Emma Batha

The Taliban may have banned women from sport in Afghanistan, but Masomah Ali Zada - head of this year's Olympic refugee team - is determined to keep championing their rights from her adopted home in France.

Three years ago, Ali Zada, 28, became the first Afghan cyclist to compete in the Olympics after winning a spot in the refugee team at the Tokyo Games.

When Afghan cyclists Yulduz and Fariba Hashimi used to train on the dusty roads at home, men would hurl stones and insults, but their years of hard graft have now paid off, winning the sisters a place at the Paris Olympics.

The Hashimi siblings are the first cyclists - male or female - to represent Afghanistan at the Games.

But taking part is about far more than chasing medals.

The Paris Olympics will be the first Games to host an equal number of female and male competitors, but off the field it is another story with barely one in 10 coaches likely to be women.

Gold medal hopefuls trained by women include U.S. sprinter Gabby Thomas, British diver Tom Daley, British swimmer Adam Peaty and Ukrainian high jumper Yaroslava Mahuchikh who set a new world record this month. 

Abortion is a key issue in this year's U.S. presidential election with both sides seeking to capitalise on the highly divisive topic following a slew of state bans.

About half of U.S. states have outlawed abortion or introduced draconian curbs since a landmark Supreme Court ruling in June 2022.

Immigration is one of the hot issues in Britain's July 4 election with Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and opposition leader Keir Starmer both pledging to cut legal migration, but deeply divided over a plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda.

Official data shows net migration - legal arrivals minus departures - stood at 685,000 last year, down from a record high of 764,000 in 2022, but still more than treble the number in 2019.

This year's Olympics in Paris are set to make history as the first Games to field as many women competitors as men, 128 years after the first modern version of the ancient Greek competition was held - with no women allowed.

The founder of the modern Olympics, Pierre de Coubertin, said women's participation would be "uninteresting, unaesthetic and improper", arguing that the Games were for the "exaltation of male athleticism" with "female applause as reward".

Sine Hope's big passion in life is Latin and ballroom dancing, but her days of samba and rumba are over - two years ago a vicious assault by her then-boyfriend left the vivacious South African in a wheelchair.

The former construction industry consultant, who was her family's main breadwinner, has not worked since and needs a full-time carer.

Probes into care companies double as reports of debt bondage and exploitation engulf migrant care workers lured by new visa scheme

France has become the only country to explicitly guarantee the right to abortion in its constitution following a landmark vote by a special joint session of parliament.

The move was in direct response to a dramatic rollback of reproductive rights in the United States.

The wildfire spread of fabricated porn images of pop megastar Taylor Swift has fuelled calls in the United States for strong legislation to tackle an explosion of deepfake sexual abuse facilitated by artificial intelligence.

The images - which grafted Swift's face onto another woman's body - attracted tens of millions of views on social media last week in what one lawyer said was the biggest such case to date.