of the last century France’s pre-eminent football and rugby venue, before being superseded by the Parc des Princes and then the Stade de France.

Today it is very much still standing – and will be used in these Olympics as the venue for field hockey events.

“For French people who love sport, Colombes is a place full of emotion,” says sports historian Mickael Delepine. “So many famous people have run and kicked and tackled here. It is full of ghosts.”

For British sports fans, the ghosts are of sprinters Harold Abrahams and Eric Liddell who won the golds here that were later immortalised in the film Chariots of Fire.

The film faithfully recreated the stadium at a venue in Liverpool. In Colombes, the track is exactly where it was 100 years ago, overlooked by the same iron stand.

The1924 Games were the first to take advantage of advances in communication – and winning athletes for the first time became household names. The Flying Finns Paavo Nurmi and Ville Ritola dominated middle-and long-distance racing, and long-jumper William de Hart-Hubbard was the first black man to win an event.

Colombes also saw victory for the Uruguayan football team – setting up its triumph at the first World Cup on home turf in 1930. And there was a famously dirty rugby final between the USA and France, whose violence contributed to the game being excluded from future Olympics. (The USA won).

The 1924 Olympics were also the first to display the Olympic motto – Citius, Altius, Fortius (Faster, Higher, Stronger); and the first to use a 50-metre swimming pool with lanes painted on the bottom.

Among the heroes availing themselves of this innovation was one Johnny Weissmuller – later to find fame as cinema’s Tarzan.

It all happened at the purpose-built Tourelles swimming pool in the 20th arrondissement of Paris. A century on the pool is still there, and in use as a practice venue for today’s Olympic stars.

I’m flying a Typhoon fighter over the Irish Sea and I’ve got a big problem.

There’s a hostile jet on my tail, and no matter how I push the joystick, or play with the throttle, this enemy is still there.

The threat is represented by a black triangle on the computer screen ahead of me that also displays a Typhoon cockpit. I’m in a series of three dogfights on a simulator and the results are not good.

That annoying little image won’t leave my six o’clock position, and I lose 3-0 to the ominous black triangle.

The ace I’m up against is an AI dogfighter developed by Turkish aerospace engineers commissioned by defence giant BAE Systems.

They’ve been working on an AI co-pilot that could save a real life aviator in a dogfight, and will find its way into sophisticated warfighting simulators.

One of the engineers, Emre Saldiran, is studying at Cranfield University in the UK, which has strong aerospace links. He describes how the AI co-pilot picked up fighting tactics by a process of trial and error. “We reinforce the AI’s learning with more and more data put into the dogfight simulator.”

One of his objectives is to address the information overload fighter pilots endure. His colleague Mevlϋt Uzun assures me that AI takes a lot of learning to beat humans. “The AI made millions of mistakes. Teaching it is like guiding a child.”

But once trained the AI can offer valuable advice, according to Mr Uzun.

“The AI can tell a pilot to slow down or speed up. And it can evaluate an emerging dogfight and warn of a 70% probability the pilot will lose if they get into that fight.”

So the AI warns pilots of situations likely to end in their jet being shot down and it takes that decision in milliseconds. But the design team aren’t making any big claims about it replacing a pilot.

“It’s just a piece of code, you could run it on your phone,” says Mr Uzun. Today their program is running off a normal laptop PC.

The US Air Force revealed its own, rather more elaborate, AI dogfighter in 2023. It was demonstrated flying an F-16 jet in combat manoeuvres.

This flight was the culmination of years of work aimed at creating an AI that could beat a living pilot.

Eight US AI companies went head to head in 2020 during a three-day competition known as the AlphaDogfight Trials Event. This involved simulated online dogfights between the competing AI programs and an experienced USAF fighter pilot.

The winning program beat the pilot repeatedly, and Brett Darcy of US defence shop Shield AI was on the three-strong team that built it.

He remembers the AlphaDogfight event vividly. “The competitors ranged from the big boys like [defence giant] Lockheed Martin down to us.”

They started out by pitching their AI pilot against a target flying straight and level, “a sitting duck” says Mr Darcy.

They progressed to fighting other AI pilots, getting the AI to think about tactics. Certain rules, such as the length of each dogfight (usually five minutes) and the maximum speed they could attain were set.

But there was no requirement to abide by USAF doctrine. “Our AI used a head-on merge with the target as an opportunity to fire guns,” he says.

This novel tactic went against accepted air fighting doctrine. The AI had learned to reject rules when it could spot a better move.

Points were awarded with each combat, the AI evolving to match successful outcomes. Multiple copies of the AI were generated by this evolution as the competing AI pilots measured up to each other’s changing tactics.

These heats left Mr Darcy’s group to oppose an experienced USAF fighter pilot wearing a VR headset that put him in the cockpit of an F-16.

Thanks to victories scored against that human pilot, Mr Darcy’s small team was invited into the government’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa), which develops technology for the US Department of Defense.

Specifically, they joined Darpa’s Air Combat Evolution (ACE) project.

When Darpa’s AI-driven F-16 took to the air it was controlled during combat by a distant descendant of the software Mr Darcy’s team wrote in 2020.

AI evolves at a startling pace. Mr Darcy says this was “a many times removed grandson of the AlphaDogfighter AI.”

Despite a bewildering rate of development AI has a long way to go. The ACE jet has a safety pilot on board for take-off and landing who can switch off the AI at any time.

For an AI pilot to be effective it has to win a lot of trust and be able to integrate into wider forces around it.

Intriguingly Mr Darcy says a big question is how an AI pilot can “explain itself on the ground”, debriefing human controllers on its actions and motives.

The UK AI dogfighter is very thrifty compared to its US cousin. “They are teaching the AI to fly an aircraft” says Dr Uzun. “We don’t need to do that.”

Paring the project down by concentrating on combat moves alone meant the Cranfield team worked fast. “What they took weeks to do we did in two days.”

One man whose career spans the rise of digital defence tools is Michael Hull. Now a principal technologist at BAE Systems in Warton, Lancashire, he joined the business as an apprentice electronics engineer in 1990.

Dramatic changes he has witnessed, include the way innovations that once emerged from inside defence companies now travel in the other direction. “We pull technology like AI into defence from the public domain.”

So, the AI dogfighter’s frugal heritage includes air-to-air combat tactics downloaded from Wikipedia, leaving classified information well out of the picture and contributing to the pace of the project.

How did the quick assembly British AI dogfighter fare against a real Top Gun?

Ben Westoby-Brooks flew Typhoons for the RAF and works for BAE Systems. He went up against the AI dogfighter and defeated it.

The AI dogfighter is no substitute for thousands of hours flying fast jets in very demanding circumstances. But it feeds into realistic online combat exercises and could reduce pilot overload in a genuine cockpit.

I’m at the Sverdlovsk Regional Courthouse in Yekaterinburg, just metres away from Courtroom 5A where US journalist Evan Gershkovich is on trial.

The Wall Street Journal reporter, who’s 32, is facing espionage charges, rejected by him, his employers and the White House.

He’s the first Western journalist on trial for spying since the Cold War.

But I’ll be honest with you: I have little sense of what’s happening inside that room. Evan’s trial is being held behind closed doors.

That means no media, no friends and family, no diplomats, no members of the public allowed in.

The journalists here are having to rely on snippets through the day from the court press secretary:

“The court’s taking a 15-minute break.”

“The hearing has resumed.”

“The hearing is over for the day.”

When the hearing ends, the press secretary announces that proceedings will resume tomorrow, Friday, with closing arguments.

It feels like the end of this trial is near.

Evan Gershkovich’s employer has denounced this as a “sham trial”.

“This bogus accusation of espionage will inevitably lead to a bogus conviction for an innocent man who would then face up to 20 years in prison for simply doing his job,” The Wall Street Journal’s editor-in-chief Emma Tucker wrote last month.

Russian security services claim that Mr Gershkovich was gathering classified information about a Russian defence plant near Yekaterinburg and spying for the CIA.

Evan, his newspaper and the US government fiercely reject the accusation. The WSJ has accused Russia of “stockpiling Americans” to trade them for Russians jailed abroad.

Referring to American citizens arrested in Russia, this week the US ambassador to the United Nations accused President Vladimir Putin of “treating human beings as bargaining chips”.

Evan Gershkovich’s trial began last month. Thursday’s hearing, the second, had been scheduled for 13 August.

Suddenly everything’s speeded up. In an unexpected move, the court brought the hearing forward to Thursday.

We’ve been allowed inside the courthouse and are close to the courtroom.

Not too close, though, The corridor leading to 5A has been cordoned off and a masked police officer is on guard to make sure we don’t get any nearer. A court official has instructed us to stay right here.

At one point we, the BBC, become the centre of attention.

“May I take a photo of you for my news outlet?” a local journalist asks me.

“If it’s OK with you I’d rather you didn’t,” I reply, “but thank you for checking first”.

“No problem,” he replies, before proceeding to take lots of photos of me and posting online. Within minutes local and national news sites are reporting that the BBC is here at the courthouse.

We sit waiting for news from 5A. Every so often, Mr Gershkovich’s defence lawyer exits the courtroom and walks past. But she won’t take questions.

More waiting. Suddenly a local lawmaker strides down the corridor and heads for the exit. This is the man who had told Russian state media that he had met Evan Gershkovich during the journalist’s reporting trip to Yekaterinburg.

So, after just two court hearings, it feels as if we’re nearing the end.

And then what?

If, as expected, the judge declares Mr Gershkovich guilty, the maximum possible sentence is 20 years in a penal colony.

But Moscow has indicated it may be open to doing a deal with the Americans to release him.

The Russians barely hide the fact that they view a jailed American as currency, as a bargaining chip, as an opportunity to extract one of their own from a foreign jail.

Moscow knows that America is prepared to undertake prisoner swaps in order to release its own citizens.

We know Russia and America have been discussing the possibility. We also know that Donald Trump has boasted that he’s the man to secure Mr Gershkovich’s release.

So, have Moscow and Washington done some kind of deal to bring Evan home?

Watch this space.

As Lara Trump strode on to centre stage at the Republican National Convention on Tuesday night, it was a moment that symbolised a change of guard in the Trump family that has taken place since his defeat in the 2020 presidential election.

Wearing a black dress and a shimmering USA flag brooch, Ms Trump – wife to Donald Trump’s son Eric – used the primetime spotlight to sell voters on her father-in-law’s softer edges, focusing on his role as a grandfather to her two young children.

And the party faithful roared as she raised a fist and spoke about a gunman’s attempt on his life on Saturday, mirroring Trump’s actions on the rally stage in Butler, Pennsylvania, after a bullet narrowly missed his head.

“Maybe you got to see a side of Donald Trump on Saturday that you were not sure existed, until you saw it with your own eyes,” she told the crowd.

Ms Trump, 41 and now the co-chair of the Republican Party, was hand-picked by her father-in-law for that role as he runs for another White House term and stands atop a party apparatus firmly under his grip.

Ms Trump, husband Eric and his older brother Don Jr have emerged as the family’s leading voices in Donald Trump’s campaign against US President Joe Biden, and they are some of the most influential figures in his political orbit.

• A quick guide to the Trump family
• Can Biden be replaced as nominee? It’s not easy

By contrast, Ivanka Trump, Trump’s eldest daughter, and her husband Jared Kushner – a power couple who enjoyed a high profile in the White House after Trump’s 2016 win – have kept their distance from politics over the last four years.

Lara was the first family member to officially speak at this convention and her presence has ignited interest in not just her role in the family but also any further political ambitions.

“I thought she was fantastic,” said Alina Habba, Trump’s legal spokeswoman who shot to prominence defending him in his civil sexual assault case in New York.

“I think she spoke from the heart. She spoke about moms. She spoke about him being a grandfather – things that only she can speak about.”

Long-time observers expect Lara Trump’s prominence in the family to only grow.

“Her speech was her introduction to the nation in a big way because while she’s had roles in campaigns previously and while she’s been a part of Trump’s inner circle and family orbit for the last eight years, this is the first time she is positioned in a role that has real power inside the Republican Party,” said Eric Cortellessa, a reporter who recently interviewed Ms Trump for a Time magazine profile.

“And she’s in a position where she’s out to prove herself as not just an effective surrogate for Trump, but a political operator. And we’re going to see that play out in the next four months as she’s co-chairing the RNC.”

Michele Merrell, a Republican state committeewoman for Broward county in Florida, said the appointment of Ms Trump in the RNC had made a “world of difference”.

“The fundraising is going through the roof… we were not doing very well before in that. The change in leadership has been all the difference,” she said. “It’s reignited the party, it really has.”

Some see parallels between the role of Lara and Eric Trump in this presidential campaign, and that of Jared and Ivanka in 2016. However, Eric has a prominent role in the Trump Organization and would probably act as the eyes and ears for his father’s sprawling business empire if Trump was to win the White House.

Lara is positioned to continue her ascent in the Republican Party, but there’s another Trump who might also have aspirations of building a political dynasty, said Eric Cortellessa.

“Don Jr says he’s not interested in politics, but everybody else around him, including his sister-in-law and brother, think that he’s got a real itch for politics,” he said.

“In fact Lara Trump, said to me in a recent interview – ‘if there’s any Trump who is going to run for higher office, look out for Don’.”

Eric and Don Jr are a constant presence around their father, and have rallied around him since the attempt on his life. They were also reportedly some of the loudest voices when it came to picking JD Vance as Trump’s running mate.

Don Jr, a favourite of the Make America Great Again (Maga) base, appeared tearful on Monday night when Donald Trump walked into the convention hall to a hero’s welcome.

Speaking at an event on the sidelines of the convention, he spoke charismatically of his father’s softer side – and like his sister-in-law sold him as a grandfather and family man.

He even introduced his 17-year-old daughter, Kai Trump, onto stage, who described Donald Trump as a “normal grandpa”.

“When I made the high honor roll,” she said, “he printed it out to show his friends how proud he was of me.”

It’s a public messaging strategy that attempts to blunt Democratic attacks on Trump as an authoritarian threat to democracy should he return to office.

“We’re having perhaps world-changing types of conversations and he’s interrupting and talking about his grandchildren for 15 minutes,” Don Jr told the room.

But the emphasis on the unity and love of the family does not hide that some key members are a missing presence so far at the Republican National Convention.

Trump’s wife Melania rarely appears in public with her husband and has not been seen publicly by his side since the rally shooting.

Their son Barron, 18, has not yet appeared at the convention either. He has been kept out of the public eye for years but stood to receive a standing ovation at a recent Trump rally in Miami, signalling that he might have a political future too.

Linda Stoch, the vice-president of Club 47 USA, which hosted Trump for his 78th birthday in June, dismissed the idea that Melania and Barron would not appear at the convention.

“His family have always been with him, from day one,” she said.

When asked if she saw any particular Trump family member ushering in the next phase of Maga politics, Ms Stoch said we would have to wait and see.

She then paused, and added: “Maybe Barron.”

Speeding along a road in the foothills of the Swiss Alps, Fariba Hashimi rises out of the saddle of her £15,000 bike and works the pedals even harder to close the gap between her and her sister, Yulduz, a few metres up ahead.

Training rides like this are the last steps on a journey that began with the two siblings from rural Afghanistan racing in disguise on borrowed bikes, before having to escape when the Taliban came to power.

Now they’re on their way to the Olympic Games in Paris. And, despite a Taliban ruling banning women from sport, they will compete under their country’s flag.

In a world where many elite athletes take up sport almost as soon as they can walk, Fariba, 21, and Yulduz, 24, came late to cycling.

They grew up in Faryab, one of the most remote and conservative provinces in Afghanistan, where it was practically unheard of to see women on bicycles.

Fariba was 14 and Yulduz 17 when they saw an advert for a local cycle race and decided to take part.

There were two problems; they didn’t have a bike and they didn’t know how to ride.

The sisters borrowed a neighbour’s bike one afternoon. After a few hours, they felt they had got the hang of it.

Their next challenge was to avoid their family finding out what they were doing because of the stigma around women taking part in sport in conservative areas of Afghanistan.

The sisters used false names and covered themselves up, wearing big baggy clothing, large headscarves and sunglasses so people didn’t recognise them.

Race day dawned, and incredibly the sisters came first and second.

“It felt amazing,” says Fariba. “I felt like a bird who could fly.”

They kept on entering races and kept on winning until their parents eventually found out when they saw pictures of them in the local media.

“They were upset at first. They asked me to stop cycling,” Fariba says. “But I didn’t give up. I secretly continued,” she smiles.

It didn’t come without dangers – people tried to hit them with cars or rickshaws as they rode or threw stones at them as they cycled past.

“People were abusive. All I wanted to do was win races,” says Yulduz.

And the situation was about to get worse.

In 2021, four years after the sisters started riding, the Taliban retook control of the country and clamped down on women’s rights, restricting their access to education and limiting how they could travel. They also banned women from taking part in sport.

Yulduz and Fariba had dreamed of one day competing in the Olympics. Now they knew if they wanted to race at all they had to leave Afghanistan.

Using contacts in the cycling community they managed to secure seats on an Italian evacuation flight, along with three teammates.

Once in Italy, the women joined a cycling team and got proper coaching for the first time.

“Back in Afghanistan, we didn’t have professional training,” says Yulduz. “All we used to do was take our bikes and ride.”

But leaving their homeland and family was not easy.

“The biggest thing for me is to be away from my mother,” says Fariba. “I never thought that because of cycling I would be separated from my brothers and sisters.”

“I’ve sacrificed a lot.”

The Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan also threw into doubt whether the country would even be allowed to compete at the Olympics.

National Olympic Committees are supposed to select athletes for the Games without any government interference.

As the Taliban’s ban on women playing sport breaks this rule, by preventing women being chosen for Afghanistan’s team, it led to calls for the country to be banned from the Olympics – as it had been when the militant group was last in power.

But the International Olympic Committee wanted to find a way to allow Afghan women to compete at the Games.

Behind the scenes talks took place between the heads of Afghan sporting bodies, including some now living in exile, about putting together a special team to represent the country in Paris.

As time ticked by, and Paris 2024 got ever closer, it looked as if no Afghan athletes would be at the Games.

Then, in June, International Olympic Committee announced that it had arranged for a special gender-equal team representing Afghanistan to go the Paris Olympics. It would be made up of three women and three men. And both the sisters are among them.

“This was a big surprise for both of us,” says Fariba.

“We always dreamt of taking part in the Olympic Games, this is our dream come true,” Yulduz adds.

“Despite all the rights that were taken from us we can show that we can achieve great success, we will be able to represent 20 million Afghan women.”

The IOC say no Taliban officials will be allowed to attend Paris 2024.

The sisters are preparing for the Olympic road race event while riding for a development team run and funded by the UCI and based at the World Cycling Centre, an ultra-modern facility in the Swiss town of Aigle.

The elite facilities are a world away from the dusty roads in Afghanistan where Yulduz and Fariba first taught themselves to cycle.

But their spirit remains the same.

“We are each other’s strength – I support her and she supports me,” says Yulduz.

“Our achievement belongs to Afghanistan,” adds Fariba. “This belongs to Afghanistan women. I am going to the Olympics because of them.”

Joe Biden’s campaign has been thrust into a pressure cooker of doubt, as panic and worry about his election chances pour in from the highest levels of the Democratic party.

In recent days, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi have all reportedly expressed concerns in private to Mr Biden about his candidacy.

Even his former running mate, former President Barack Obama, has reportedly said Mr Biden’s chances of winning the election have greatly diminished.

A 6 July letter from high-ranking congressman Jamie Raskin was made public on Thursday, where the Maryland representative compared the president to a baseball pitcher whose arm has “tired out”.

“There is no shame in taking a well-deserved bow to the overflowing appreciation of the crowd,” Mr Raskin said.

Mr Biden, 81, has repeatedly and defiantly declared he is “not going anywhere”, urging his party to refocus on the task of defeating Donald Trump.

But the calls to exit are nearing a crescendo as Democratic politicians, donors and voters speak out against the president’s candidacy.

It began five days after the June 27 debate with Lloyd Doggett, a 15-term Texas congressman, who said that it was time for Mr Biden to “make the painful and difficult decision to withdraw”.

Mr Doggett, 77, who sits on the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, said he respected “all that President Biden has achieved” but that the Democrat had failed to “effectively defend his many accomplishments” on the debate stage.

Less than two weeks later, the first US senator stepped forward to publicly ask Biden to drop out. Peter Welch, of Vermont, told the Washington Post: “We need him to put us first, as he has done before,” he said. “I urge him to do it now.”

Then 18 July, less than 24 hours after the White House announced that Biden contracted Covid-19, on 17 July, a second senator came forward. Jon Tester, from Montana, said: “I believe President Biden should not seek re-election to another term.”

The two senators and congressman Doggett are joined by a growing list of others from the House of Representatives:

• Arizona left-winger Raul Grijalva told The New York Times that the campaign was in a “precarious” state and Mr Biden had to now “shoulder the responsibility” of holding the White House.
• Seth Moulton of Massachusetts, a 2020 presidential candidate, told WBUR that he no longer had confidence that Mr Biden could beat Trump.
• Mike Quigley, an Illinois congressman involved in planning the Democratic National Convention, made a direct plea to the president on MSNBC, saying that his “legacy is set” but it was time to “let someone else do this”.
• Angie Craig, a Minnesota Democrat representing a swing district, fretted over Mr Biden’s debate performance and his “lack of a forceful response” since then, and warned “there is only a small window left” to choose a replacement.
• Adam Smith of Washington, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, said Mr Biden could no longer “clearly, articulately, and strongly make his case to the American people”.
• Centre-left New Jersey congresswoman Mikie Sherrill wrote that “the stakes are too high – and the threat is too real – to stay silent” because Democrats “cannot allow Trump to return to the White House”.
• Pat Ryan, from a vulnerable seat in the state of New York, urged Mr Biden “to deliver on an earlier promise to be a bridge to a new generation of leaders” and step aside “for the good of our country”.
• Long-time Oregon leftist Earl Blumenauer, who is retiring at the end of this term, said he hoped Mr Biden would end his bid because the 2024 race was “not just about extending his presidency but protecting democracy”.
• Hillary Scholten, from a Michigan swing district, told The Detroit News: “We just have too much at stake in this election to sit on the sidelines and be silent while we still have time to do something.”
• Another Illinois centrist, Brad Schneider, whose district hosts next month’s party convention, said Mr Biden should “heroically pass the torch to a new generation… to guide us to the future he has enabled”.
• Ed Case from Hawaii broke ranks with the rest of the state’s Congressional delegation and issued a statement that Biden should not continue his candidacy. “Difficult times and realities require difficult decisions,” he wrote, adding “my guidepost is what is the best way forward for our country”.
• Greg Stanton, who represents a district in the key swing state of Arizona, said that he believes it is time for Mr Biden to drop out of the race “for the sake of American democracy, and to continue make progress on our shared priorities”.
• Jim Himes, a Connecticut congressman since 2009, said on X (formerly Twitter) that Democrats must put forth the strongest candidate possible to confront Trump and “I no longer believe that is Joe Biden”.
• California congressman Scott Peters has also made his position official. ”Today I ask President Biden to withdraw,” he said in a statement. “The stakes are high, and we are on a losing course.”
• Another Illinois congressman Eric Sorensen said, “I am hopeful President Biden will step aside in his campaign for President”, in a statement on X. “In 2020 Joe Biden ran for President with the purpose of putting country over party. Today, I am asking him to do that again,” he added.
• Washington state congresswoman Marie Gluesenkamp Perez suggested Mr Biden should step aside, saying: “I doubt the President’s judgement about his health, his fitness to do the job”.
• California congressman Mike Levin joined the chorus, saying: “I believe the time has come for President Biden to pass the torch”.
• Colorado congresswoman Brittany Pettersen called Mr Biden “a good man who has served this country faithfully and admirably”, but “my sons and my constituents can’t suffer the consequences of inaction at this critical moment”.
• California’s likely next Senator Adam Schiff, who developed a national profile as a top Trump critic, urged Mr Biden to “pass the torch” and “secure his legacy of leadership by allowing us to defeat Donald Trump”.
• California congressman Jim Costa was the fourth to use the phrase “pass the torch”, thanking Mr Biden while showing him the door.

Other prominent figures have also joined the growing chorus:

• New York Lt Gov Antonio Delgado, a former member of the House of Representatives, said Mr Biden “can add to his legacy, showing his strength and grace, by ending his campaign”.
• Ex-Ohio congressman Tim Ryan, former housing secretary Julian Castro and self-help guru Marianne Williamson – all former primary opponents of Mr Biden – have called on him to withdraw.
• George Clooney, the Hollywood actor and major party fundraiser, said in The New York Times that Mr Biden could not beat time. His article was titled: “I Love Joe Biden. But We Need a New Nominee.”

Senior Democrats, including party leaders in Washington, have held their fire in public and straddled the fence on whether Mr Biden should continue his 2024 bid.

Nancy Pelosi, the former House Speaker, had previously declined to directly answer whether she wanted him to keep running. She did so on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, the president’s favourite news programme.

“I want him to do whatever he decides to do,” she said, adding that “time is running short” for him to make that call.

CNN reported that since then, Mrs Pelosi had met with Mr Biden privately and told him that polls show he cannot win in November. She later slammed the reporting as a “feeding frenzy”, but did not deny that a conversation with Mr Biden had taken place.

Her replacement as House Democratic chief, Hakeem Jeffries, has said he is having “candid, comprehensive and clear-eyed” conversations with his members and that he will meet his leadership team to discuss next steps.

Mr Jeffries reportedly also met with Mr Biden in recent days and expressed concern.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has publicly said he is “for Joe” but, per Axios, is privately signalling to donors that he is open to replacing Mr Biden.

He, like Mr Jeffries, has met with the president in recent days and reportedly told the Mr Biden about his worries that his candidacy could negatively impact Democrats in other races.

Jaime Harrison, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, has continued to defend Biden, telling MSNBC “we’ve got to stop the nitpicking”.

Many politicians have carefully parsed their words, expressing respect for the president’s accomplishments in office while noting that his poor polling and concerning public appearances raise significant questions.

Montana’s Jon Tester and Ohio’s Sherrod Brown are two of the most vulnerable senators up for re-election. While Mr Brown has largely dodged questions on the topic, Mr Tester says Mr Biden “has got to prove” that he is up to the job.

Colleagues have echoed those concerns. Patty Murray, of Washington state, said Mr Biden “must do more to demonstrate he can campaign strong enough to beat Donald Trump”. Michael Bennet, of Colorado, warned that Mr Trump was on track to win “by a landslide, and take with him the Senate and the House”.

Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey has also publicly aired their doubts since the debate.

But the president is not without his backers.

Vice-President Kamala Harris has not wavered in standing by her boss, as have potential replacement candidates such as Gavin Newsom, California’s governor, and his Michigan and Maryland contemporaries Gretchen Whitmer and Wes Moore.

The powerful Congressional Black Caucus, which represents about one quarter of House Democrats, and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus have recently reaffirmed their backing for Mr Biden. But some of their members are reportedly not on board.

Also standing by Mr Biden, and enthusiastically so, are outspoken figures on the Hill such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a New York congresswoman, two-time presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, and John Fetterman, a Pennsylvania senator.

From causing seismic activity at Harry Styles concerts to Swifties boosting the UK economy during the Eras Tour, the power of teenage female pop fans shouldn’t be underestimated.

For playwright Yve Blake, the danger of dismissing these youngsters is the inspiration behind her new comedy musical Fangirls.

Following the life of 14-year-old Edna, who is obsessed with a boy band resembling One Direction, Fangirls explores “what it means to love something without apology”.

The idea came to Blake in 2015 after she witnessed a pivotal moment in the lives of thousands of teenage girls – Zayn Malik left One Direction.

Despondent and heartbroken fans across the world were shown weeping inconsolably – but for Blake, something even more interesting caught her eye.

“People started calling these young girls crazy, hysterical and psycho,” the writer explains. “I asked myself the question – would the same words be used to describe male football fans?

“The girls screaming at the top of their lungs at Taylor Swift concerts are cringe, but men running around with their tops off and fist pumping the air because England scored a goal are just supporting their country.

“It seems like there’s definitely a double standard there.”

But the musical doesn’t just praise fangirls.

“It’s a lot more nuanced than that,” Blake explains. “We look at the dark side of worshipping celebrities as well as praising the decision for girls to make an empowered choice to love something free of judgement.

“I’d describe it as a glittery trojan horse.”

The hit musical premiered in 2019 in Blake’s home country, Australia, and has been met with critical acclaim across three runs.

Its stint at the Sydney Opera House was awarded five stars by Time Out, which said “it deals with the exquisite pain of being a teenager, of having little agency and lesser respect from the world around you”.

In a four-star review, the Guardian called it “witty and agile” and said it “balances serious social reflections with a loving twinkle in its eye”.

Blake says the show “retains its fearlessness, cheekiness and naughtiness from Australia, but the screws have really been tightened”.

She is both excited and nervous about bringing the show to the Lyric theatre in Hammersmith, west London.

“Brits are definitely a lot more repressed than Aussies, so I don’t know if they can match the energy of previous runs,” Blake says.

At one point in the show, the stage is transformed into a concert venue and audience participation is encouraged.

“Theatre is so polite normally, but Fangirls is about unleashing your feral excitement and screaming like you’re 14 again.”

In Australia, Blake had no problem getting the audience involved – she tells the BBC that an older lady in the front row accidentally flashed the actors because she “was so in the moment and excitedly dancing”.

Playing the lead role of Edna is Jasmine Elcock, who got a golden buzzer on Britain’s Got Talent in 2016.

The singer was 14 when she reached the talent show final, and this is her first major acting role.

“I’m excited for people to be able to see the world through the eyes of a young girl,” Elcock says.

As a self-proclaimed fangirl, Elcock can relate to the feelings and emotions that the play delves into.

“I am a mega fangirl and at the moment I am absolutely obsessed with Little Simz. I can spend hours in my bedroom dancing and singing along to her,” she says.

In comparison, writer Blake explains she was a “victim of my own cringe growing up”.

“I was socially embarrassed to be a fangirl so I definitely repressed it as a teenager,” she says.

“As an adult that’s what made me interested in exploring this topic – I woke up to the fact that my cringe was a symptom of internalised misogyny because it’s only the things that teenage girls like that are ever called cringeworthy.”

It seems that for Blake, this play is a way for her to tell her younger self, and all teenage girls out that, that it’s OK to let lose and embrace being a fangirl.

A nesting seagull added almost £500,000 to the cost of knocking down Newport Centre.

A council report showed the demolition scheme spent £460,000 more than planned last year.

The authority blamed delays on the bird that resulted in additional costs.

The council confirmed about 40 days were lost because of the nesting bird.

The report said the overspend will be paid for by “Coleg Gwent and a revenue budget contribution from the councils in 2023-24”.

Costs it said, were being finalised.

Newport Centre, which was in Usk Way, has now been knocked down in preparation for a new Coleg Gwent campus.

Demolition began in April 2023 at the site, which for decades was one of the city’s main leisure destinations.

It included a swimming pool, and hosted big gigs with David Bowie and Elton John among stars to play there.

The council said it was focused on delivering a new leisure centre for Newport that will be built about 100m from the old site.

Cambodia has welcomed 60 baby Siamese crocodiles – a hatching record for the endangered species in this century, conservationists say.

They have called it a “real sign of hope”, after more than 20 years of efforts to revive the reptile’s numbers in the remote Cardamom Mountains.

The olive green freshwater reptile has a distinct bony crest at the back of its head – by some estimates, it can grow up to 3m or nearly 10ft.

Locals discovered five nests in May and the baby crocs were born at the end of June, conservationists said on Thursday.

Siamese crocodiles were once widespread throughout much of South East Asia.

But decades of hunting and habitat loss have tuned them into what conservations classify as “critically endangered” species. There are just 400 of them left in the world – and most of those are in Cambodia.

Given their dwindling population in the wild, “the hatching of 60 new crocodiles is a tremendous boost,” said Pablo Sinovas, who leads the Cambodia programme of conservation group Fauna & Flora.

He added that this was hugely encouraging for “collaborative conservation efforts” – in this case the efforts have involved conservationists, local NGOs and the Cambodian government.

The crocs were feared to be extinct until they were rediscovered in Cambodia in 2000.

Mr Sinovas says it Fauna & Flora has since worked with local officials to set up a programme to breed them in captivity before releasing them into suitable habitats across the Cardamom Mountains.

Local community wardens patrol crisscross mountains in regular patrols to ensure that the crocodiles are safe after release.

Since 2012, the programme has successfully let 196 Siamaese crocs back into the wild.

In May locals discovered nests in an area where the crocodiles had not been released before, suggesting that the species have been breeding in their natural habitat.

The conservation team then dispatched people to make sure the nests were protected round the clock – until all the eggs hatched, bringing 60 baby Siamese crocs into the world.

There has been outrage in Italy after a female tourist in Florence was pictured miming a lewd act on a statue of Bacchus, the Roman god of wine and excess.

In the photos – which were shared online by the social media account Welcome To Florence – the woman can also be seen kissing the life-size statue at night-time.

The Bacchus stands on a plinth on a street corner near the famous Ponte Vecchio bridge and is a modern replica of the 16th Century work by sculptor Giambologna. The original is kept in the nearby Bargello museum.

The photos sparked angry reactions from social media users, some of whom called for the woman’s arrest.

“This is the result of years of attempts at turning Florence into Disneyland,” said another.

Patrizia Asproni, the president of Confcultura, an association that promotes Italy’s cultural heritage, told Italian media that these “repeated shows of rudeness and barbarity” take place “because everyone feels entitled to do whatever they want with impunity”.

Ms Asproni called for the application of the “Singapore model” with “tight checks, sky-high fines and zero tolerance” for bad behaviour.

Antonella Rinaldi, Florence’s archaeology and fine arts superintendent, said: “Tourists are welcome here but they need to respect our artworks, be they originals or replicas.”

“Although I doubt this lady – whom I condemn – even knows the difference,” she added.

Florence is one of the world’s foremost tourist destinations.

In 2023, around 1.5 million people visited the city – which has a population of just 382,000 – between June and September.

Local residents have long struggled with the huge influx of tourists, which in the summer months turns Florence’s narrow streets into steady streams of people.

The so-called “overtourism” phenomenon has prompted several cities around the world to make changes to the way they welcome tourists.

Last month, the mayor of Barcelona pledged to eliminate short-term tourist lets in the city within five years, while several hotspots – like Venice or Japan’s Mount Fuji – have started to introduce daily charges to try to limit numbers.

A collection of 3,404 eggs have been seized in Australia after a European operation into the illegal bird trade.

Investigators discovered the haul – believed to be worth A$400,000 to A$500,000 (£207,000 – £259,000) – at a property in Granton, Tasmania on 9 July.

The eggs had been blown – or hollowed out – meaning they only had ornamental value.

A 62-year-old man was being investigated but no arrests had been made, according to officials.

Environmental and wildlife crime has become one of the world’s largest and most profitable crime sectors and continues to grow as it pushes many species to the brink of extinction.

It is expected that the Australian suspect will appear in court at a later date for offences in contravention of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Act 1999.

“[The man] is alleged to have been involved in the collection and harvesting of bird eggs from the wild and trading of both Australian native and CITES-listed bird eggs with people overseas,” a spokesperson from the federal Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water (DCCEEW) said.

CITES-listed means a species is listed in the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), an international agreement between governments that aims to protect endangered plants and animals from international trade.

Analysis of the eggs is now underway to confirm what species they belong to, but they are believed to include rare and threatened species facing a high extinction risk.

Investigators believe they include eggs from the forty-spotted pardalote, which is found only on Tasmania’s Bruny Island, the swift parrot and the shy albatross.

The eggs in this collection were all blown or hollowed eggs, meaning the egg white and yolk had been removed.

In 2023, European authorities launched an investigation in relation to the illegal harvesting, collecting, trading, buying and selling of bird eggs within Europe and internationally.

A number of search warrants were undertaken resulting in the seizure of over 56,000 eggs.

CITES estimates international wildlife trade is worth billions of dollars – ranging from live animals, to products derived from them.

More than 40,000 species are covered by the agreement, with more than 180 countries agreeing, including Australia.

Tasmanian ecologist Dr Sally Bryant told ABC News that egg collecting “was probably happening more than any of us realise”.

She said: “We are well aware of these sorts of activities, but they’re very, very outdated — they are morally, ethically, legally corrupt.”

Collections of this size were put together by “skilled operators” over “many years”, she added.

The interference of threatened and migratory birds can carry a penalty of seven years imprisonment, a fine of A$138,600 or both.

The export of Australian native specimens, including eggs, and the export or import of specimens, including eggs, on the CITES list has a maximum penalty of 10 years’ imprisonment, a fine A$330,000, or both.

The possession of CITES-listed specimens, including eggs, can carry a penalty of five years imprisonment, a fine of A$330,000 or both.

Tanya Plibersek, Minister for the Environment and Water, said: “Illegal trafficking and wildlife crime is fast becoming a threat for many of our species that are already at risk of extinction.

“We have to stamp out this terrible trade which sees our native animals captured in the Aussie bush and sent overseas to be sold.”

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

A drug has increased the lifespans of laboratory animals by nearly 25%, in a discovery scientists hope can slow human ageing too.

The treated mice were known as “supermodel grannies” in the lab because of their youthful appearance.

They were healthier, stronger and developed fewer cancers than their unmedicated peers.

The drug is already being tested in people, but whether it would have the same anti-ageing effect is unknown.

The quest for a longer life is woven through human history.

However, scientists have long known the ageing process is malleable – laboratory animals live longer if you significantly cut the amount of food they eat.

Now the field of ageing-research is booming as researchers try to uncover – and manipulate – the molecular processes of ageing.

The team at the MRC Laboratory of Medical Science, Imperial College London and Duke-NUS Medical School in Singapore were investigating a protein called interleukin-11.

Levels of it increase in the human body as we get older, it contributes to higher levels of inflammation, and the researchers say it flips several biological switches that control the pace of ageing.

The researchers performed two experiments.

• The first genetically engineered mice so they were unable to produce interleukin-11
• The second waited until mice were 75 weeks old (roughly equivalent to a 55-year-old person) and then regularly gave them a drug to purge interleukin-11 from their bodies

The results, published in the journal Nature, showed lifespans were increased by 20-25% depending on the experiment and sex of the mice.

Old laboratory mice often die from cancer, however, the mice lacking interleukin-11 had far lower levels of the disease.

And they showed improved muscle function, were leaner, had healthier fur and scored better on many measures of frailty.

I asked one of the researchers, Prof Stuart Cook, whether the data was too good to be believed.

He told me: “I try not to get too excited, for the reasons you say, is it too good to be true?

“There’s lots of snake oil out there, so I try to stick to the data and they are the strongest out there.”

He said he “definitely” thought it was worth trialling in human ageing, arguing that the impact “would be transformative” if it worked and was prepared to take it himself.

The big unanswered questions are could the same effect be achieved in people, and whether any side effects would be tolerable.

Interleukin-11 does have a role in the human body during early development.

People are, very rarely, born unable to make it. This alters how the bones in their skull fuse together, affects their joints, which can need surgery to correct, and how their teeth emerge. It also has a role in scarring.

The researchers think that later in life, interleukin-11 is playing the bad role of driving ageing.

The drug, a manufactured antibody that attacks interleukin-11, is being trialled in patients with lung fibrosis. This is where the lungs become scarred, making it harder to breathe.

Prof Cook said the trials had not been completed, however, the data suggested the drug was safe to take.

This is just the latest approach to “treating” ageing with drugs. The type-2 diabetes drug metformin and rapamycin, which is taken to prevent an organ transplant being rejected, are both actively being researched for their anti-ageing qualities.

Prof Cook thinks a drug is likely to be easier for people than calorie restriction.

“Would you want to live from the age of 40, half-starved, have a completely unpleasant life, if you’re going to live another five years at the end? I wouldn’t,” he said.

Prof Anissa Widjaja, from Duke-NUS Medical School, said: “Although our work was done in mice, we hope that these findings will be highly relevant to human health, given that we have seen similar effects in studies of human cells and tissues.

“This research is an important step toward better understanding ageing and we have demonstrated, in mice, a therapy that could potentially extend healthy ageing.”

Ilaria Bellantuono, professor of musculoskeletal ageing at the University of Sheffield, said: “Overall, the data seems solid, this is another potential therapy targeting a mechanism of ageing, which may benefit frailty.”

However, he said there were still problems, including the lack of evidence in patients and the cost of making such drugs and “it is unthinkable to treat every 50-year-old for the rest of their life”.

A raft of global institutions – including major banks, media outlets and airlines – have reported suffering a mass IT outage.

The US state of Alaska has warned its emergency services are affected, while several of the country’s airlines have grounded their flights around the globe.

Australia – which has been particularly hard hit – has seen broadcast networks scrambling on air as systems failed and supermarkets crippled. Sky News UK went completely off air as a result of the issues.

The cause of the outage is unclear, but many of those impacted have linked it to Microsoft PC operating systems.

An official Microsoft 365 service update posted to X earlier in the day said ” we’re investigating an issue impacting users ability to access various Microsoft 365 apps and services”.

However, a Microsoft spokesperson told the BBC on Friday that “the majority of services were recovered” hours earlier.

A spokesperson for Australia’s Home Affairs Minister said the outage appears to be related to an issue at global cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike, and the country’s cybersecurity watchdog said there is no information to suggest it an attack.

“Our current information is this outage relates to a technical issue with a third-party software platform employed by affected companies,” they said in a statement.

Alaskan officials said many 911 and non-emergency call centres are not working properly.

United, Delta and American Airlines – which are all based in the United States – have issued a “global ground stop” on all of their flights. And in Australia, carriers Virgin Australia and Jetstar have also had to delay or cancel flights.

Australian telecom firm Telstra has said triple-0 call centres – the main emergency contact in the country – are not affected, but that it is working with other state emergency services providers to implement backup processes.

Social media users have reported queues at Australian stores like Woolworths, with payment systems downed, and trouble accessing financial institutions like the National Australia Bank.

After a tumultuous few weeks that have upended American politics, Donald Trump pitched a message of unity and strength as he accepted the Republican presidential nomination for the third time on Thursday night.

Trump appeared after Kid Rock delivered a version of his song American Bad Ass, an introduction from Ultimate Fighting Championship chief Dana White, a shirt-ripping endorsement from wrestling legend Hulk Hogan and a singalong version of his rally anthem God Bless the USA.

His name was written in giant lights behind him as he strode on stage.

But after that bombastic introduction, the former president seemed relatively subdued as he spoke – often veering off-script – to the Republican faithful for more than 90 minutes.

He told the hushed crowd in detail about the recent attempt on his life, suggesting he had been saved by divine intervention.

But despite stressing a message of national togetherness he could not resist sharp jibes at Democratic party leaders.

Here are five takeaways:

Trump began his speech by recounting his experience of last Saturday’s attack.

“As you already know, the assassin’s bullet came within a quarter of an inch of taking my life,” he told the assembled Republican delegates.

He said he turned his head slightly to view a chart about immigration projected on a teleprompter screen.

“In order to see the chart, I started to – like this – turn to my right, and was ready to begin a little bit further turn, which I’m very lucky I didn’t do, when I heard a loud whizzing sound and felt something hit me, really, really hard, on my right ear.

“I said to myself, ‘Wow, what was that – it can only be a bullet.'”

Trump called the Secret Service agents who rushed the stage “very brave”.

“I stand before you in this arena only by the grace of almighty God,” he said. “Many people say it was a providential moment. It probably was.”

He credited the crowd at the rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, for not panicking and causing a stampede.

“They just didn’t want to leave me, and you can see that love written all over their faces,” he said.

• Follow live updates on this story
• Melania Trump watches husband’s convention speech in rare appearance
• Republicans put abortion disagreements aside at ‘unity’ convention
• What Republicans want from a second Trump presidency
• Watch: Hulk Hogan and Melania join Trump at Republican convention

Although his speech contained sharp criticism of Joe Biden’s policies on several fronts, Trump made just one direct mention of his rival’s name, calling him one of the worst presidents in history, as he frequently does at rallies.

“The damage he has done to this country is unthinkable,” he said, “just unthinkable.”

Uncertainty continues to swirl around the future of Mr Biden’s candidacy. On Wednesday, he was diagnosed with Covid-19 and is recuperating at his home in Delaware.

Mr Biden has vowed to stay in the race, despite reports that leading Democrats, including Barack Obama, are now questioning his position, and a growing number of Congressional lawmakers have urged him to step aside for a new candidate.

Trump pledged to build the rest of the southern border wall, “most of which I have already built”. That claim isn’t accurate, with fewer than 500 miles constructed during his first term.

He also painted a picture of massive inflation, saying “groceries are up 50%, gasoline is up 60 to 70%, mortgage rates have quadrupled”.

Inflation is major issue to American voters, but since Mr Biden took office in January 2021 prices have risen by a total of about 20%.

Trump also mentioned at several points his baseless assertion that fraud in the 2020 election cost him the presidency.

The convention ended with the usual family gathering on stage. But Trump’s clan is more than just a show – they are now truly Republican power brokers with the potential makings of a dynasty.

Trump’s sons, Eric and Don Jr, were given high-profile speaking slots, and Don Jr was reportedly a key influence over his father’s vice-presidential pick.

Earlier in the week Eric’s wife, Lara Trump, took to the stage. As co-chair of the Republican National Committee, she will play a key role in the election campaign.

The convention also heard from little-known members of the clan, such as his eldest granddaughter, Kai Trump, a keen golfer. Aged 17, she will not be eligible to vote in November.

Other Trumps had much lower profiles. Melania Trump turned up on the final night in a rare public appearance, but she did not take to the podium to speak as US candidates’ wives usually do on such occasions.

Neither did Trump’s daughter Ivanka, who – with her husband Jared Kushner – only attended the convention on the final day. Once a close adviser to her father, she left politics after her father departed the White House.

Trump generally attempted to continue the overall theme of national unity that kept coming up this week at the party convention – but at several points he digressed into sharp attacks on Democrats and their policies.

Early on in the speech he told the crowd: “Together, we will launch a new era of safety, prosperity and freedom for citizens of every race, religion, colour, and creed.”

“I am running to be president for all of America, not half of America, because there is no victory in winning for half of America.”

Still, he could not resist ad-libbed lines criticising top Democrats and the leadership of the United Auto Workers, one of the country’s largest unions. In addition to his criticism of President Biden, he called Nancy Pelosi – the former House speaker – “crazy”.

Referring to the legal cases against him, he said: “They’ve got to stop that because they’re destroying our country.”

Trump also demanded that “the Democrat Party should immediately stop weaponising the justice system”.

Much as it has been throughout his political career, immigration was at the top of the agenda.

He called illegal immigration an “invasion that is killing hundreds of thousands of people a year” and promised the “largest deportation operation in the history of our country – even larger than that of President Dwight D Eisenhower many years ago”.

More than one million Mexican immigrants were deported from the US in 1954.

In a lengthy section of one of the longest convention speeches in memory, he blamed immigrants for crime, and said: “We have become a dumping ground for the world, which is laughing at us, they think we’re stupid.”

A US police officer has been fired for saying that an Indian student’s life was of “limited value” after she died last year.

The Seattle Police Department said that officer Daniel Auderer’s comments about Jaahnavi Kandula’s death were “vile” and callous”, The Seattle Times reported.

Kandula, 23, was fatally struck down in January by another police vehicle while she was crossing a street near her university.

Daniel Auderer – who was responding to the incident – was recorded laughing and saying that she was a “regular person” and the city should “just write a cheque”.

The footage was captured on his body camera while he had made a call to a colleague.

“But she is dead,” the officer was heard saying before laughing. “No, it’s a regular person. Yeah, just write a cheque,” he said, before laughing again.

“Eleven thousand dollars. She was 26, anyway. She had limited value,” he added.

The video was widely circulated on social media and sparked outrage online.

On Wednesday, Seattle Police Department’s interim chief Sue Rahr announced the policeman’s termination through a department-wide email.

His actions had brought shame on the entire department and the police profession, she wrote.

Interim chief Rahr added that his “cruel and callous laughter” and the pain it had inflicted on Kandula’s family could not outweigh Daniel Auderer’s good reputation among his colleagues and his years of service to the community.

“For me to allow the officer to remain on our force would only bring further dishonour to the entire department. For that reason, I am going to terminate his employment,” she said.

Daniel Audered had been placed under investigation after the incident.

The Office of Police Accountability – the agency that investigates police misconduct – had recommended his termination for unprofessional conduct and showing bias in recorded statements, the Seattle Times reported.

Jaahnavi Kandula was a graduate student at Northeastern University in Seattle.

The officer who rammed her with his patrol vehicle was going at 74mph (119km/h) and she was thrown more than 100ft (30m), US media reports said.

Joe Biden’s campaign faced further pressure on Thursday amid reported concerns from Barack Obama about the presidential election, a darkening mood among Democrats and polls suggesting Donald Trump was pulling ahead.

Some Democrats painted a bleak picture. One senior party official told the BBC that many in the party felt Mr Biden’s stepping down was “inevitable”.

Polling on Thursday by the BBC’s US partner, CBS News, showed him five points behind Trump – the widest margin recorded this campaign.

But Mr Biden’s campaign batted away reports of high-level Democratic concern as “baseless”, insisting he would remain the nominee.

Mr Obama was reported by the Washington Post to have privately stated Mr Biden’s chances were greatly diminished. Spokespeople for the former president have declined to comment.

It followed several reports that former house speaker Nancy Pelosi and the two most senior Democrats in Congress, Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer, had advised Mr Biden to consider his candidacy for the good of the party. All have rejected the reports.

But a senior Democrat source told BBC News that the mood in Washington was grim, adding: “We are all waiting for the inevitable decision.”

Adam Smith, a Democratic congressman for Washington state, painted a similarly grim picture. Asked by BBC Radio 4’s The World Tonight whether the party was “coming to the end” of Mr Biden’s candidacy, he said: “That is my sense”.

“I mean, I don’t know. But without question, I think that is the direction that this is heading right now.”

Mr Biden has faced a torrid few weeks since his poor showing in the first presidential debate late last month. He is currently in isolation in Delaware while he recovers from a Covid infection.

By contrast, Donald Trump officially accepted his party’s presidential nomination at the Republican national convention in Milwaukee on Thursday evening.

He struck a confident tone in his first speech since surviving an assassination attempt. Delegates and supporters at the convention have been in high spirits all week.

Mr Biden has so far taken a defiant tone in response to Democratic pressure for him to step aside as his party’s candidate. He continues to enjoy the public support of many politicians, including members of the powerful Congressional black caucus.

Mr Schumer, the Senate Majority Leader and Mr Jeffries, the ranking Democrat in the House of Representatives, are reported to have told Mr Biden last week that their colleagues in Congress were “concerned” that his troubles would hit their own chances of re-election.

Mr Schumer said the reports were “idle speculation”, while Mr Jeffries said his was “a private conversation that will remain private”.

CNN meanwhile reported that Mrs Pelosi had told Mr Biden that polls show he cannot win. She later slammed the reporting as a “feeding frenzy”, but did not deny that a conversation with Mr Biden had taken place.

Jamie Raskin, a congressman from Maryland, wrote to Mr Biden, comparing him to a baseball pitcher at the end of his career – saying there was “no shame” in retiring “to the overflowing appreciation of the crowd when your arm is tired out”.

But TJ Ducklo, a Biden campaign senior adviser, slammed reports of grandee concern as “baseless conjecture from anonymous sources”.

“Joe Biden is his party’s nominee,” he wrote on X. “He’s running for re-election.”

Deputy campaign manager Quentin Fulks said Mr Biden was “not wavering on anything. The president has made his decision. I don’t want to be rude, but I don’t know how many more times we can answer that.”

Mr Biden has mild upper respiratory symptoms associated with Covid but does not have a fever, presidential doctor Kevin O’Connor said on Thursday,

The White House said he was expected to meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after he arrives in the US on Wednesday.

Former North Korean diplomat Tae Yong-ho has been named the new leader of South Korea’s presidential advisory council on unification.

This makes him the highest-ranking defector among the thousands who have resettled in the South – and the first to be given a vice-ministerial job.

Tae, 62, was Pyongyang’s deputy ambassador to the United Kingdom before he fled to South Korea in 2016.

Pyongyang has denounced him as “human scum” and accused him of embezzling state funds and other crimes.

Mr Tae became the first former North Korean to win a seat in South Korea’s 2020 National Assembly.

He failed to secure a second term in parliamentary elections in April, but in his new role, he will be be advising South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol’s office on peaceful Korean unification.

“He is the right person to help establish a peaceful unification policy based on liberal democracy and garner support from home and abroad,” the presidential office said on Thursday.

Born in Pyongyang in 1962, Mr Tae entered the foreign service at the age of 27 and spent almost 30 years working under three generations of the ruling Kim dynasty.

He said in earlier statements that he left North Korea because he did not want his children to have “miserable lives”. He also cited disgust with Kim Jong Un’s regime and expressed admiration for South Korea’s democracy.

In a memoir published this year, Mr Tae wrote about the excesses of the North Korean elite and the depths of the personality cult built around the Kims.

Since his defection, he has advocated for the use of “soft power” to weaken the Kim regime and called for prisoner swaps between the North and the South.

Tensions between the Koreas have risen over the past few months, with Seoul resuming propaganda broadcasts towards the North on Friday, in response to Pyongyang floating thousands of trash-carrying balloons into the South.

Reports based on satellite imagery also suggest that North Korea may be strengthening its military presence and building walls along its border with the South.

As of December last year, some 34,000 individuals have defected from the North to the South, according to estimates from Seoul’s Unification Ministry.

Many do so by crossing into China and then to South Korea. In South Korea, they automatically receive citizenship and are given some resettlement money.

Earlier this week, Seoul’s spy agency cofirmed another high-profile defection of a former diplomat most recently stationed in Cuba.

Local reports identified the man as 52-year-old Ri Il Kyu and quoted him as saying that he fled because of “disillusionment with the North Korean regime and a bleak future”.

“Every North Korean thinks at least once about living in South Korea,” the Chosun Ilbo newspaper quoted him as saying.

Last Sunday, South Korea marked its very first North Korean Defectors’ Day, during which Mr Yoon Suk Yeol promised better financial support for defectors and tax incentives for companies that hire them.

The Israeli military says it is investigating an apparent drone attack that hit central Tel Aviv in the early hours of Friday.

In a statement, it said an initial inquiry indicated the explosion had been caused by the falling of an “aerial target”, which was not intercepted because of human error.

Israeli emergency services say the explosion left one person dead and several lightly injured.

Yemen’s Houthi militants have claimed responsibility for the attack.

The group – which is backed by Iran – announced earlier on social media that they would reveal details about a military operation that had targeted Tel Aviv.

The Israeli military added it was increasing air patrols, while the city’s mayor said they were on high alert, local media reported.

“The whole building shook,” Alon, a local resident, told Haaretz.

“My neighbours’ windows shattered, so I was sure something had hit the building. It was only when I went outside that I realised that several buildings had been damaged.”

The incident also came after the Israeli military confirmed it had killed a senior commander of the Hezbollah militia in southern Lebanon.

Hezbollah and Israel have traded fire across the border since Hezbollah launched rockets a day after Israel began its military offensive on Gaza in response to Hamas’s deadly attack on Israel on 7 October.

Both Hezbollah and the Houthis say they are acting in solidarity with the Palestinians.

A High Security Alert has been issued for the whole of Bangladesh, as violent clashes between students and police continue.

The capital Dhaka is in the midst of a near-total internet blackout, with phone lines also down.

On Thursday evening, several thousand protestors stormed the state broadcaster BTV, vandalising furniture, smashing windows and lights and setting parts of it on fire.

Bangladesh’s information minister told the BBC that broadcasts had been stopped and most employees had left the building in the capital.

A post on BTV’s official Facebook page had earlier warned “many” were trapped inside the building, and appealed for help from the fire service to put the blaze out.

A senior BTV journalist, who didn’t want to be named, told the BBC: “The situation was so bad we didn’t have any other option but to leave the place. Some of our colleagues were trapped inside. I don’t know what happened to them.”

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina appeared on the network on Wednesday night, appealing for calm after days of violent protests which have left at least 19 people dead, possibly many more, and hundreds injured.

Students have been holding rallies demanding change to a system which reserves a third of public sector jobs for the relatives of veterans of the country’s war for independence from Pakistan in 1971.

The students are arguing that the system is discriminatory, asking for recruitment based on merit.

The government has been trying to quell the protests, on Thursday switching off the country’s mobile internet in an attempt to slow the students.

Instead, it became the deadliest day so far, according to news agency AFP. According to its count citing hospitals, a total of 32 people have died during the protests.

The BBC’s Bengali service has confirmed 19 deaths so far – 13 of them on Thursday. Among the dead was a 32-year-old journalist for the Dhaka Times.

Sheikh Hasina had condemned protesters’ deaths as “murder” in her Wednesday television appearance, but her words were largely dismissed by protest organisers, who rejected government offers of talks.

“The government has killed so many people in a day that we cannot join any discussions in the current circumstances,” said Nahid Iqbal, a leader of the anti-quota protest.

Another student, Aleem Khan, 22, told the BBC: “The Prime Minister is asking for an end to the violence with one hand whilst, with the other hand, attacking students using pro-ruling party groups and the police.”

Thursday saw tear gas and rubber bullets deployed by officers, as students created human blockades in the streets.

The students who stormed BTV had earlier “torched” a police station, according to an official at the network.

“They chased the police officers when they took refuge at the BTV office,” the official told AFP. “Angry protesters then caused mayhem here.”

Elsewhere, BBC Bengali spoke to a group of medical students who were taking shelter inside a medical college compound after they were attacked by pro-ruling party groups.

One of the students, Sumi, told the BBC: “I am here to protest against discrimination within the civil service and now that so many students have been killed by the police, I am also protesting against that.

“Our protest is peaceful, but the way in which we were attacked made me feel like we were going to be killed by pro-ruling party groups.”

The father of the gunman who tried to assassinate Donald Trump called police before the Saturday shooting because he was concerned about his son, according to media reports.

The call is one of a number of red flags revealed in recent days that law enforcement was notified about before gunshots rang out at Trump’s Pennsylvania rally on Saturday. Law enforcement – specifically the US Secret Service – has faced mounting questions about security with calls by some lawmakers that the head of the agency should resign.

Matthew Crooks’ father called police because he was worried about his son and his whereabouts, a law enforcement source told the BBC’s news partner CBS. It’s unclear when the call was made but it was before the shooting.

It is unclear what his father told police. Fox News reported that Crooks’ parents, Mary and Matthew, told officers “they were worried” about their son and that he had disappeared without any advance notice.

His parents are both co-operating in the investigation, the FBI has said.

Law enforcement sources have told US media that the gunman had conducted online searches into a major depressive disorder and the Democratic National Convention scheduled for August.

He had also saved images of Trump, President Joe Biden, Attorney General Merrick Garland, FBI Director Chris Wray and a member of the British Royal Family, according to reports from the Washington Post and Associated Press.

Investigators are still trying to trace a potential motive for the 20-year-old gunman, who was shot dead by Secret Service snipers after opening fire. His attack left one member of the audience dead and several others wounded.

The preliminary investigation has found that Crooks climbed onto the roof of a nearby building outside the rally by climbing onto an air conditioning unit. The units were located next to the building, the unnamed official told CBS.

• Witness says he saw gunman on roof near Trump rally
• Trump gunman flagged by Secret Service 20 minutes before shooting
• Trump to address buoyant Republicans in first speech since shooting

A counter sniper flagged a suspicious man using a rangefinder to the US Secret Service some 20 minutes before the attack started, according to members of Congress briefed by law enforcement this week.

A rangefinder is an instrument that can be used to help measure the distance to a target.

Local police initially spotted the gunman, who was acting strangely and had a backpack, about an hour before the shooting. They lost him in the crowd, but he was spotted again by the sniper.

Officers were alerted by radio about a suspicious person and searched the area where Crooks had perched his rifle on a rooftop.

Finding no one, one officer decided to check the roof. The officer was hoisted on to the roof by a colleague and came face-to-face with the suspect, Butler Township Manager Tom Knights told CBS.

The suspect pointed a rifle at him and the officer, who was in a “defenceless” position, let go from the roof and fell to the ground.

He then alerted others to the gunman. Moments later, the shooting started.

• What we know about the Trump attacker
• Democratic mood darkens as Biden faces new pressure

No weapon was spotted by law enforcement when Crooks was seen in the crowd and officials are trying to determine how no one saw his AR-style rifle.

Investigators are examining various theories, including that he had stashed it earlier in the day near the air conditioning units or that he was somehow able to smuggle it inside his backpack.

Retracing his footsteps in the hours before the attack will be key to understanding how the shooting unfolded, officials say.

Officials told CBS that the semi-automatic rifle he used had been legally purchased by Crook’s father in 2013.

When the gunman was found, he was carrying a remote detonator and his car contained explosives, law enforcement sources have told US media.

It continues to remain unclear what motivated the attack, and whether any political ideology is to blame.

• Around 17:11: local officers spot Crooks and notify other law enforcement but then lose track of him, according to briefings between police and lawmakers
• 17:45: A counter sniper officer calls in with a report and a photo of a man – who turned out to be Crooks – acting suspiciously around a building near the rally, according to local media reports
• 17:52: US Secret Service become aware of a suspicious person with a rangefinder on the ground, according to sources familiar with the briefing to lawmakers
• 18:03: Trump begins speaking at the rally
• Around 18:09: Rallygoers spot Crooks on the roof and attempt to tell law enforcement
• 18:11: Crooks opens fire. He is fatally shot by Secret Service counter snipers 26 seconds later

United Airlines has apologised to NFL Hall of Fame legend Terrell Davis after the two-time Super Bowl champion said he was “wrongly handcuffed” on a flight to California.

Mr Davis said he was removed from a United Airlines aircraft last Saturday after a flight attendant accused the former Denver Broncos star of hitting him.

The 51-year-old, who was flying with his family from Denver, spoke about his ordeal on social media. He said the claim was false and described feeling “traumatised” by it.

United Airlines told the BBC it had removed the flight attendant from duty while it investigates the matters and reviews its policies.

Posting on his Instagram, Mr Davis released a statement explaining that during the flight’s beverage service his son had asked for a cup of ice.

In an effort to get his son the ice, Mr Davis said he “lightly tapped” the flight attendant on the arm to get his attention, only to hear him respond, “Don’t hit me!”

The flight attendant then left the cart and went to the front of the plane, according to the Instagram account.

“I was confused, as were the passengers in front of me who witnessed the exchange, Mr Davis wrote. “I thought nothing of it other than this particular employee was incredibly rude and blatantly wrong in his accusations of me hitting him.”

Mr Davis said that when the plane arrived at Orange County’s John Wayne Airport, he and other passengers were told to remain seated. FBI agents and local authorities then boarded the plane, placed him in handcuffs in front of his wife and three children and then removed him from the flight.

He said the “entire flight of passengers watched in silence”.

A United Airlines spokeswoman told the BBC the company has apologised to Mr Davis and continues to discuss the incident with him.

“This is clearly not the kind of travel experience we strive to provide,” she said.

“We have removed the flight attendant from duty while we closely look into this matter and we are reviewing our policies around incidents like this.”

Mr Davis was a star running back for the Denver Broncos, playing for them from 1995 to 2001.

He helped Denver win Super Bowls XXXII and XXXIII, remains the team’s all-time leading rusher and was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2017.