Democratic voters have picked congressman Charlie Crist to take on Florida’s Republican Governor Ron DeSantis in the midterm elections. Mr Crist beat the state’s agriculture commissioner, Nikki Fried, in the last big election day before November’s vote. Democrats are eager to eclipse rising star Mr DeSantis amid expectations he will run for the White House in 2024. Voters in New York and Oklahoma also picked candidates on Tuesday. The midterms will determine control of Congress for the final two years of Democratic President Joe Biden’s term. In New York state, Democrat Pat Ryan defeated Republican Marc Molinaro in a special election for an open US House seat. That race could prove a bellwether for the midterms. According to opinion polls Mr Crist is currently trailing Mr DeSantis by a few percentage points in Florida, a crucial swing state in presidential elections that has grown steadily more Republican during the governor’s tenure. Mr Crist was formerly a Republican who served a single term as the state’s governor before switching parties in 2012.(BBC)…[+]

Ten police officers have been arrested in Colombia on suspicion of involvement in the killing of three youths. The three were shot dead while in police custody in northern Sucre province on 25 July. A police colonel, the highest-ranking officer suspected in the case, is on the run and thought to be abroad. Prosecutors say the policers officers had alleged that the youths were members of the Gulf Clan criminal group that had earlier shot dead a policeman. Colombia has a dark history of “false positives” – cases in which civilians were murdered by the military and passed off as rebels to boost its kill rate. An inquiry found last year that Colombia’s military killed more than 6,400 people between 2002 and 2008 and falsely labelled them as enemy combatants.(BBC)…[+]

Elon Musk has launched legal action to summon Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey to appear in court as part of his legal battle with the tech company. Mr Musk is seeking to end his $44bn deal for Twitter after alleging the firm failed to provide enough information on fake account numbers. But the social media site is suing Mr Musk to try to force him to buy it. The case will be heard in Delaware, US, in October unless both parties decide to settle outside of court beforehand. Twitter hopes that a judge will order Mr Musk – who is the world’s richest man – to complete the takeover at the agreed price of $54.20 per share. But as part of the trial preparations, lawyers for Mr Musk have called on his friend, the former boss of Twitter Mr Dorsey, in the hope that he will help support the Tesla boss’s argument that the social media company hasn’t been honest about the volume of fake accounts on its platform.(BBC)…[+]

Former US President Donald Trump has asked a judge to freeze the justice department’s investigation of files seized from his Mar-a-Lago home. In a lawsuit, his legal team asked that an independent lawyer be appointed to oversee the documents that FBI agents took earlier this month. Eleven sets of classified files were taken from Mr Trump’s Florida estate on 8 August, according to the FBI. Mr Trump is being investigated for potentially mishandling documents. US presidents must transfer all of their documents and emails to a government agency called the National Archive – and the FBI is investigating whether Mr Trump improperly handled records by taking them from the White House to Mar-a-Lago after he left office in January 2021. He has denied any wrongdoing and said the items were declassified.(BBC)…[+]

The embalmed heart of Brazil’s first emperor, Dom Pedro I, has arrived in the capital Brasilia to mark 200 years of independence from Portugal. The heart, which lies preserved in a flask filled with formaldehyde, was flown on board a military plane from Portugal. It will be received with military honours before going on public display at the foreign ministry. The heart will be returned to Portugal after Brazil’s independence day. Portuguese officials gave the go-ahead for the preserved organ to be moved from the city of Porto for the celebrations of Brazil’s bicentenary. The organ arrived on a Brazilian air force plane accompanied by the mayor of Porto, Rui Moreira. Mayor Moreira said it would return to Portugal after having basked “in the admiration of the Brazilian people”. “The heart will be received like a head of state, it will be treated as if Dom Pedro I was still living amongst us,” Brazil foreign ministry’s chief of protocol Alan Coelho de Séllos said.(BBC)…[+]

Russia has accused Ukrainian special services of killing the daughter of one of Vladimir Putin’s allies in a car bombing near Moscow at the weekend. Journalist Darya Dugina, aged 29, died on Saturday when a vehicl e she was driving exploded near Russia’s capital. Her prominent ultra-nationalist father, Alexander Dugin, said to be close to Mr Putin, may have been the intended target of the attack. Ukrainian officials have denied any involvement in the explosion.  But Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) said on Monday it had solved the case and said that Ukraine was directly responsible. The FSB told Russian media that a Ukrainian woman had moved to Russia in July alongside her young daughter – but that she was in fact a Ukrainian special services contractor.(BBC)…[+]

Pakistan’s police have charged the country’s former Prime Minister, Imran Khan, under anti-terror laws. Their investigation comes after he accused the police and judiciary of detaining and torturing a close aide. Mr Khan’s supporters gathered outside his house vowing to “take over” if he was arrested. However, he has now been granted pre-arrest bail until Thursday. Since being ousted from power in April, Mr Khan has been a vocal critic of the government and the country’s army. Police announced the charges after the cricketer-turned-politician accused authorities of torturing his close aide, who is himself being detained under sedition charges. Officials accused Mr Khan of breaching the country’s anti-terrorism act for allegedly making threats against the state officials.(BBC)..[+]

When Jenn Ross returned to her New Zealand home to find a few buckets out of place in the garage, she thought the family cat, Coco, might have brought in a bird. Instead she found a seal in the hall. The young animal had got through two cat flaps to enter the house in Mt Maunganui, about 150m from the sea – probably in pursuit of Coco the cat. Ms Ross’ marine biologist husband Phil was unfortunately the only member of the family not at home at the time. He told the BBC he regretted missing his chance to shine, saying: “The big joke is that this is probably the one family emergency where it would be useful to have a marine biologist, and I wasn’t there.” After posing for some photos, the seal – nicknamed Oscar – was collected by the Department of Conservation and returned to the sea. Mr Ross said it was likely to be around 10 months old, and likened it to a “teenager”.(BBC)…[+]

A new coffee chain is taking over Starbucks outlets in Russia after the US company pulled out over the invasion of Ukraine. Stars Coffee, which opened its first Moscow café on Thursday, is owned by a pro-Putin rapper and a restaurateur. The cafés were closed by Starbucks in March and the company completely withdrew from Russia in May. Starbucks had almost 2,000 employees in Russia and 130 stores. Staff members remain on full pay through the autumn. Stars co-owner, the restaurateur Anton Pinsky, said the outlets would be reopened gradually. The logo of Stars Coffee is similar to that of Starbucks, featuring a woman in the centre of a circle but wearing traditional Russian headgear.(BBC)…[+]

Model Linda Evangelista has appeared on the cover of Vogue for the first time since saying she had been “deformed” by a cosmetic procedure which went wrong. In the photos, tape and elastic were used to pull back her face, jaw and neck, hiding the problems caused when a fat-freezing treatment “backfired”. She said: “That’s not my jaw and neck in real life – and I can’t walk around with tape and elastics everywhere.” She told the magazine she was “trying to love myself as I am”.  “But for the photos,” she added. “Look, for photos I always think we’re here to create fantasies. We’re creating dreams. I think it’s allowed. Also, all my insecurities are taken care of in these pictures, so I got to do what I love to do.” It’s almost a year since the Canadian supermodel, one of the best-known faces on catwalks and magazine covers in the 1990s and 2000s, said she had disappeared from the spotlight because she had been “brutally disfigured” by the non-surgical fat reduction procedure. She said the CoolSculpting treatment – a brand name for cryolipolysis, which uses cold temperatures to reduce fat deposits – went wrong when a rare side-effect increased, instead of decreasing, fat cells.(BBC)…[+]