SkyyPro News

A suspect has been arrested in the US state of Louisiana for the murders of two black men, which authorities said were “racially motivated”.

Baton Rouge police have also charged Kenneth Gleason with attempted murder after shots were fired at an African-American family’s home.

Investigators say they discovered the 23-year-old’s DNA on pistol shell-casings found at the crime scenes.

A lawyer for Mr Gleason, who is white, said his client denies the charges.

During a search of the suspect’s home over the weekend, authorities discovered a speech by Adolf Hitler, as well as cannabis and human growth hormone, US media report.

Bruce Cofield, 59, and Donald Smart, 49, were both shot in separate incidents while walking on the streets of the Louisiana state capital last week.

Mr Cofield was homeless, and Mr Smart had been walking to his job as a dishwasher at a cafe popular with Louisiana State University students.

Authorities believe the two victims were first shot from a car before the attacker walked over and continued firing at them as they lay on the ground.

The attacks happened two days apart, and police say they believe neither man had any previous interaction with Mr Gleason.

Police also believe Mr Gleason may have opened fire on the home of a black family in his neighbourhood, where he lives with his parents. Nobody was injured in that attack.

Baton Rouge Interim Police Chief Jonny Dunnam said on Tuesday: “I feel confident this killer probably would have killed again, and could have potentially created a tear in the fabric that holds this community together.”

Mr Gleason had just posted bail for unrelated theft charges when he was arrested for the killings.

He has been booked on two counts of first-degree murder, two counts of attempted first-degree murder, aggravated criminal damage to property and illegal use of weapon, according to the East Baton Rouge Sheriff’s Office.

East Baton Rouge Parish District Attorney Hillar Moore said his office will seek the death penalty.

Christopher Alexander, a lawyer for Mr Gleason, said his client “vehemently denies guilt, and we look forward to complete vindication”.

It is not the first time the Louisiana state capital has been rocked by racially charged shootings.

In July 2016, a black gunman gunned down six police officers in the city, killing three, days after the fatal police shooting of an African-American man, Alton Sterling.

More than 5,700 asylum seekers crossed illegally from the US into Canada last month, a rise of almost 80% on July, government figures show.

Canada has seen a surge of refugee claimants in recent months, especially into the province of Quebec.

Crossings have increased relatively steadily since January.

There were 5,712 people intercepted by the Mounties last month at the Canada-US border, bringing this year’s total to 13,211.

In Manitoba, 80 people were intercepted after crossing the border. In British Columbia, 102 people were stopped.

But the vast majority – 5,530 – crossed into Quebec in the first part of the month, where people can easily cross a ditch at the end of a rural New York state road into Canada.

The influx into the predominantly French-speaking province was led by Haitians who had been living legally in the US, protected by a programme that extended temporary protection from deportation to Haitian citizens after the devastating 2010 earthquake.

The Trump administration has hinted it will not extend that protection when it expires in January 2018.

• Canada seeks to dispel asylum myths
• Canada refugee claimants numbers jump

Canada completely lifted its own protected status for Haitians a year ago. In 2016, about 50% of all asylum claims by Haitians were rejected.

Government officials have redoubled efforts to counteract misinformation helping bring asylum seekers to Canada’s doorstep.

In January, 315 people were intercepted in Canada after crossing the border, increasing to 887 in March and 3,134 in July.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has tempered his language on refugees and immigration in recent weeks.

He has noted that while Canada remains an “opening and welcoming society”, it is still a country of laws with rigorous immigration and customs rules.

In August, federal Liberal MP Emmanuel Dubourg, who is of Haitian origin and speaks Creole, was tasked with engaging extensively with Haitian media in American cities like Miami and New York.

And earlier this month, MP Pablo Rodriguez was sent to Los Angeles to meet with the Hispanic community there.

Thousands of immigrants in the US from Honduras, Nicaragua and El Salvador also face losing their temporary protected status.

The Canadian government is concerned they will also seek a second shot at asylum in the north.

Asylum seekers are usually stopped immediately by the Mounties after crossing the border.

Once apprehended, they are identified, searched and screened. If they are eligible to make an asylum claim, they are allowed entry and referred to the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada.

Police in Colorado are looking for a mystery jogger – dubbed “the Mad Pooper” – who keeps defecating outside a family’s home.

Cathy Budde says the woman has left human waste in front of her property about seven times in recent weeks, even though there are public toilets nearby.

She says her children caught the runner in the act, squatting by their house in Colorado Springs.

The city police department said such behaviour is “bizarre”.

Lt Howard Black told the BBC the suspect could be charged under a city ordinance banning public urination or defecation.

“I haven’t come across anything like this in 35 years with the police department,” he added.

He said it is not clear if mental health issues are involved.

• Could jogging be bad for you?
• New ‘bridge push’ jogger image released

Mrs Budde told news station KKTV she has confronted the woman.

“So I come outside, and I’m like, ‘Are you serious?’ Are you really taking a poop right here in front of my kids?’ She’s like, ‘Yeah, sorry!’

“I thought for sure she’s mortified, it’s an accident, she’ll go get a dog bag, clean it up and never run here again. Not the case.”

Mrs Budde added: “Two other times we’ve caught her – caught her yesterday – she changed up her time a little bit because she knew I was watching.

“I put a sign on the wall that’s like, ‘please, I’m begging you, please stop.'”

But she says this did not deter the jogger from answering the call of nature outside the Budde residence.

Myanmar’s Aung San Suu Kyi is facing mounting international pressure for her handling of violence in Rakhine state and the Rohingya refugee crisis.

In a speech on Tuesday, the de facto leader condemned rights abuses but did not blame the army or address allegations of ethnic cleansing.

Leaders and diplomats from several countries have since expressed strong disappointment with her stance.

More than 400,000 Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh since late August.

The latest unrest in troubled Rakhine was sparked by deadly attacks on police stations across the state last month, blamed on a newly emerged militant group, the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (Arsa).

Scores of people were killed in an ensuing military crackdown and there are widespread allegations of villages being burned and Rohingya being driven out.

In her first national address on the recent crisis, Ms Suu Kyi said:

• there had been no clashes or clearance operations in the northern state since 5 September
• most Muslims had decided to stay and that this indicated the situation was not so severe
• the government had made efforts in recent years to improve living conditions for all people in Rakhine including Muslims
• that all refugees would be allowed to return after a verification process.

Reality Check: Are Suu Kyi’s Rohingya claims correct?

Who are the Rohingya group behind attacks?

The Burmese military says its operations in Rakhine are aimed at rooting out militants, and has repeatedly denied targeting civilians. Witnesses, refugees and journalists have contested this.

In a phone call, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told Ms Suu Kyi that he welcomed her statement that refugees would be able to return once verified.

But he urged her to facilitate humanitarian aid and “address deeply troubling allegations of human rights abuses and violations”, the state department said.

Speaking to the UN Assembly, French President Emmanuel Macron said “the military operation must stop, humanitarian access must be guaranteed and the rule of law restored in the face of what we know is ethnic cleansing”.

He also said he would start a Security Council initiative to ensure humanitarian access and an end to the violence.

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres also urged Myanmar to “end the military operations” and “address the grievances of the Rohingyas, whose status has been left unresolved for far too long”.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called on the international community to act on the crisis warning that “unless the tragedy taking place in Myanmar is brought to a halt, humanity will have to live with the shame of another dark stain in its history”.

• What sparked latest violence in Rakhine?
• Myanmar conflict: The view from Yangon

A spokesperson for the EU said Ms Suu Kyi’s invitation for international diplomats to visit the affected areas – previously ruled out of bounds by the government – was “a step forward”.

But he said Myanmar’s leadership needed to show “that the democracy they fought so hard for can work for all the people of Myanmar, beyond ethnic, social and religious boundaries”.

UK Prime Minister Theresa May also said the military action in Rakhine had to stop. The UK is suspending training courses for the Myanmar military in light of the violence.

Amnesty International said Aung San Suu Kyi’s speech was “little more than a mix of untruths and victim blaming”, and accused her of “burying her head in the sand” by ignoring the abuses by the army.

Having led Myanmar’s struggle out of decades of military dictatorship, Ms Suu Kyi received the Nobel Peace in 1990. She remains overwhelmingly popular in the country.

The shooting of a student at Georgia Tech university has raised questions over when and why police resort to deadly force. In some cities, including one of America’s poorest and most violent, officers are trying a different approach.

On 17 November 2015, Sergeant Mickey White was driving home in his patrol car, his shift over, when a call went out about a man harassing customers at Jerry’s Country Meat and Catering, a local grocery store in Arlington, Georgia.

The suspect was behaving oddly, said the employee who dialled 911, accosting people and singing a hymn – “Great is Thy Faithfulness” – as he walked up and down the aisles.

Sgt White took the call. When he arrived, the man was outside sitting in his car, the door open and hazard lights on. He was Derry Eugene Touchtone, a 58-year old white man from Headland, just over the state border in Alabama. He was unarmed.

As Sgt White pulled up behind Touchtone, the dashboard camera in his patrol car was recording.

In the video, the officer can be heard telling Touchtone to leave the vehicle. Touchtone complies but then ignores repeated instructions to put his hands on the car. Instead he walks slowly out of shot, towards White, and begins to sing.

Sgt White fires his Taser but it fails to stop Touchtone. Off camera, a tussle can be heard, followed by two gunshots.

Thirty-five seconds after Sgt White had arrived, Touchtone was dead.

The dashcam kept recording as other officers arrived on the scene, and it overheard Sgt White talking to another deputy.

“You know the bad thing about it, Brent?” White says, “I could’ve fought him.”

“Don’t second guess yourself,” Brent replies. “You did what Mickey had to do.”

Two years later, and 200 miles north, another controversial police shooting in Georgia has raised questions over exactly what officers have to do to protect themselves against suspects who threaten them with fists, knives, bats or other non-firearm weapons.

Scout Schultz, a 21-year-old Georgia Tech student who had battled depression, was reported to police on Sunday after being seen on campus with a knife.

When officers arrived on scene, Schultz approached them holding the knife – in reality a multi-tool with a small blade, which a family lawyer says was closed.

In an amateur video of the incident, Schultz can be heard saying “Shoot me!” while walking towards the officers.

“Drop the knife, man, come on,” a police officer responds.

“Nobody wants to hurt you,” another officer says.

At a press conference, Schultz’s father was asked what he would like to say to the officer who pulled the trigger.

“Why did you have to shoot?” Bill Schultz said.

“That’s the question, I mean that’s the only question that matters right now. Why did you kill my son?”

It’s question that goes to the heart of a shift in policing tactics that is taking place in some parts of the country – an attempted move away from the use of deadly force and towards de-escalation.

A series of highly publicised police shootings have drawn national attention to so-called officer-involved shootings, but the vast majority of police officers in the US still have little or no training in how to recognise and engage with a suspect suffering from a mental health crisis, or de-escalate a threat from a knife without resorting to a gun.

‘Slow it down’

On 9 November 2015, about a week before Sgt Mickey White pulled up at Jerry’s Country Meat, a 48-year-old man walked into a Crown Fried Chicken in Camden City, New Jersey, and pulled out a steak knife. High on PCP, and with a history of mental health problems, he was acting wildly, threatening customers.

Outside, he jabbed the knife in the direction of two police deputies before setting off down the street. He was soon surrounded by a dozen or so officers, but he continued to swing the knife and move forward.

At this point, the situation could so easily have played out the way it did at Georgia Tech on Sunday. The officers could have stood their ground, as they had the right to do. They could have followed a decades-old policing rule that anyone with a knife within 21ft presents an immediate threat to life. They could have shot him dead.

But in Camden, one of the poorest and most violent cities in the country, police have for the past few years been taking a new approach. “We stress to our officers that you do not have to rush in and rapidly resolve every scenario,” said Lieutenant Kevin Lutz, who has overseen the shift in tactics.

“It’s OK to slow down, it’s OK to take a step back. Sometimes the best thing is to holster your weapon and talk.”

The Camden officers following the knife-wielding suspect slowed down. They formed a loose group around the man, clearing the street ahead and walking alongside him. One spoke to him, periodically asking him to drop the knife. They waited. Most of the officers had their guns holstered, a few held them subtly at their sides.

About 45 minutes after police arrived they were able to Taser the man, and he was arrested.

“Those officers would 100% have been legally justified to use deadly force,” said Lt Lutz. “Had they stood their ground a deadly encounter would have been forced at that point. By allowing it to unfold, it ended with an arrest and the suspect is alive. Five or 10 years ago, he wouldn’t be.”

But the Georgia Tech shooting on Sunday shows that similar incidents still end fatally today. Of the 40,000 or so serving police officers in the state, about 10,000 have received some kind of mental health and de-escalation training over the past decade, according to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. The gold standard is a 40-hour course run in conjunction with the National Alliance for Mental Illness, but the majority of those 10,000 officers – and the vast majority of police officers across the country – will have received significantly less than that.

And a proportion of those 10,000 officers have retired or moved on to desk jobs, leaving no clear picture of how many current frontline officers in Georgia have had some form of de-escalation training. It is not known whether the officers that confronted Scout Schultz had had any.

According to a 2015 national survey by the Police Executive Research Forum (Perf), police officers received on average 58 hours of firearms training, 49 hours on defensive tactics, and just eight hours on mental health and de-escalation. There are no states which mandate de-escalation training.

Lessons from the UK

Camden police worked closely with Perf in developing its new approach. Perf in turn took inspiration from officers in Scotland. In late 2014 – shortly after the police shooting of Michael Brown sparked violent unrest in Ferguson, Missouri – Perf director Chuck Wexler was in Scotland for a leadership training programme.

Looking around him at a graduation ceremony, he was struck by the fact that none of the officers were carrying guns.

“What hit me was the fact that these officers deal with similar knife situations that we deal with. A knife in Glasgow is the same as a knife in downtown Washington DC, so why are they able to do it without shooting?”

Mr Wexler returned to the US armed with the UK’s National Decision Model – a framework that emphasises communication, patience, and minimal force. He took note of interesting tactics, like a police officer removing his hat to appear more open and less confrontational. Perf now works with police departments across the country to train officers in looking for alternatives to firing their gun.

Those alternatives can present themselves in any number of small decisions before a final, momentous one, said Greg Ridgeway, a statistician at the University of Pennsylvania who has studied police shootings.

“Often you look at the three seconds before the shooting and it looks like a good shoot,” he said. “Suspect comes at officer with knife, officer shoots. Fine. But step back five minutes, even a minute, and you start questioning how the officer got themselves into that situation where they had no option but to shoot. And you see that a little bit of patience, a little bit of distance, could have resolved some of those incidents peacefully.”

The Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) declined to comment on the incident at Georgia Tech, but the video suggests that crisis intervention tactics – and the kind of patience exhibited by the officers in Camden County – might have resolved that incident peacefully.

GBI director Vernon Keenan acknowledged that the amount of mental health and de-escalation training currently given to most officers was “minimal”. He said the state was in the process of reviewing the amount of training on offer and recruiting 12 new permanent staff to oversee more.

Even those who bang the drum loudest for a rethink over the use of deadly force acknowledge that it is still sometimes the only option, and the 300 million or so guns in America put it in a vastly different position to countries like Scotland. “Make no mistake, there are times when force is going to be immediate and required,” said Lt Lutz.

But in places like Camden, they are trying to shift the emphasis. Officers are taught to put an “absolute value on the life of the person they encounter, regardless of what behaviour they are exhibiting at the time,” said Lt Lutz.

“If our officers value life, and they are morally sound, and they are responding to the call and thinking through why they are there, then we believe some of the more controversial shootings that have taken place across the country, right or wrong, can be avoided.”

Barn owls keep their acute sense of hearing into old age, scientists have discovered.

Previously, starlings have been found to have this ability, suggesting birds are protected from age-related hearing loss.

Understanding more about the “ageless ears” of barn owls could help develop new treatments for human hearing problems.

Birds are able to naturally repair damage to the inner ear.

Georg Klump of the University of Oldenburg, Germany, a researcher on the study, said owls keep their hearing into very old age.

“Birds can repair their ears like (humans) can repair a wound,” he said. “Humans cannot re-grow the sensory cells of the ears but birds can do this.”

It appears that humans lost these regenerative abilities at some point in evolution. Like all mammals, people commonly suffer from hearing loss in old age.

By the age of 65, humans can expect to lose more than 30 dB in sensitivity at high frequencies.

Commenting on the study, Dr Stefan Heller of Stanford University School of Medicine, said work was underway to investigate differences between birds and mammals.

“To truly utilise this knowledge, we need to conduct comparative studies of birds and mammals that aim to find the differences in regenerative capacity, a topic that is actively pursued by a number of laboratories worldwide,” he said.

The research, published in the journal, Royal Society Proceedings B, was carried out on seven captive barn owls.

The birds were trained to fly to a perch to receive a food reward in response to sounds.

Even the oldest owl, which reached the ripe old age of 23, showed no signs of age-related hearing loss.

Barn owls typically only live to the age of three or four in the wild. The birds rely on their hearing to hunt prey at night.

For all the Western concern about Russia’s Zapad military exercises, they nonetheless offer a rare insight into developments in the Russian military at a time of significant change.

As one of the leading Western analysts of Russian military developments, Roger McDermott, says “while Russia’s armed forces’ leadership remain very interested in military theory, they test and rehearse new approaches to warfare in strategic exercises”.

Thus, he adds, “exercises like Zapad offer glimpses into the real level of capability and demand careful and sober assessment for outsiders”.

• Russia launches huge war games
• Ukraine fears Russia will use exercises next week to invade
• How much of a threat does Russia pose, and to whom?
• Should Russia’s new Armata T-14 tanks worry Nato?

Russia claims this exercise falls below a treaty threshold of 13,000 soldiers that would require invitations to be issued to observer teams from other European nations. Western analysts place the numbers involved much higher.

But even without full-scale observer teams, Zapad is being monitored closely by Nato countries using satellites and aircraft with radars that can reach into western Russia to get a clear sense of how Russian and Belarussian forces perform.

These exercises come at an interesting moment.

The Russian military is transitioning from the old Cold-War-style Red Army into a more modern and flexible force, capable of conducting combined operations across land, sea and air, tailored to a variety of potential scenarios – just like the more sophisticated of Nato armies.

Lessons learned?

Igor Sutyagin, the senior research fellow for Russian studies at the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies (RUSI) think tank in London, describes this as an attempt to create “a lean, fully manned, combat-ready force, fully – or to the best possible extent – equipped with the up-to-date equipment [and] supported by agile rear infrastructure”.

Despite Russia’s victory in the brief Georgia war of 2008, the conflict showed up many shortcomings. And Western analysts will be watching the Zapad manoeuvres closely to see how the Russian General Staff is applying the lessons learned from more recent operations in Syria and eastern Ukraine.

Dr Sutyagin told me: “Both campaigns showed the general direction in which the Russian military is moving.”

But how far has Russia’s military transition really gone? And, crucially, will the Russian government continue to have sufficient funds to maintain its military modernisation plans?

Technological gap?

Dr Sutyagin says the transition has passed the middle of its long path, with organisational changes nearing their completion.

However, there have been some indications of backsliding, with a return to the establishment of large army divisions which, he says, are “hard to man, thus being to a large extent ’empty shells'”.

Rearmament with modern weaponry, necessary to close – or at the minimum, narrow – the technological gap between the Russian and the best Western military forces is also gaining momentum.

But Dr Sutyagin says much of the new equipment budget may now be in question, “as completion of the rearmament programme depends on both availability of finances and access to Western technologies, which is becoming harder”.

Spectacular fire power

In terms of the Zapad exercises themselves, there is much to look for.

In theory these are defensive exercises, organising the defence of Russia and Belarus against an external attack.

This of course has not prevented some spectacular firepower demonstrations, not least the firing of an Iskander-M missile from a range in south-west Russia against a mock target in Kazakhstan – a flight of some 480km (300 miles).

But in terms of the exercises themselves, what will Nato watchers be looking for?

Mr McDermott says “it will be worth examining the use of strike systems in the exercise” because “since the last Zapad in 2013, Moscow has magnified the role of conventional precision strike in its set of coercive tools”.

In a ground-breaking study of Russia’s use of what it calls “high-precision weapons” (precision-guided munitions or PGMs in the West) recently published by the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment, Mr McDermott and his co-author, Tor Bukkvoll, set out the history and development of Russia’s interest in this category of weapon.

Long-range cruise missiles, both air- and sea-launched, were first used by the Russians in combat in the conflict in Syria.

It is interesting that while much of the Western media discussion of PGMs rests upon their use as air-launched weapons in bombing campaigns, intended to increase accuracy and reduce the level of civilian casualties, in Russia the weapons are viewed in a rather different light.

Mr McDermott’s study concludes that “for the foreseeable future, precision-guided munitions will mainly provide Russia with what in the Russian literature is called a ‘pre-nuclear’ deterrence capability”.

Electronic warfare

Note the Iskander-M launch in this exercise. This is basically just another layer of deterrence in addition to the nuclear weapons, but is still seen as being of vital importance by the Russian military.

Another area Mr McDermott highlights is Russia’s growing electronic warfare (EW) capability.

This has been on display during the fighting in eastern Ukraine and has impressed many Nato commanders.

They fear that while their forces have had a lengthy gap in serious training for high-intensity conflict to fight counter-insurgency campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, Russia has been steadily improving its forces. EW is a case in point.

In a recently published study for the International Centre for Defence and Security in Estonia, Mr McDermott said: “Russia’s growing technological advances in EW will allow its forces to jam, disrupt and interfere with Nato communications, radar and other sensor systems, unmanned aerial vehicles and other assets.”

This capability, he said, risked “negating advantages conferred on [Nato] by its technological edge”.

“Many of those systems,” he said, “are being introduced in units across all services stationed in Russia’s Western Military District adjacent to Nato’s borders.”

Russia sees EW as a seamless whole, ranging from kinetic combat operations on the battlefield to missions in cyber-space and the information domain.

Indeed this may be the area where the Russian military is breaking the “newest” ground, having as it does, a far less clearly defined sense of the boundary line between war and peace.

It is in this “grey area” of warfare that Moscow is leveraging its abilities.

As such it poses fundamental political and military challenges to Nato countries, in whose strategic outlook war and peace tend to assume a far more black and white character.

Two men have been arrested in south Wales over Friday’s terror attack on a London Underground train, bringing the total number held to five.

A 48-year-old man and a 30-year-old man were detained under the Terrorism Act in the early hours, after a search at an address in Newport.

Police are still searching there, and at a second address in Newport.

Thirty people were injured when a homemade bomb partially exploded on a rush-hour train at Parsons Green.

The other arrests so far were of:

• A 25-year-old man in Newport on Tuesday evening

• An 18-year-old man at Dover port on Saturday. The BBC has learnt he had previously been referred to an anti-extremist programme

• A 21-year-old man in Hounslow, west London, also on Saturday

Commander Dean Haydon, head of the Metropolitan Police counter terrorism command, said: “This continues to be a fast-moving investigation.

“A significant amount of activity has taken place since the attack on Friday.

“Detectives are carrying out extensive inquiries to determine the full facts behind the attack.”

Further searches are continuing at two addresses in Surrey and are expected to last some days, the police said.

Orphan from Iraq

The 18-year-old arrested man is thought to have lived in a foster home owned by Ronald and Penelope Jones, in Sunbury-on-Thames, Surrey.

He is thought to have moved to the UK from Iraq aged 15 when his parents died.

The BBC has learnt that he had been referred to an anti-extremist programme before his arrest.

It is not known who made the referral and when – or how serious the concerns were.

The 21-year-old man, also arrested on Saturday, is believed to be Syrian-born Yahyah Farroukh.

Mr Farroukh worked at Aladdins chicken shop in Hounslow, and has been described as a former foster child who had lived in the Jones’s house.

Mr Farroukh posted a picture on his Instagram page in May this year with a suitcase on Cavendish Road, Sunbury, almost directly outside the Jones’s house.

At 08:20 BST on Friday a homemade bomb, which was transported in a Lidl bag, partially exploded in a Tube train at Parsons Green station, causing burns to a number of victims.

Sham thinks I should learn to milk a cow. Her new enthusiasm for farming bursts forth over a Skype call between London and Damascus, along with a loud and confident laugh.

She has been to visit a farm with her local Girl Guide group in Syria.

From Damascus and Hama to Aleppo and the seaside city of Latakia, through six years of war in which hundreds of thousands of people have lost their lives and more than 12 million have been forced from their homes, the Girl Guides have continued.

‘Sense of normality’

Women first started holding Guide meetings in Syria in the 1950s and they are being granted full membership of the movement’s worldwide body this week.

The World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts (Wagggs) praised the Syria groups’ “incredible work” at giving their more than 1,000 members “a sense of normality” and “a safe space to play and make friends”.

“Everyone thinks that we’re all dying. Actually we are having a normal life,” says Sham, a 22-year-old student who lives in Damascus, the capital.

That might seem incongruous – Damascus has been rocked by suicide bombings and air strikes and has seen battles between rebels and the government.

• Why is there a war in Syria?

But in any war the intensity of conflict depends on where you are. In government-held Damascus, cafes and markets have stayed open against a backdrop of shelling, even as other cities have been destroyed, displaced families have been left destitute, and millions more people have left Syria altogether.

Living in a middle-class part of the capital, Sham knows how lucky she is.

“The war has taken its toll on my country, however, I am thankful it hasn’t affected me in person,” she says.

“Instead, it’s made me stronger and helped me realise what I want to do in life. I know now that studying is the key to everything.

“Girl Guides has helped me no end and it’s one of the reasons I consider myself successful.

“I am a part of the efforts of rebuilding Syria because I am a leader in the Scout movement.”

• From cooking to campaigning: Girl Guides modernise

Sham even went to Sudan earlier this year to train Girl Guides there in body confidence. Since she took part in the scheme, she has stopped wearing make up altogether and wants other girls to feel proud of their bodies.

While in the UK Guides have traditionally been associated with Christianity, Sham is a Sunni Muslim and says the members come from different religions and celebrate both Eid and Christmas together.

“No one would even ask” her religion, she says.

• Girlguiding UK drop God vow from promise

Girl Guides were banned in Syria in 1980 along with other youth organisations, as the ruling party tried to consolidate power.

One woman, Rim, had been a member since she was six years old and the movement meant so much to her, she flouted the ban to hold meetings in a local church.

Girl Guides groups started to re-form in 2000 after the ban was lifted, and Rim is now a leader, a board member and a training co-ordinator. She says it has made her a “strong, confident woman” and she tries to pass that on to the girls in her charge by organising guest speakers including writers and businesswomen.

“Not only in Syria but in the Middle East women have not reached the position that they should be in yet,” she says.

“The community still thinks that women cannot be decision makers or independent. It is hard to persuade people that even though I am a woman, I can still be a leader, a decision-maker and be able to create positive change.

“Girls are the key to our future. They are capable of amazing things.”

Syria’s Girl Guides Promise:

“On my honour, I promise that I will do my best to do my duty to God and my country, to help others and to obey the Girl Guide law.”

Some of Rim’s friends have died or had to leave, and she can no longer travel around the country to go hiking at the weekend as she used to.

When the Girl Guides in Syria go camping, they have to check with the army beforehand that the area around their campsite is safe.

And in such a divided country, it is difficult to be as inclusive as they might like. They operate in government-held areas. Their events use the national flag of Syria, the anthem and the national motto – contentious symbols all.

Even the Syrian version of the promise – a pledge Girl Guides are invited to make when they join – mentions duty to one’s country. It is not inconceivable that this would stop families who oppose the government of Bashar al-Assad from sending their daughters to meetings.

Rim says that is not the case and some parents who “object to” the government do send their children.

“The Guides and Scouts is a movement that is not political,” she says.

“The promise is promising for the country and not for a specific government.

“It is for the country. It is for Syria.”

Sham agrees: “We never talk about politics. It’s open for everyone. Christians, Muslims, everyone.”

A guide to Guides

• Girl Guides are aged between five and 22
• They started in 1909 in Britain as a girls’ version of the Boy Scouts
• The Damascus unit meets once a week in the winter and three times a week in the summer
• Members can earn badges for new skills including learning an exercise, having an adventure or for learning facts
• Guides wear a uniform
• Associate members do not have voting rights at annual conferences of the movement; full members do
• Along with Syria, groups in Aruba, Azerbaijan and the Palestinian territories will become full members this week

Hillary Clinton says she would not “rule out” questioning the legitimacy of the US presidential election if Russia is found to have deeply meddled.

The former secretary of state told NPR’s Fresh Air programme, however, she did not believe there was a “mechanism” in place to challenge the outcome.

US intelligence agencies believe Russia tried to tip the election in favour of President Donald Trump.

Mrs Clinton spoke just before her top aide testified to Congress.

John Podesta, the former chairman of her Democratic presidential campaign, appeared on Monday before the Senate Intelligence Committee, which is leading one of several investigations on Russia’s alleged role in the 2016 election.

• What Happened: The long list of who Hillary Clinton blames

Mr Podesta was one of several Democratic figures whose email account was breached by suspected Russia-backed hackers.

The ghost of elections past?

Analysis by Anthony Zurcher, BBC North America reporter

The day after her 2016 election defeat, Hillary Clinton told a crowd of shell-shocked supporters that “we must accept this result and then look to the future”.

Now, the former Democratic nominee seems open to adding a big asterisk to that sentence. Everyone can move on – unless there’s clear evidence of Russian interference.

Needless to say, that’s a big “unless” and a bridge that will likely never be crossed in the minds of many Americans.

It could come as sweet music to some in the Democratic base, who are hanging on every unconfirmed report or rumour of Trump campaign malfeasance and waiting with bated breath for the day the presidential house of cards comes crashing down.

Democratic officeholders and those aspiring to higher office – including the growing list of 2020 presidential aspirants – aren’t quite so thrilled.

For them, Mrs Clinton is threatening to become the ghost of elections past; an unwelcome spectre reminding the party of its failings.

Mrs Clinton’s recent statement – indeed, the tone of her book tour and the book itself – shows that while many Democrats may want to look to the future, she’s still got one eye on what could have been.

Follow @awzurcher

His emails were subsequently released to the public by Wikileaks during the election campaign.

NPR’s Terry Gross pressed Mrs Clinton on Monday about whether she would “completely rule out questioning the legitimacy of this election if we learn that the Russian interference in the election is even deeper than we know now”.

“No, I wouldn’t rule it out,” Mrs Clinton said in the interview, which was to promote her new book about how she lost, What Happened.

But she emphasised that she did not believe there was a legal option to challenge the validity of the election.

“There are scholars, academics, who have arguments that it would be, but I don’t think they’re on strong ground. But people are making those arguments. I just don’t think we have a mechanism,” she said.

Republican Senator Cory Gardner fired back at Mrs Clinton on Monday, saying he is aware she has a book to plug but “she should be ashamed” for her “wildly irresponsible” comments.

Last week, Mrs Clinton called for the abolishing of the US electoral college as she sought to explain why she lost the election.

“I think it needs to be eliminated,” Mrs Clinton told CNN of the institution. “I’d like to see us move beyond it, yes.”

As Mrs Clinton often points out, she won the popular vote last November by nearly three million ballots.

But she still lost the White House because Mr Trump prevailed in the electoral college.

Despite winning the presidency, Mr Trump has himself questioned the results.

He has claimed millions voted illegally for Mrs Clinton, even though the Federal Election Commission certified the results.

The Trump administration has been dogged by claims that members of its campaign team had ties to the Kremlin.

Mr Trump denies any wrongdoing and has repeatedly called the Russia investigation a “witch hunt”.