At least two students at Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania have been suspended from the swim team after a report that a racial slur was scratched onto a student’s body, officials said.

Officials received “a deeply concerning report of a racial slur being scratched on to a student using a plastic or ceramic tool,” officials at the liberal arts school said in a statement last week.

“This is a serious report, which is being actively assessed through the student conduct process,” the college said. “At this point, the students involved are not participating in swim team activities.”

The school declined to release further details, citing the investigation and privacy laws.

However, a family of the victim contacted the Gettysburgian last week to give more details. They said the student had the N-word cut into their chest by someone they “trusted”. The victim’s family say they consider the incident a hate crime. They also said the victim was the only person of color at the scene.

“The reprehensible act was committed by a fellow student-athlete, someone he considered his friend, someone whom he trusted. This student used a box cutter to etch the N-word across his chest,” the family told the Gettysburgian.

They added: “As we wait to discuss the decisions made by college staff, the harm continues without much relief. Media outlets (social, online, and broadcast) continue to perpetuate misinformation stemming from an act of racial animus. In the same vein, the isolation that pairs with being isolated from many in the Gettysburg College community that he had come to trust deepens the harm.

“We want to be clear that we understand that an investigation should not be rushed. We support a fair and thorough investigation. To this end, we appreciate the standardized procedures and protocols that are in place. We know that they are meant to ensure that the rights and responsibilities of all parties involved are maintained and protected.”

Gettysburg College president Robert Iuliano said he felt “profound distress about what happened” and the impact on the implications “for a community continuing its evolving efforts to create a truly inclusive environment.”

“No matter the relationship, and no matter the motivation, there is no place on this campus for words or actions that demean, degrade, or marginalize based on one’s identity and history,” he said in a statement that also cautioned against speculation “based on fragments of information that may or may not be accurate.”

The city’s police chief, Robert Glenny Jr, said he contacted the college after hearing news reports and was told the victim chose to handle the matter through the college’s internal process, despite college officials encouraging the person to take the matter to police, WGAL-TV reported.

Gretchen Whitmer, the governor of Michigan, called Donald Trump “just deranged” on Sunday after he said women would no longer be thinking about abortion if he is elected as president in November.

“This guy just doesn’t understand what the average woman is confronting in her life in this country, and how could he? He’s not lived a normal life,” Whitmer said in an interview on CNN’s State of the Union.

Whitmer also reaffirmed her support for Kamala Harris, describing her as a person “who has worked hourly jobs, who knows how important it is that women have healthcare and access to the medical care that they need”.

Whitmer was asked to comment about a speech the former president delivered on Saturday, saying women “will be happy, healthy, confident, and free” if he is elected president.

“He’s just deranged,” the governor of Michigan said.

On Friday, Trump made similar comments about women on his Truth Social platform.

“WOMEN ARE POORER THAN THEY WERE FOUR YEARS AGO, ARE LESS HEALTHY THAN THEY WERE FOUR YEARS AGO … AND ARE LESS OPTIMISTIC AND CONFIDENT IN THE FUTURE THAN THEY WERE FOUR YEARS AGO!” Trump said.

Harris is a staunch supporter of abortion rights. The vice-president delivered two speeches on Friday, first in Georgia and then Wisconsin, highlighting the case of Amber Thurman, who died in Georgia due to a strict abortion ban.

Whitmer’s comments on Sunday come a week after participating in an online campaign event with TV host, producer and author Oprah Winfrey, which was livestreamed nationally from Michigan.

The Michigan governor was previously named as a possible candidate for the Democratic nomination for president before ruling herself out in July. Michigan is a must-win prize for candidates, a state that has voted for the presidential winner in the last four national elections.

Joe Biden took Michigan by 154,000 votes in 2020. Two years later, Whitmer defeated a Trump-backed candidate and Democrats took full control for the first time in 45 years.

Four people have died and more than 20 were wounded in a shooting in a nightlife area in Birmingham, Alabama, according to police and news reports.

The violence is just the latest shocking incident that highlights the epidemic of gun violence and killings that continues to plague the US and yet prompts little to no political action.

Police said say multiple victims in the mass killing were caught in crossfire and offered an reward for information leading to the arrest of those involved.

There were multiple people shot on 20th Street near Magnolia Avenue in the Five Points South area, the Birmingham police department said in a social media post.

The shooting happened shortly after 11pm on Saturday in the city’s Five Points South entertainment district, the officer Truman Fitzgerald said in an email.

Officers arriving at the scene found two men and a woman on a sidewalk with gunshot wounds, and they were pronounced dead there. An additional male gunshot victim was pronounced dead at a hospital, Fitzgerald said.

A preliminary investigation showed that “multiple suspects fired upon a large group of people who were outside in a public area”, Fitzgerald said.

“Detectives believe the shooting was not random and stemmed from an isolated incident where multiple victims were caught in the crossfire,” Fitzgerald said.

Injured people began showing up at hospitals, Fitzgerald said. By early Sunday, police had identified 18 other victims with injuries, some of them life-threatening.

Some victims were transported to hospitals in private vehicles, police told WBMA.

The Five Points South area of Birmingham has numerous entertainment venues, restaurants and bars and often is crowded on Saturday nights.

Police said there were no immediate arrests.

“We will do everything we possibly can to make sure we uncover, identify and hunt down whoever is responsible for preying on our people this morning,” Fitzgerald told WBMA.

The US has a high rate of mass shootings, which frequently prompts public calls for more substantial gun control. But the US federal government has generally been unwilling or unable to heed those calls.

The gun rights lobby remains strong in the US and its power over politicians who try to enforce tighter gun laws is formidable.

In June the conservative-dominated supreme court struck down a federal ban on “bump stocks”, accessories which can allow a semiautomatic gun to fire as fast as a machine gun. Following the 6-3 decision Joe Biden condemned the ruling, saying it “strikes down an important gun safety regulation”.

The Associated Press contributed reporting

Society tells us that love stories should be linear, that marriage is until death us do part. We’ve learned, though, that things are often a little more complicated. The average adult may have five relationships and fall in love with three people (bad news for two of the five, then). Divorce has recently neared the 50% rate in the UK, a percentage that is now falling, mostly because fewer can afford it. Despite these statistics, we are still fed the idea that the ultimate goal is to find “the one”. Is it any wonder then, that divorce is often viewed as a failure?

We see the “success stories” of life in long love and we wince at messy divorces – what we see less is the grey area in between. A large number of couples separate and then reunify, and a surprising amount also divorce and then remarry. The term “divorce regret” has been circulating recently after golfer Rory McIlroy called his marriage off and then back on. There are the notable couples who married, then did it all over again; Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. Elon Musk and his ex, British actor Talulah Riley, walked down the aisle twice, too.

There’s also Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez, who were engaged in 2002, separated for nearly two decades, then finally married in June 2022, 20 years after their initial engagement. This August, after two years of marriage, they divorced.

Yet the drama of the double wedding is not only for the rich and famous. Divorce followed by reunification is relatively common, with between 10 and 15% of couples reconciling after they separate and about 6% of couples marrying each other once again. One in 10 people who divorce say they regret it at some point. On Mumsnet, a user shares that she is thinking about divorcing her husband but is terrified she’ll regret it. Many share their own regret in response (except one, who writes: “Regret yeah… Regret not doing it 10 years earlier.”)

The couples remarrying after divorce offer the idea that it is possible to come through pain, anger and mourning to reach another outcome. Take Karen and Louis Beardsworth, who met in their early 20s, had been married for more than 20 years and had two daughters by the time they divorced in 2015. After five years apart and a lot of therapy, they walked down the aisle for a second time.

“At the first wedding we had about 40 guests, at a register office in the town I grew up in. I wore a three-quarter-length cream dress,” remembers Karen. “The second time around we married in South Africa with no one there except us. The venue was a bit strange – like one of those chapels in Las Vegas. We got the giggles because they had all these soppy, romantic placards up on the walls.”

Their laughter may have acknowledged the irony that this was “take two”, but could there be something even more romantic about that fact? For their second wedding, they chose the same date as the first time around. “We thought it would be easier to remember the anniversary,” says Karen, smiling, but there was also a kind of poetry to choosing the same day, she adds, like things had come full circle. “After time apart, it felt as if we were marrying more as the people we actually are, rather than the people we thought we should be,” says Louis.

If 42% of marriages end in divorce, there is the question of why we do it to begin with, beyond the legal benefits and tax breaks. As a sex and relationships therapist with the charity Relate, Ammanda Major has spent much of her career working with relationship struggles, helping people find a way out, or through. “We get married because, mostly, it feels like the right thing to do, whether that’s due to romantic, cultural, idealised thinking or just seeking evidence of that attachment that so many of us seek,” she reflects. “Hope reigns eternal that our partner will love us always. As human beings that is a seriously compelling reason to get hitched.” The majority of people getting married believe it’s for keeps. “That’s because by then we’ve already become fully invested in the person we are marrying and hopefully them with us.”

The problems, says Major, often arise when the person we are marrying, or the marriage itself, does not meet our expectations. “Sometimes expectations of being married are so high they can’t possibly be met and so disappointment and resentment soon make themselves apparent, which then negatively impacts on the ability to work on problems effectively together.”

This was the case for Karen and Louis: “Getting married should be about two people, but it turns into a theatre – and then there are expectations that come with that,” says Louis. The marriage broke down after Louis, working as a pilot and travelling a great deal, had an affair. “I was emotionally dysfunctional, under a lot of pressure and compartmentalising my family to have relationships outside my marriage. It was a toxic cocktail,” he admits now. When she found out, Karen decided to divorce Louis, in part to send a signal to her daughters that she – and all women – deserved better.

Yet, when a marriage buckles under the weight of expectation, the script of how things should be, regret is a natural response, says Major. “People quite often have regrets about separation or experience a sense of failure, shame, sadness, a lot of ‘if only’,” she says. “We can regret a situation even though we knew it was the right one.” Regret isn’t always a bad thing, she adds. It can prompt an opportunity to look at how our needs might have changed, what could be new in our lives, or give us clarity about the past. “The challenge is sorting through these complex emotions and questions to understand whether to close a door or attempt to ease it open once more.”

When Major began her work, therapy was not as prevalent as it is today. The popular US TV show Couples Therapy airs couples’ problems – literally – as does celebrity relationship therapist Esther Perel on her hugely popular podcast. Then there’s the burgeoning industry of self-help gurus promising to help individuals rekindle with their ex (at a price). As well as the financial cost of divorce, according to Major, the rising awareness and uptake in therapy may be contributing to a fall in divorce rates.

For Karen and Louis, who accessed therapy together and then separately, talking things through with an independent party saved the relationship. In therapy, Karen established she needed independence and space to think about what she really wanted her future to look like. Louis, meanwhile, embarked on 18 months of psychotherapy. “I learned that I was not a happy person, for a bunch of reasons.” As someone raised in a very conventional background, with emotionally distant parents, Louis says he was inhibited about discussing his feelings in a way that was bad for relationships. In therapy, Karen and Louis had revelations about who they were as people, both separately and together.

In her book, Mating in Captivity: Reconciling the Erotic and the Domestic, Perel suggests that “love rests on two pillars: surrender and autonomy”. The cliché of “us against the world” may not always serve us. Growing as individuals is just as important as growing as a couple, while distance – both physical and psychological – can foster attraction to our partner when it is waning. Perel has also built her multimillion-dollar business, and credibility, by addressing the thorny issue of expectations versus reality. “Today, we turn to one person to provide what an entire village once did: a sense of grounding, meaning, and continuity,” she writes. “At the same time, we expect our committed relationships to be romantic as well as emotionally and sexually fulfilling. Is it any wonder that so many relationships crumble under the weight of it all?”

Perel’s quote resonates with Ebele, who married, divorced and then remarried her lifelong love, Rich. The couple met at a summer camp in the US as teenagers in the early 90s, and started dating. However, because Rich was younger, they decided to remain friends. When the millennium was approaching, Rich started sending gifts to Ebele, who was by then living in London. The coy courtship worked; one night, they unexpectedly slept together, moving in together that same week, and marrying just two years later. “We agreed on what marriage meant to us: not gazing into one another’s eyes all the time, but wanting our lives to be a shared adventure.”

The couple honoured these intentions as best they could; they lived separately for periods and travelled extensively before having children. Yet, starting a family complicated things: “Having kids is a joy, a blessing and a privilege, but it’s also really hard, especially the way it’s done in the west, where you’re not so much in communities with parents and aunts and uncles around.” Ebele remembers how, after she had each kid, their sex life would shut down for a time. In 2020, after 16 years as husband and wife, she felt that she and Rich had become more like friends. Their divorce was amicable. “We had a better divorce than most marriages, we lived in walking distance, were dating other people and coparenting smoothly.”

Ebele jokes that there is a “chaos phase” after divorce, something like a second youth. Then, you reach a point where you can sit with your feelings for long enough to understand them. Two realisations hit her. “A friend who is an artist said that if you have a creative gift and don’t use it or suppress it, it can eat you up inside. I remember thinking, ‘This is Rich, he was an artist, but he was always trying to do the adult thing, he wasn’t fully himself.’” Ebele was also able to recognise that the grief of her brother’s death in a racially motivated police shooting in 2018 had impacted the marriage. “Another friend said one thing that happens in grief is creating distance from the person you’re most scared of losing. No one had ever said that to me. There was a way I felt at the end of the marriage, like I’m not fighting for this, which I now recognise was about me creating distance.” Distance allowed Ebele and Rich the perspective to see that they were better off together, life had just come in the way.

Throughout the process of separation, and also reunification, Ebele noticed that, while marriage can feel insular, the people in your life always have opinions on it. Friends’ feelings were mixed. “When we divorced, people took it badly, they were devastated, said, ‘But you guys are like Black love incarnate.’ When we told them we were getting together again there was joy, some said, ‘You owe us a party’ and others said, ‘Everything about this is very you guys: slightly off,” she laughs. Karen experienced a stronger sense of judgment. “I lost two good long-term girlfriends, because I got back together with Louis. They were very judgmental. They felt I hadn’t taken their advice.”

Judgment from others piles on top of the judgments we place on ourselves when it comes to marriage and divorce. Stay together for the kids, try harder, don’t walk away. Fear of being alone also leaves people trapped in relationships, says Major, and can spur a sense of regret if we do leave. “But no matter the situation, the first bit of the problem-solving is what may have gone wrong,” the therapist explains. “People fantasise about what life would be like if they got back together again, but without understanding what didn’t work, people may find they go back into those relationships and the same problems emerge.” Bar a situation of domestic violence or abuse, where there is one person responsible, she says, usually we each have a part to play in relationship dissatisfaction.

For those experiencing divorce regret, Major offers advice on how to sort out what is missing someone, loneliness, or a genuine mistake. She believes self-reflection and, if possible, therapy can be instrumental in finding answers to these questions. “We’re social human beings – we seek connection and to be left or abandoned can have a profound toll on some people’s mental health or wellbeing.” Sitting with that, letting it settle, and also rebuilding self-worth can help people have a happy relationship going forward, she says, whoever it might be with.

While for many cheating is the final straw, for Karen, understanding the weight of expectation that marriage can bring helped her see things differently. “We label people who have affairs as terrible, but it’s an extraordinary thing to be expected to spend your life with one person. I think what I’ve learned is that people need to be honest and open about where they are at, because you look at people who are unhappy in their relationships and you think: why aren’t you changing anything?” For younger generations, she adds, there seems to be more openness and also equality. “Society has changed so much. Women are far more likely to think of themselves first and more hesitant to jump into relationships because that is what they are ‘supposed’ to do.”

Things are indeed changing, albeit slowly, agrees Major. At Relate, she and other therapists have adopted the term “multi-partner relationship therapy” to encompass the many constellations relationships can take. “People choose to live their lives now unmarried or with more than one partner, so it’s important to have a narrative that reflects how we live.”

At the Labour party conference last October Emily Thornberry committed to reforming the law on cohabiting couples to provide better protection (the outcome remains to be seen). Recently the law around divorce changed, too, points out lawyer David Allison. Since April 2023, couples can file for “no-fault” divorce, stating that their marriage simply broke down. “That has really changed things,” he comments, “because the requirement to state fault stirred up anger and resentment, resulting in a blame game.”

The change in law may provide yet another reason why couples are getting back together. Allison is familiar with the concept of divorce regret. Over his two-decades-long career, he has seen countless couples reunite. “It’s not uncommon for our clients to get back together, which is surprising when they’ve been slugging things out in court,” he explains. “But I suppose sometimes the cause of unhappiness in a relationship goes away precisely because of the divorce.” He gives an example: a female client who had felt she lacked financial independence in her marriage. “They divorced, reached a settlement, and then she started seeing her ex-husband again.” Similarly, he has seen people move in on their own and start dating their ex, enjoying a sense of novelty of this arrangement. Love is space, as the saying goes.

Karen and Louis lived apart for a while before moving back in together. “It took a long time to rebuild trust and prove I wasn’t the person I used to be,” says Louis, who brought up the idea to remarry: “I wanted it for a number of reasons, but mostly because it is a very clear commitment.” Now, happily married again since 2020, the couple say their kids like to tease them: “So which anniversary is this, your 36th or your 4th?” But what have they ultimately learned from loving – and then loving one another again? It’s that you must love yourself before you can love someone else. “I look at friends who have gone through divorce and are on their second and third marriages, but if you don’t reflect on yourself, you may end up confronting the same issues with someone else,” says Karen. “Personally, I needed to grow up and work out what I wanted rather than being the wife and the mother of the children. I was forced into that situation, which was actually great.”

Ebele and Karen look back on their separation as a positive thing. As well as an opportunity to establish independence, Ebele believes her marriage is different the second time around: “There’s more room for experimentation, for us figuring out even further what we want out of marriage, it feels even more like adventure. The first time we thought it was forever, but now it really does feel that way… Especially as no one has any patience for us to do this again.”

Anthony Joshua suffered a shocking knockout loss to Daniel Dubois, his far less celebrated British rival, on an extraordinary night at Wembley Stadium. It was a crushing defeat for Joshua who was knocked down in the first round and then utterly dominated and sent repeatedly to the canvas. The brutal end was finally sealed in the fifth round when, just as Joshua tried to turn the tide of a one-sided beating, Dubois landed two shattering right hands which resulted in a conclusive stoppage.

Even though Dubois was the nominal IBF world heavyweight champion, he walked to the ring first in a clear sign that he was meant to play a supporting role to the Joshua Show in front of 96,000 fans. Dubois had never experienced such a searing atmosphere before but he looked composed and determined as he climbed through the ropes. But he had a long wait before his more exalted rival joined him.

A Joshua fight entrance is always overblown and makes some of us yearn for those long-lost nights when Mike Tyson, shirtless and in black trunks, walked menacingly and silently on his own to the ring. Dubois would soon replicate the bad intentions and percussive force which once personified Tyson.

At least Joshua looked concentrated but the laboured prelude dragged on through the anthems and ritual introductions. Dubois was booed while Joshua was cheered deliriously before, finally, they were alone in the ring. An astonishing fight was about to unfold.

Dubois was the early aggressor and he stalked Joshua. He looked confident and full of intent as he backed up Joshua. Dubois was warned for excessive use of his head but his fists presented the most serious danger. A huge overhand right nailed Joshua, dropping him heavily near the end of the first round.

The contest changed in that shattering moment as Joshua looked badly dazed, even though he was saved by the bell.

Joshua was reeling early in the second as Dubois pressured him with ferocious force. A worried and sickly expression was etched across Joshua’s face and he was again hurt by a right and a clubbing left. Dubois soon caught him again and an anxious hum spread through the stunned crowd.

As they came out for the third Joshua tried to change the pattern of the fight behind his jab. His supporters also attempted to rouse him after such a rocky opening but then Dubois landed another monstrous left hand. Joshua wobbled and tottered against the ropes. He again needed to be rescued by the bell.

Joshua was dropped again early in the fourth round as a scything left sent him tumbling to the canvas. It seemed as if the referee was about to wave the fight over even though Joshua beat his chest in sad and lonely defiance.

They were allowed to continue and the slow, pitiless beating continued as Joshua absorbed yet more punishment.

The decisive round showed the courage of a former champion. Joshua rallied, briefly, and he hurt Dubois for the first time as he landed a jolting right which rocked the younger man. But facing that desperate burst of fire, Dubois responded with clinical authority. He landed successive heavy right hands which left Joshua a crumpled and broken figure on the canvas.

Despair for Joshua and his backers was swamped by elation for Dubois, who can finally claim that he became a world champion in the ring as he retained the IBF title which had been gifted to him three months ago with this stunning victory. The real king of the division remains Oleksandr Usyk who, four months ago, became the first undisputed world heavyweight champion of the 21st century when he won the IBF, WBA, WBC and WBO belts in a riveting contest against Tyson Fury.

But, in a typically shameless act of boxing chicanery, the IBF soon stripped Usyk of its title because he was already contracted to fight Fury again in December and unable to box their mandatory contender first. The IBF handed its championship as a present to Dubois, whom Usyk defeated last August, and set up his first defence against Joshua.

But Dubois deserves to savour the sweetness of his remarkable victory while, in contrast, the 34-year-old Joshua will be devastated. His admirable but flawed career is now much closer to ending after he was beaten so violently by a hungry fighter who is seven years younger than him.

Wembley had once belonged, in boxing terms, to Joshua, but this is a hard and unforgiving business. Dubois was simply too strong, too fresh and far too powerful for a lost and fallen champion.

The last time I met Evgenia Kara-Murza, it was a grim day in early March. The timing couldn’t have been worse. As we spoke, Alexei Navalny’s coffin was being lowered into the frozen ground in a Moscow cemetery. Meanwhile Evgenia’s husband, Vladimir Kara-Murza, was still incarcerated in a Siberian prison cell almost identical to the one in the Arctic Circle in which Navalny had been found dead, presumed murdered.

The parallels were eerie. Because Vladimir, a journalist turned political activist, was not just also loathed and feared by the Kremlin and imprisoned on spurious charges, he’d also been poisoned – twice – targeted by the same FSB (Federal Security Service) unit that had poisoned Navalny.

The prospects were so grim and the news from Russia and Ukraine so unrelentingly depressing, it feels almost unimaginably miraculous six months later to see Evgenia walk into the lobby of a London hotel, this time with Vladimir right next to her. Six weeks ago, he was in a Siberian gulag. Today, he’s a free man on a trip to London with his wife and their youngest son, nine-year-old Daniel, the result of the largest prisoner exchange between Russian and the west since the cold war.

I find myself suddenly overwhelmed by the sight of them together so I can’t begin to imagine how Evgenia is feeling. “I cry all the time,” she says. “And I make other people cry. Just when I speak, people start crying in the audience. I just seem to have that effect on people.” She’d been so exasperated when we’d last met, fresh from a meeting she’d waited two years to get with the foreign secretary with the steely demeanour of a woman who can’t afford to give up.

“There has been so much emotional trauma. I mean, let alone the fact that Vladimir was in prison in those horrible conditions and solitary confinement in Western Siberia, but I also had to deal with people who couldn’t really understand this. It’s so difficult for a person living in a normal democratic country to grasp what political repression is in the 21st century. They just couldn’t get it.”

But then, it is difficult to grasp. What’s disorienting about Vladimir’s descriptions of the Siberian gulag is how familiar it is from the works of Solzhenitsyn and other writers of the Stalinist era – though for Kara-Murza, who studied history at Cambridge, this was a source of both incredulity and solace.

“I’m a historian, and one of the biggest areas of study has always been the Soviet dissidents. I made films about it. I’ve written about it extensively. I’ve known many of these people. And it’s sometimes said that every historian subconsciously dreams of personally experiencing the area of his or her study. If that’s true, you know, I’ve got my wish fully.

“I felt like I was living inside these books because it’s astonishing and shocking, and, frankly, very sad how, all these decades later, nothing has changed. Even the minutest details of what a prison cell is like, how the walk is organised, how prison guards speak to you, how the prison transportation works, everything is exactly the same.”

Though it was his knowledge of the system, gained from these Soviet memoirs, that enabled him to navigate the system. “I knew the rules. These Siberian prisons are notorious even by the standards of the Russian system for having rules for everything, every minute of every day, but I also knew that I had the right to these books, to the prison library, so they had to give them to me.”

For Evgenia too, there were models from the past. When her husband heaps praise on “this amazing woman” who helped keep his fate in the mind of western politicians, he compares her to the “Decembrist wives” of the early 19th century who followed their husbands to Siberia. But the shock of his sudden change in circumstances, and of the luck that ran out for Navalny who was intended to be part of the exchange, still hasn’t sunk in.

For his close friend, Bill Browder, the businessman and anti-corruption campaigner who lobbied tirelessly for Kara-Murza’s release, it’s “been such a gift. I was sure he was going to die in custody”. As did Kara-Murza.

“I was convinced I was going to die in prison. Sitting here, with you, a few hundred yards from the Palace of Westminster, it feels completely and utterly surreal. It’s too much. It’s too fast for the human mind to process. I’m sort of watching this film since the end of July. It’s a wonderful film, but it still doesn’t feel real.” He talks about how, as he was taxiing down the runway of Vnukovo airport, the FSB agent sitting next to him told him to look out of the window because it would be the last time he’d see his country. “I just laughed in his face and said, ‘Look man, I’m a historian. I don’t only think, I don’t only believe, I know I will be back home and it’s going to be much quicker than you imagine.’”

Most people he met in the Russian prison system, “the police officers, prison officials, judges, prosecutors, they don’t believe in anything”. Most are not pathological sadists, he says, they were just doing a job. “But the Alpha Group, the FSB special unit that was escorting us, I saw ideological hatred. They believe in this stuff and that’s even scarier.”

Kara-Murza’s grasp of history underpins his certainty that Putin’s regime will collapse – quickly and without warning. “That’s how things happen in Russia. Both the Romanov empire in the early 20th century, and the Soviet regime at the end of the 20th century collapsed in three days. That’s not a metaphor, it was literally three days in both cases.” He believes passionately that the best chance of a free and democratic Russia and peace in Europe rests on Russia’s defeat in Ukraine.

“A lost war of aggression” has been the country’s greatest driver of political change, he says. Though it’s not just the Russian people, in his view, who need to take collective responsibility but western leaders too, who “for all these years were buying gas from Putin, inviting him to international summits, rolling out red carpets”.

He tells me he thinks the truth will out. “These guys keep meticulous records. When the end comes – and it will – the archives will open, we will find out about Trump and Marine Le Pen and your British guys too.”

Sitting in London, the money and reputation-laundering centre of Putin’s empire, he laughs when I mention one of the more notorious figures of British political patronage, Evgeny Lebedev, the proprietor of the Independent and Evening Standard, son of KGB lieutenant colonel Alexander Lebedev.

“Is that the guy who’s Baron of Siberia?” he says. “I should meet him. I guess he represents me?”

Siberia, the land of Soviet-style gulags and British lords and one delighted former political prisoner walking out into the London sunshine with his wife and son, a small flickering light from the heart of Putin’s darkness.

At the beginning of 2000 I moved to Christchurch in Aotearoa New Zealand to study midwifery. I had been a volunteer firefighter before, so I decided to live in my old hometown of Lyttelton while I was studying so I could join their local fire brigade.

It had been more than 10 years since I had lived there but not much had changed. It still had that small-town vibe where everyone knew each other. I fronted up for training night at the brigade and recognised quite a few faces, still the same, just a bit older. There was a very tall, handsome young guy standing at the back who I recognised as Grant. He looked very shy and serious but when he smiled it was like turning a light on. His mum and my mum had been friends when we were younger, but we didn’t hang out in the same circles; I was seven years older than him and we went to different schools.

I had been in the brigade for a few months when we had a function at the fire station and, with the courage of a few drinks in me, I danced with Grant to Neil Diamond’s Forever in Blue Jeans. By the end of the night, I was a bit wobbly on my feet and he did the gentlemanly thing and escorted me home.

A couple of days later he called and invited me to go to the movies with him. He later said it took many attempts at picking up the phone and putting it down before he managed to make the call (this was back in the days of telephones with handsets).

The date was “nice”, not earth-shattering and I could tell he was nervous, but I could sense the attraction between us. We went to a Bruce Willis film, The Whole Nine Yards, which was a good choice because I’m a fan of his action movies. (Several years later I bought a DVD of the movie as an anniversary present.)

I was 32 and a single mum with a seven-year-old son. I had no plans to settle down – I had goals and plans for a future that did not include marriage and more children, and truly believed that ship had sailed. Grant was 25, had just returned from a trip overseas and was taking off again. Like me, he had no intention of settling down any time soon.

On our second date, Grant included my son, Jesse, and took us ice-skating. It was Jesse’s first time at an ice-skating rink and Grant held Jesse’s hands while skating backwards so he could guide Jesse along the ice while everyone else zoomed around them. Grant was calm and considerate and made Jesse feel important and safe, which absolutely melted my heart.

It was such a weird feeling. I had never considered getting married, but in that instant, watching him patiently teaching my boy how to skate, all I knew was that Grant was a genuinely good man and I didn’t want to let him get away. He was the one.

The next day friends asked how the date went. I surprised them – and myself – when I said: “I’m going to marry him and have his children.”

Six weeks later we were engaged, and nine months after that we married under a huge kahikatea tree in February on the hottest day of the year, with my son as my best man, and our friends, family and dogs gathered together. The band played a Neil Diamond song for our first dance together as husband and wife.

Soon after that, we bought our first house. I marvelled at how much Grant’s life had changed in one short year. He had gone from being a young, single guy with a two-seater sports car to having a wife, a young son, a mortgage … and a baby on the way. I always said it’s lucky he has big shoulders because that was a lot to carry!

We have built a chaotic, beautiful life together through the hard times and the good. We have six amazing children, lots of animals and live in a beautiful part of Aotearoa New Zealand. Twenty-four years later, his smile still lights up my world. He will always be “the one” – and we still dance together to Neil Diamond.

The Israeli military says it has launched airstrikes on hundreds of targets in southern Lebanon, as Hezbollah launched its deepest rocket attacks into Israel since the start of the Gaza war, fuelling fears of a wider conflict.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said on Saturday night it launched two wave of attacks – one attacking about 290 targets, and a second targeting 110 sites – across southern Lebanon as sirens warning of Hezbollah rocket attacks sounded in dozens of towns across northern Israel.

About 10 rockets are believed to crossed over from Lebanon, with most intercepted, the IDF said. Israel’s emergency medical services reported that a man was lightly wounded by shrapnel from a missile that was intercepted in a village in the lower Galilee.

Hezbollah posted on its Telegram channel early on Sunday morning that it had targeted the Israeli Ramat David airbase near Haifa with dozens of missiles in response to what it described as “repeated Israeli attacks on Lebanon”.

The airbase is the furthest target the Lebanese group has hit in Israel since the beginning of fighting in October, about 50km from the Lebanon-Israel border.

Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant delivered a speech at the Ramat David airbase on Wednesday, telling air force personnel that Israel’s war with Hezbollah had reached a “new phase”. He also praised the army’s Mossad intelligence agency for its “excellent achievements” in the region, just hours after a wave of attacks struck Lebanon, striking walkie-talkies commonly held by Hezbollah members. Wednesday’s attack, in addition to a previous operation targeting pagers, left 42 dead and more than 3,000 wounded. Israel is presumed to be behind the operation, though it has not officially claimed responsibility.

In July, Hezbollah released footage filmed by a drone over the city of Haifa that highlighted Ramat David airbase, as part of an almost 10-minute long video marking military infrastructure in the densely populated city in northern Israel.

On Saturday, Israel closed its northern airspace as it awaited Hezbollah retaliation for the assassination of Ibrahim Aqil, a veteran commander of the elite Radwan unit, along with more than a dozen other militants.

Three children and seven women were among 37 people killed by the Israeli strike on Beirut on Friday that targeted the top Hezbollah leader in a densely populated neighbourhood, Lebanese authorities have said.

US and UN officials have warned against further escalation, with airlines including Air France, Turkish Airlines and Aegean cancelling flights to Beirut, reflecting fears that a tumultuous week had pushed the region closer to full-blown war.

Israel has not visibly slowed its war in Gaza to focus on the north. On Saturday its forces bombed a school turned shelter, killing at least 22 and injuring 30 others, mostly women and children, the Gaza health ministry said. Israel’s military said the target was a Hamas base inside the school, without providing details or evidence.

Last week, however, Israel said it was expanding its strategic aims for the Gaza war to include returning 60,0000 evacuated residents of northern Israel to their homes, which are regularly targeted by Hezbollah. It then unleashed a series of unprecedented attacks on the group.

The US state department on Saturday urged Americans in Lebanon to leave. “Due to the unpredictable nature of ongoing conflict between Hezbollah and Israel and recent explosions throughout Lebanon, including Beirut, the US embassy urges US citizens to depart Lebanon while commercial options still remain available,” it said in an updated advisory. “At this time, commercial flights are available, but at reduced capacity. If the security situation worsens, commercial options to depart may become unavailable,” it added.

In late July, the US raised its travel advisory for Lebanon to its highest “do not travel” classification, after a strike on southern Beirut killed a Hezbollah commander.

Hezbollah began launching attacks in support of its ally Hamas after 7 October, and has indicated it will stop targeting Israel when the Gaza Strip offensive stops, unless Israel continues shelling Lebanon.

Months of missile, rocket and drone hits have killed at least 23 soldiers and 26 civilians, and in effect turned Israel’s border regions near Lebanon into a strategic buffer zone, too dangerous for ordinary life.

Inside Lebanon, more than 500 people have been killed by Israeli strikes, most of them fighters with Hezbollah and other armed groups, but also more than 100 civilians.

Israel has not visibly slowed its war in Gaza to focus on the north. On Saturday its forces bombed a school turned shelter, killing at least 22 and injuring 30 others, mostly women and children, the Gaza health ministry said. Israel’s military said the target was a Hamas base inside the school, without providing details or evidence.

With Agence France-Presse and Associated Press