Jin, the oldest member of the K-pop supergroup BTS, has completed his military service in South Korea, although their legions of fans around the world will still have to wait at least a year until all seven artists are reunited.

The star, who in December 2022 became the first member of the group to begin 18 months of military service, emerged on Wednesday from the 5th Army Infantry Division’s base in northern Yeoncheon province, 60km north of Seoul, to be greeted by fellow bandmates J-hope, RM, V, Jungkook and Jimin.

A smiling Jin saluted outside the camp gate before RM played BTS’s 2020 mega-hit Dynamite on a saxophone, then exchanged hugs with other members of the band who presented him with a giant bouquet of flowers.

While fans had been asked not to visit the camp, some had hung colourful banners outside, with one reading: “Seok-jin you did so well for the last 548 days. We’ll stand by you with our unwavering love,” referring to the star by his full first name.

All able-bodied South Korean men are required to spend between 18 and 21 months in the military by the time they are 28 – a duty intended to maintain the country’s ability to respond to a possible attack by North Korea, with which it is technically still at war.

Some fans had hoped the band – by far South Korea’s most successful cultural export – would be granted an exemption in recognition of their huge contribution to the country’s economy and soft power. Exemptions have been granted to classical musicians and athletes who won international tournaments.

But in October 2022, BTS’s management agency, Big Hit Music, confirmed that all seven artists were “moving forward with plans to fulfil their military service”.

The band will not be able to reform until RM, Jimin, Jungkook and V – the last four members of the band to join up – are discharged from military service in June 2025.

While the two Koreas engage in a proxy war by flying balloons across their heavily armed border, a giant balloon flown outside the camp had a more benign message. “Worldwide handsome Seok-jin! Congratulations on your discharge,” it said.

County authorities joined in with a banner of their own that read: “BTS Jin, the last year and a half was a joy for us. Yeoncheon will not forget you!”

The band’s agency announced Jin’s discharge on Weverse – a superfan social media platform – earlier this week. “We are excited to bring you the news of Jin’s upcoming military discharge,” it said.

It also urged fans not to visit the camp over safety concerns, and only two were seen on Wednesday morning, according to local media.

On Thursday, Jin, who is expected to release a solo album later this year, is scheduled to give out hugs to fans at the Festa event in Seoul, held to mark the 11th anniversary of the band’s debut. Later the same day he will take part in a meet-and-greet event that will be livestreamed on Weverse.

The five members who greeted Jin on Wednesday had applied for leave, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reported, adding that Suga, who is performing civilian duties after the effects of shoulder surgery ruled him out of military service, was the only absentee.

Agence France-Presse contributed reporting.

Azerbaijan’s government has been accused of cracking down on media and civil society activism before the country’s hosting of crucial UN climate talks later this year.

Human Rights Watch has found at least 25 instances of the arrest or sentencing of journalists and activists in the past year, almost all of whom remain in custody.

Many campaigners and civil society groups have spoken of their concerns that climate advocacy was being stifled amid a media clampdown. Azerbaijan will host the UN Cop29 climate summit over two weeks in November, when nearly 200 governments, including dozens of heads of state, are expected to thrash out a new global approach to providing the funds needed to tackle the climate crisis.

Azerbaijan, an authoritarian state where media and civic freedoms are curtailed, is regarded as one of the world’s most corrupt countries, coming 154th out of 180 states in a ranking by Transparency International last year. There is little effective political opposition and the president, Ilham Aliyev, won more than 92% of the vote in elections in February to take a fifth consecutive term. His father was Heydar Aliyev, who led the country under Soviet rule and was installed as president after a military coup in 1993 followed the breakup of the eastern bloc.

Azerbaijan is also accused of holding political prisoners. A war with neighbouring Armenia last year over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region ended with 100,000 people being displaced from their homes.

One of Aliyev’s top advisers said a few weeks ago that the government intended to make Cop29 a “Cop of peace”, and to call for a Cop truce in which hostilities would be suspended around the world for the duration of the talks.

Campaigners raised their concerns at a pre-Cop29 meeting of governments in Bonn, where the secretariat for the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is based. Officials from around the world are in the midst of two weeks of meetings to discuss the key issues that will dominate the Cop29 summit, including the vexed question of how to provide sufficient finance to help the developing world cut greenhouse gas emissions and cope with the impacts of global heating.

A protest was held at the entrance to the Bonn talks on Friday evening – the midpoint of the discussions – calling for the release of 23 Armenian political prisoners held in Azerbaijan. Some protesters accused the government of genocide.

Myrto Tilianaki, a senior environmental advocate at Human Rights Watch, highlighted the case of Anar Mammadli, a member of the Human Rights Houses network, who was arrested on 29 April on smuggling charges. He is a founder of the Climate of Justice Initiative, which aims to use Cop29 to push for environmental justice in Azerbaijan.

Ibad Bayramov is campaigning for the release of his father, Gubad Ibadoghlu, a research fellow at the London School of Economics and civil rights activist, who was imprisoned last summer and whose health has badly deteriorated, requiring urgent medical treatment which his family say he is not receiving.

Bayramov said: “Cop29 lends legitimacy on the world stage to the government’s illegitimate imprisonment of my father. As his health has deteriorated to extreme levels, western governments continue to meet weekly with their Azerbaijani counterparts regarding Cop29. Meaningful progress on climate change cannot be achieved in a country where individuals like my father are imprisoned and tortured for speaking out.”

Paul Polman, a former CEO of Unilever who now campaigns on climate and human rights issues, said he wanted to use Cop29 as an opportunity for the international community to talk about Azerbaijan’s treatment of prisoners, about which he has serious concerns. “I hope that Cop29 can be used as an opening,” he said. “But it’s appalling that human rights has not been on the agenda. After Cop29, there will not be a spotlight on Azerbaijan’s record.”

Azerbaijan’s government has rebutted the activists’ claims. A spokesperson said: “We totally reject the claims about [a] crackdown against human rights activists and journalists in Azerbaijan. No one is persecuted in Azerbaijan because of political beliefs or activities.

“As in any rule-of-law based society, any detention or imprisonment of a person who is suspected in illegal activities is subject to the requirements of investigation and fair trial, based on relevant laws and regulations. Instead of waiting for the results of criminal cases and investigations, as well as court rulings … to call on Azerbaijan to release suspects is in open contradiction with legal procedures.

“As Cop29 president, Azerbaijan lays out its vision and pillars for a successful year of climate negotiations, encouraging an open and direct dialogue among all nations, and we believe all the layers of society should contribute to successful efforts to tackle the climate change challenge.”

Azerbaijan’s presidency follows two other consecutive Cops – the term stands for conference of the parties, under the UNFCCC, the 1992 parent treaty to the Paris agreement – in countries with authoritarian leaders and poor records on human rights: the United Arab Emirates hosted Cop28 in Dubai last year, where protests were muted, and Egypt hosted Cop27 in 2022. The UN guarantees some freedom of expression for protesters within the confines of the Cop during the fortnight it runs, but has little influence on the hosts’ behaviour outside its precincts.

Tilianaki said: “Holding Cop29 in Azerbaijan raises serious concerns about the possibility of advancing ambitious climate action in negotiations. Governments attending the Bonn preparatory meeting should call out Azerbaijan for its repression of civil society and make clear that they will actively confront any attempts to weaken robust climate policies.”

Lawyers for Elizabeth Holmes, founder of failed blood testing company Theranos, urged judges in a federal appeals court on Tuesday to overturn the fraud conviction that earned her an 11-year prison sentence.

In an appeal hearing for both Holmes and company president Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, lawyers argued improper procedures and evidence in both cases warrant new trials.

Holmes, who started Theranos as a college student and became its public face, was indicted alongside Balwani, her former romantic partner, in 2018. The two were tried separately in 2022 and sentenced later that year to 11 years and three months, and 12 years and 11 months, respectively.

Her legal team filed an appeal of her conviction in April 2023, but Tuesday marked the first court hearing on the matter.

Amy Saharia, Holmes’ lawyer, told a three-judge panel of the ninth US circuit court of appeals in San Francisco that the Theranos founder believed she was telling the truth when she told investors that Theranos’s miniature blood testing device could accurately run a broad array of medical diagnostic tests on a small amount of blood.

“There were in fact many good people working at Theranos, and believing they had good technology,” Saharia said. “Holmes believed that, and that is what she was telling investors.”

Saharia’s argument also focused on issues with two main witnesses for the prosecution: former Theranos employee Kingshuk Das, who testified as a scientific expert about Theranos’s product and former laboratory director Adam Rosendorff.

Holmes’ team argued Das should have faced cross-examination about his qualifications and the judge should have allowed Holmes to introduce more evidence attacking Rosendorff, including details of a government investigation of his work after leaving Theranos.

Those mistakes could have made the difference in the “close” case, in which jurors were not able to reach a verdict on most counts against Holmes after seven days of deliberations.

The assistant US attorney Kelly Volkar, arguing for the government, disputed that Das had improperly testified as an expert, saying he was called to talk about his personal experience at Theranos. She also said that “it was not really contested that the device did not work”.

The judges had skeptical questions for both sides and did not clearly indicate how they would rule. Circuit judge Ryan Nelson said that, even without the disputed testimony, “there was, it seemed to me, pretty overwhelming evidence”.

Circuit judges Jacqueline Nguyen and Mary Schroeder said that much of Das’s testimony concerned what he observed at the company, not his scientific opinions, as Saharia argued.

Nguyen and Nelson, however, also both told Volkar that they had concerns about what opinions Das was allowed to give during the trial. “I have some problems with how this happened,” Nelson said.

Jeffrey Coopersmith, Balwani’s lawyer, argued that prosecutors had gone beyond what was in the indictment against his client by introducing evidence that the commercial testing technology Theranos secretly used was not reliable.

The judges appeared more skeptical of that argument, though again did not clearly signal how they would rule. Appeals can take weeks or months to be decided. Representatives from Holmes’s legal team did not respond to request for comment.

Reuters contributed to this report

The confident demeanour of Rory McIlroy before this week’s US Open at Pinehurst has been further explained after it emerged the divorce petition he filed in a Florida court last month has been voluntarily dismissed.

McIlroy has reconciled with Erica, his wife of seven years, in what is likely to serve as a huge boost to the golfer’s state of mind.

Shock news emerged in the immediate buildup to the US PGA Championship that the world No 2 was to divorce. However, court papers served in Florida on Tuesday show dismissal of the case at the behest of the parties involved. McIlroy looked in noticeably upbeat mood when he addressed the media at Pinehurst earlier in the day.

Contacted by the Guardian about the divorce and fevered speculation between the last two majors about his situation, McIlroy said: “There have been rumours about my personal life recently, which is unfortunate. Responding to each rumour is a fool’s game.

“Over the past weeks, Erica and I have realised that our best future was as a family together. Thankfully, we have resolved our differences and look forward to a new beginning.”

McIlroy arrived in North Carolina seeking to end a wait for a fifth major stretching back to August 2014. The Northern Irishman will partner Scottie Scheffler and Xander Schauffele in rounds one and two.

“I’m really proud of my body of work over the past 15 years and everything that I have achieved, whether it be season-long titles or individual tournaments or majors,” McIlroy said.

“Obviously getting my hands on a fifth major has taken quite a while, but I’m more confident than ever that I’m right there, that I’m as close as I’ve ever been.”

It is a weird and wonderful sight: millions of migratory insects funnelling through a single narrow pass high in the Pyrenees, looking like a dark flying carpet and emitting a low, deep hum.

A team of scientists from a British university that has been studying the phenomenon for the last four years has now concluded that more than 17 million insects fly each year through the 30 metre-wide Puerto de Bujaruelo on the border of France and Spain.

“It really is a magical thing,” said Will Hawkes, from the centre for ecology and conservation at Exeter University. “You sweep your net and it’s full of the tiniest of flies, all journeying on this unbelievably huge migration.”

The work has its origins in the discovery in 1950 by British ornithologists Elizabeth and David Lack, who “chanced upon a spectacle” – the migration through the pass, which sits at 2,273 metres.

Hawkes said: “They witnessed remarkable numbers of marmalade hoverflies migrating through the mountains. We went to the same pass to see if this migration still occurred, and to record the numbers and species.

“Not only were vast numbers of marmalade hoverflies still migrating through the pass but far more besides. These insects would have begun their journeys farther north in Europe and continued south into Spain and perhaps beyond for the winter. There were some days when the number of flies was well over 3,000 individuals per metre, per minute.”

As well as the marmalade hoverflies, they watched butterflies – including cabbage whites, dragonflies and house flies – whiz through the pass. The team used cameras, nets and keen eyesight to spot and record the insects.

There has been an alarming decline in insect numbers across the globe and the assumption is that the amount travelling through the pass has dropped since the Lacks first observed it, though the precise figures were not recorded 70 years ago.

The Exeter team hope that their findings may boost determination to protect their habitats. Hawkes said: “Insects are resilient and can bounce back quickly.”

Team leader Karl Wotton said it was a wonder of nature to see so many insects all moving purposefully in the same direction at the same time.

Wotton said: “The combination of high-altitude mountains and wind patterns render what is normally an invisible high-altitude migration into this incredibly rare spectacle observable at ground level.”

The researchers said that insect numbers peaked when conditions were warm, sunny and dry – just after lunch seemed the best time. The area is a tourist hotspot and visitors, who at first were a little upset at being bombarded with flies, cheered up when they realised what was going on.

Denmark’s prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, has said she is still “not doing great” but will continue to work, in her first interview since she was assaulted in a Copenhagen square last week.

Frederiksen, 46, suffered minor whiplash in the attack last Friday, which is not thought to have been politically motivated. A 39-year-old Polish man was detained on suspicion of assault.

“I’m not doing great, and I’m not really myself yet,” Frederiksen told the Danish broadcaster DR in an interview broadcast on Tuesday.

Frederiksen gave no details of the attack, but said “it was very intimidating when someone crosses the last physical limit you have. There is some shock and surprise in that”.

She said it was “probably also an accumulation of many other things. Threats over a long period of time on social media have got worse, especially since the war in the Middle East. Shouting in public space. Maybe that was the final straw”.

“As a human being, it feels like an attack on me,” Frederiksen said in the 10-minute interview. “But I have no doubt that it was the prime minister that was hit. In this way, it also becomes a kind of attack on all of us.”

“No form of violence has any place in our society.”

She continued: “I would rather have a Denmark where the prime minister can bicycle to work without being worried. I am Mette at my core, but I am the country’s prime minister. Thus, an institution that you must not attack, like the police.”

Frederiksen said the tone had changed in politics recently.

A 39-year-old Polish man was arrested and will be held in custody until 20 June on preliminary charges of violence against a person in public service. In Denmark, preliminary charges are one step short of formal ones but allow authorities to keep criminal suspects in custody during an investigation.

In court, the suspect, who was not identified, reportedly praised Frederiksen as “a really good prime minister”, and investigators suspect he was under the influence of drugs and intoxicated at the time of the incident that happened just before 6pm on Friday.

Media reports said the man walked toward Frederiksen and pushed her hard while she was passing one of Copenhagen’s main squares. He hit her upper right arm with a clenched fist.

Frederiksen has not appeared in public since the attack and did not participate in public party events as the results of Sunday’s European parliament elections started coming in. Her party, the Social Democrats, faced a loss in the vote.

Frederiksen became the youngest ever Danish prime minister when she took office in 2019. She won re-election in legislative elections in 2022.

International efforts to protect the ozone layer have been a “huge global success”, scientists have said, after revealing that damaging gases in the atmosphere were declining faster than expected.

The Montreal protocol, signed in 1987, aimed to phase out ozone-depleting substances found primarily in refrigeration, air conditioning and aerosol sprays.

A study has found that atmospheric levels of hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs), harmful gases responsible for holes in the ozone layer, peaked in 2021 – five years ahead of projections.

“This has been a huge global success. We’re seeing that things are going in the right direction,” the study’s lead author, Luke Western from the University of Bristol, said.

The most harmful CFCs were phased out by 2010 in the effort to protect the ozone layer – the shield that protects life on Earth from harmful levels of ultraviolet rays from the Sun.

The HCFC chemicals that replaced them are expected to be eliminated by 2040.

The study, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, examined levels of these pollutants in the atmosphere by using data from the Advanced Global Atmospheric Gases Experiment and US National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration.

Western attributed the steep decline in HCFCs to the efficacy of the Montreal protocol, as well as tighter national regulations and a shift by industry in anticipation of the coming ban of these pollutants.

“In terms of environmental policy, there is some optimism that these environmental treaties can work if properly enacted and properly followed,” Western said.

Both CFCs and HCFCs are also powerful greenhouse gases, meaning their decline also aids in the fight against global heating.

CFCs can last in the atmosphere for hundreds of years, while HCFCs have a lifespan of about two decades, Western said.

Even once they are no longer in production, the past use of these products will continue to affect the ozone for years to come.

The United Nations Environment Programme in 2023 estimated it could take four decades before the ozone layer would recover to levels before the hole was first detected in the 1980s.

Iceland has granted a licence to Europe’s last whaling company to kill more than 100 animals this year, despite hopes the practice might have been halted after concerns about cruelty led to a temporary suspension last year.

Animal rights groups described the news as “deeply disappointing” and “dangerous”.

Hvalur, an Icelandic company run by Kristján Loftsson, will now be permitted to kill 128 fin whales over this year’s hunting season. Last year, just 24 fin whales were killed after a government-commissioned report found harpooned whales took as long as two hours to die and new regulations were introduced, delaying the whaling season.

Iceland is the second country, after Japan, to allow fin whaling to resume this year.

Fin whales, the second-largest mammal in the world, are listed as vulnerable to extinction on the red list of the International Union for Conservation of Nature. Their numbers have recovered since bans on hunting were introduced in many countries from the 1970s.

In granting the permit, Iceland’s food, fisheries and agriculture minister, Bjarkey Olsen Gunnarsdóttir, said her decision was not necessarily in line with her views or those of her party, the Left-Green Movement.

“Nevertheless, I have to follow the laws and regulations, and this is my conclusion now,” Gunnarsdóttir told RÚV, the Icelandic national broadcasting service.

Campaigners claimed that a recent report by Mast, Iceland’s food and veterinary authority, had failed to demonstrate any significant improvements in animal welfare for the 2023 hunt compared with the year before, despite the implementation of new regulations aimed at reducing suffering.

Patrick Ramage, director of the International Fund for Animal Welfare, said: “It’s hard to fathom how and why this green light to kill 128 fin whales is being given. “There is clearly no way to kill a whale at sea without inflicting unthinkable cruelty.”

Luke McMillan, an anti-whaling campaigner with Whale and Dolphin Conservation, said: “It is unbelievable and deeply disappointing that the Icelandic government has granted [this], defying extensive scientific and economic evidence against such actions.”

The decision set a “dangerous” precedent for commercial whaling around the world, he said, as well as undermining global conservation efforts.

Iceland’s previous fisheries minister suspended whaling after a report concluded that the 2022 hunt did not comply with the country’s animal welfare legislation, as the whales took too long to die.

The report, by Mast, found that some harpooned whales took two hours to die and it questioned whether hunting large whales could ever meet animal welfare objectives.

An expert working group, set up subsequently to look into whether the hunt could be modified to meet welfare laws, concluded there were grounds for making improvements to hunting methods.

However, a Mast analysis of last year’s whale hunt, seen by the Guardian, concluded that while the efficiency of killing whales in 2023 appeared to be better than in 2022, the difference was not statistically significant, possibly due to the small numbers of animals killed in 2023. There were 148 whales hunted in 2022.

Last month, Japan announced that fin whaling could resume, adding the cetacean to a list of other species it allows to be caught commercially.

Although populations of fin whales are reportedly increasing, thanks to regulation of commercial whaling, they were still classified as endangered as recently as 2018 and also face other pressures, including climate change.

Emmanuel Macron has said he is “out to win” the snap legislative election he called after his allies’ crushing defeat to Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally (RN) in the European elections.

In his first interview since Sunday’s vote, he denied accusations that his decision to dissolve parliament was madness that could hand major political power to the far right and in effect neuter his ability to make domestic policy with three years of his term in office still to run.

“Not at all. I’m only thinking of France. It was a good decision and in the country’s interest. I say to the French: don’t be afraid, go and vote,” he told Le Figaro in an interview conducted on his return to Paris from commemorations of the 1944 Oradour-sur-Glane massacre, when a Nazi SS division killed 642 villagers.

“This is the spirit of our institutions: I have listened to the French people. Now is the time for clarification. Dissolution is the clearest, most radical and strongest gesture. A gesture of great confidence in the French people.”

The RN won about 32% of the vote on Sunday, more than double the 15% or so scored by the president’s allies, according to exit polls. The Socialist party, on 14%, came within a whisker of the Macron group.

Macron told Le Figaro he did not think the far right could repeat its European success in a domestic election.

“Politics is a dynamic. I’ve never believed in opinion polls. The decision I’ve taken opens up a new era. A new campaign is beginning and we mustn’t look at the scores per constituency by the yardstick of those at the European elections,” he said.

“The president must commit himself, it’s his correct place: the future of the republic, the institutions, the country and Europe are at stake.”

He said his position as president was not threatened, despite suggestions that the RN would call for his resignation if it wins the general election.

“It’s not the RN that writes the constitution, or the spirit of it. The institutions are clear, and so is the president’s place, whatever the result,” Macron said.

Jordan Hatmaker knew something was wrong as soon as she tried to open her parachute. “You’re meant to look up to check: is it there? Is it square? And is it stable?” she says.

It was none of those things.

This was the second time that day that she and her skydiving coach had leapt from an aircraft 13,500ft above the fields and farmland of Suffolk, Virginia. Hatmaker was 35, a fairly experienced skydiver, just 10 jumps away from securing her skydiving licence.

“When you’re spinning around while being pulled to the ground, it’s hard to know exactly what’s happening. I was in my own world. All I was thinking about was how to get out of the situation. I felt oddly calm.

“I do remember seeing the ground coming towards me really quickly and I thought to myself: ‘This is going to hurt.’”

Hatmaker has always been a thrill-seeker. “I’ve always loved rollercoasters, zip-lining, jumping off cliffs into water, climbing mountains – all that stuff,” she says. Remarkably, she had never so much as broken a bone before that day in November 2021. “I never worried about safety; I always figured everything would be fine.”

After graduating from college, she began working for a defence contractor, selling equipment to the military. She first tried skydiving with a tandem jump in 2015 and immediately fell in love with the sport. “It’s been my dream to fly since I was a little kid – if somebody asked me what animal I would like to be, I would always say a bird. Being able to tackle something so daring gave me a great sense of confidence and pride.”

Friends encouraged her to get her licence. “It allows you to dive solo, which is a lot less expensive, and you can jump in any drop zone in the world. It’s around $5,000 (£3,900) to get your licence – and $3,000-5,000 to buy your own equipment – so it was a lot of money. But once you have it, it’s $25 a jump.”

Her other passion is dog rescue, and on the day of the accident, her brother came along to watch her jump, bringing her two dogs with him. “When he got there, he told me not to jump because he thought the vibes were off. I thought he was being ridiculous.” Dogs were not allowed in the hangar, so her brother had to leave.

On the ground, she was assigned a coach she hadn’t jumped with before, but that wasn’t uncommon; there were lots of coaches and skydivers would jump with whoever was available. They ran through “drills” – exercises or movements they would aim to replicate during freefall – then boarded the aircraft. The first jump went without a hitch and, as they ascended for the second time, Hatmaker had no qualms.

She and her coach jumped out separately, as they had planned, and began running through the drills they had practised on the ground. It was going well. She was “hitting all of them perfectly”.

“We had planned to match each other’s levels – so if she floated up, I was supposed to float up – and everything was good.” They continued in freefall for about a minute, then moved away from one another, so they could activate their parachutes without any risk of becoming tangled together.

She and her coach had agreed to freefall to 4,000ft; as her training progressed, she was able to deploy her parachute at increasingly lower altitudes, and this was the lowest she had ever gone. Hatmaker activated her pilot chute – a small preliminary parachute – and immediately knew something was wrong. The force of the inflation is designed to trigger the release of the main canopy, but instead, the pilot chute became wrapped around her leg in a malfunction known as a “horseshoe”.

She tried to untangle her leg but she was spinning and falling at about 70mph. “I thought, ‘OK, I’ll remove my shoe” – but I couldn’t because I’d double-knotted [the laces].” A shoe had come off during a previous jump, and she hadn’t wanted it to happen again.

If a parachute fails to deploy properly, the reserve parachute is triggered automatically. “I felt it jerk me upwards and I got control for a few seconds,” says Hatmaker. There was a paved runway below that she was desperate to avoid, and during this brief moment of stability she steered towards the grass.

Then she felt another jolt – her main parachute had finally “wiggled loose” from its bag and inflated. With hindsight, she says, this is where she may have made a “huge mistake”: she did not cut away the main canopy, which would have disconnected it from the harness (although it is possible it would have remained attached to her leg anyway). With both canopies deployed, there was a secondary malfunction, something Hatmaker had not heard of before, known as a “down plane”. The parachutes pull away from one another in opposite directions, streamlining the airflow, accelerating the skydiver’s descent rather than slowing it.

Even as Hatmaker spiralled towards the ground, she says the thought she might die never crossed her mind. At most, she thought she might break a leg – jeopardising her plans to climb to Mount Everest Base Camp three days later, a trip that had been a goal of hers for a couple of years.

In seconds, she crash-landed “a few football fields from where I should have been”.

After the crash, Hatmaker lay alone on the ground. She remembers the blades of grass in her mouth as she prayed out loud and screamed for help. Her pelvis was burning and she thought it was broken. But a bigger reality began to dawn. “I tried to get up and couldn’t move anything below my waist. I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, am I paralysed?’”

It took just a few minutes for some of the other skydivers and the drop zone manager to reach her, although it felt like longer. They were frantic as they called the ambulance.

“I was in the middle of nowhere so it took a good 30 minutes for an ambulance to come. It felt like for ever. The paramedics cut off my rig and tried to put me on a backboard gurney, but it was the most excruciating pain you could ever feel in your entire life.” When an air ambulance helicopter arrived, she didn’t realise at first that it was for her. “I thought, ‘Huh, that’s a helicopter’ – then I thought, ‘Whoa, I guess that must be for me!’”

It took around 10 minutes to reach Sentara Norfolk General Hospital, where her brother and her boyfriend of four months were the first to meet her.