Yelena Efros has been sending letters to Russian prisons for years, as the head of a volunteer group writing regular dispatches to the country's...

Less than a month after leaving the Kremlin quaking as his Wagner mercenaries marched on Moscow, leaked photographs of Yevgeny Prigozhin in his underwear in a tent have been leaked online amid an ongoing campaign to discredit the exiled mutineer. As Vladimir Putin – whose grip on power is perceived by many to have been severely weakened by the popular mercenary boss’s armed rebellion – sought to insist that Wagner had never actually existed, images showing a dishevelled-looking Mr Prigozhin in a state of semi-nudity appeared on Telegram. In the latest bizarre twist of the saga, the president insisted to the Kommersant newspaper on Friday that the private military company “simply doesn't exist” as a legal entity under Russian law – while his emboldened ally Alexander Lukashenko claimed that some of the exiled mercenaries were now training Belarus’s military. While the latter’s remarks indicated the enactment of at least part of the deal struck by Mr Lukashenko and Mr Prigozhin for him and his fighters to relocate to Belarus, halting their armed progress less than 125 miles from Moscow last month, efforts to undermine the mercenary leader appeared to continue. Just days after a pro-Kremlin media outlet published photographs supposedly seized in a raid at Mr Prigozhin’s St Petersburg mansion showing him donning various bizarre disguises such as lengthy wigs and stick-on beards, a new image began circulating on Russian social media spaces on Friday. The picture appears to show Mr Prigozhin sitting in a tent wearing Y-fronts and a T-shirt, sparking futher speculation over his whereabouts after weeks of uncertainty. In claims appearing to chime with Minsk’s assertion that Wagner fighters are instructing the Belarusian military at a camp near Osipovichi – some 50 miles from the capital – the pro-Russian Telegram account which first posted the image claimed its metadata showed it was taken on 12 July, according to monitoring group Belarusian Gayun, which noted similarities with other photos from the camp. The floorboards in the tent appear to match those shown in photographs taken last week during an official tour of the formerly disused Osipovichi camp, at which satellite images reported by Radio Free Europe and the BBC appeared to show scores of newly erected tents and other structures. Despite the activity at the camp, and potential presence of Mr Prigozhin, Nato secretary general Jens Stoltenberg had told reporters as recently as Tuesday that the alliance had not witnessed “any deployment or movement of any Wagner forces into Belarus”. Despite it being a long-favoured foreign policy tool of his own creation, Mr Putin appears to have urgently sought to defang the private military company since its fighters seized the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don last month and threatened Moscow. In remarks denouncing the aborted mutiny as “high treason”, the Russian president toed a cautious line in a televised address last month in which he claimed the mercenaries – whose prestige on the battlefield in Ukraine has boosted their domestic popularity – had been “tricked into a criminal adventure”, without specifically referring to those under Mr Prigozhin. Criticising what he called “a stab in the back of the troops and the people of Russia”, Mr Putin insisted however that Wagner troops were free to join the Russian military, return to their families, or leave Russia for Belarus. The extraordinary mutiny came after Wagner withdrew from Bakhmut, which it seized from Ukraine after months of bloody attrition in the frontline Donetsk city, with Mr Prigozhin having frequently voiced his anger at an alleged lack of ammunition and coordination by Russian military leaders. The 62-year-old’s vitriolic criticisms drew surprise from many observers given their apparent disregard for the Kremlin’s typically rigid grip on the narrative of its war in Ukraine, and were widely interpreted as a sign of the former convict’s growing political stature within Russia. A former hot dog vendor, Mr Prigozhin rose to prominence as he garnered the attention and favour of the Russian president while working as a restauranteur, with both men having grown up in St Petersburg. He benefitted from large state loans while expanding his business under Mr Putin’s gaze, winning millions of pounds in contracts to provide meals to public schools, the Kremlin and Russian military – also drawing the attention of jailed opposition figure Alexei Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation. Claiming to have served 10 years in jail during the final throes of the Soviet Union, reportedly after the violent robbery of a woman whom he choked unconscious, Mr Prigozhin was permitted by Mr Putin to create Wagner in 2014, despite Russia’s constitution outlawing such groups. Following exploits in the Donbas and Syria, while also fighting for national leaders and warlords in Africa in return for lucrative sums and assets, Wagner has become a household name during the Ukraine war as a result of its relative prestige in comparison with the faltering Russian military – and its apparent brutality. While Mr Prigozhin’s recruitment drive in prisons fuelling “human wave” attacks deemed largely responsible for Wagner’s gains in Bakhmut, footage has also circulated of its fighters bludgeoning an alleged deserter to death with a sledgehammer, symbolism since adopted by Mr Prigozhin himself. Having long sought plausible deniability on the subject of Wagner, in seeking to discredit Mr Prigozhin following his shortlived mutiny, Mr Putin reversed his position by seeking to claim ultimate responsibility for the group, as he insisted the fighters’ wages had come out of state coffers. Read More Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin ‘dead or in prison’ after Putin meeting, former US commander claims Wagner mercenaries are in Belarus and training the country’s soldiers Putin wants to attend an August summit. Host country South Africa doesn't want to have to arrest him Russian general says he has been fired for telling truth about dire situation on Ukraine frontlines

The Biden administration has asked a federal appeals court to uphold health care guidance issued last year that says hospitals must provide abortions for women whose lives are at risk due to pregnancy

It is clear that Olivia Dunne's reign as the NIL queen will endure for years to come

Ron DeSantis continues to defend newly approved curriculum guidelines in Florida instructing students to learn that enslaved people “developed skills” that could be “applied for personal benefit”. “That means they developed skills in spite of slavery, not because of slavery,” the governor told NBC News in a recent interview that aired on 7 August. “It was them showing resourcefulness and then using those skills once slavery ended,” he added. Mr DeSantis, who is seeking the Republican nomination for president in 2024, has dismissed criticism from Vice President Kamala Harris and Democratic and Republican members of Congress urging Florida officials to amend the state’s African American history standards and reflect an honest history of race and racism in school curricula. The vice president has also rejected an invitation from Mr DeSantis to “discuss” the standards, telling a crowd in Orlando earlier this month that “there is no roundtable, no lecture, no invitation we will accept to debate an undeniable fact: there were no redeeming qualities of slavery.” Mr DeSantis had previously stated he “wasn’t involved” with the guidelines approved by the state’s appointed Board of Education. He said the standards are “probably going to show some of the folks” – enslaved people – “that eventually parlayed, you know, being a blacksmith into doing things later in life.” The development of such “skills” would not have benefited the millions of enslaved people in the US in the decades before slavery’s abolition. Another controversial guideline instructs high schoolers to be taught that a massacre in the state led by white supremacists against Black residents to stop them from voting in 1920 included “acts of violence perpetrated against and by African Americans.” “Adults know what slavery really was. It involved rape, it involved torture, it involved taking a baby from their mother, it involved some of the worst examples of depriving humanity of people in our world,” Ms Harris said in her remarks in Jacksonville last month. South Carolina Senator Tim Scott, the only Black Republican in the Senate, echoed Ms Harris in his criticism of the standards, stressing that slavery was defined by “separating families, about mutilating humans and even raping their wives”. “It was just devastating,” said Mr Scott, who is also seeking the 2024 Republican nomination. “So I would hope that every person in our country – and certainly running for president – would appreciate that.” Mr DeSantis told NBC in response: “Don’t take that side of Kamala Harris against the state of Florida. Don’t indulge those lies.” The new standards join the governor’s overhaul of public education and a “parents’ rights” agenda that targets honest lessons on race and racism and gender and sexuality, which the governor told NBC amounts to “indoctrination”. “Those standards were not political at all,” he added. “The legislature didn’t dictate any of that. [The] governor’s office didn’t dictate anything of that.” Last week, before thousands of high school students enrolled in advanced placement courses begin classes for the 2023-2024 school year, the DeSantis administration criticised the College Board’s warning that Florida education officials had “effectively banned” AP Psychology courses in the state under the Parental Rights in Education Act, what opponents have derided as the “Don’t Say Gay” law. Read More Ron DeSantis admits ‘of course’ Donald Trump lost the election DeSantis blasted for ‘un-American’ restrictions on AP psychology course under ‘Don’t Say Gay’ law Why Florida’s new curriculum on slavery is becoming a political headache for Ron DeSantis

Former President Donald Trump's public statements about the federal election interference investigation led to the harassment of witnesses, according to prosecutors with special counsel Jack Smith's office.

The number of Americans applying for jobless benefits rose last week but remains historically low as the labor market continues to show strength amid high interest rates and inflation

Ten months before Donald Trump is scheduled to stand trial in his historic New York City criminal case, Manhattan prosecutors are in a tug of war with the former president’s legal team over precisely where he will be tried

The first time Masha Maltsava attended Burning Man -- the annual "ephemeral city" that attracts thousands of free-spirited revelers in the Nevada desert -- she over packed.

Amazon.com Inc.’s $1.4 billion deal for vacuum cleaner firm iRobot Corp. risks being derailed unless the firms fix

Fred Holmes watches with satisfaction as pumps pull oil from deep under his California farm, tapping a supply he thinks...

Alcohol addiction ruins millions of lives every year, but scientists may have found a cure for this terrible affliction. A new treatment for alcohol use disorder (AUD) has been trialled in monkeys with impressive results and, if these translate to human trials, the impact could be monumental. A team of neuroscientists and physiologists from across the US tested a new type of gene therapy to see if they could directly target the underlying brain circuitry associated with sustained heavy drinking. As they noted, in the journal Nature Medicine, people suffering from AUD commonly return to alcohol use even if they attempt to quit. This is largely to do with what’s known as mesolimbic dopamine (DA) signalling – meaning how the central nervous system circuit communicates the feelgood neurotransmitter dopamine. A protein called glial-derived neurotrophic factor (GDNF) is key to keeping these neurons in this reward circuitry functioning. However, experts have found that levels of GDNF are reduced in people with AUD during periods of alcohol abstinence, most notably in a region of the brain called the ventral tegmental area (VTA), as IFLScience notes. Therefore, the researchers decided to test whether using gene therapy to deliver more GDNF to the VTA could help reinforce this crucial dopaminergic signalling and prevent patients from suffering an alcoholic relapse. The team of scientists explained how alcohol consumption in non-addicts prompts the release of dopamine, creating a pleasurable buzz feeling, but chronic alcohol use causes the brain to adapt and stop releasing so much dopamine. “So when people are addicted to alcohol, they don’t really feel more pleasure in drinking,” Dr Kathleen Grant, a senior co-author of the study, said in a statement. “It seems that they’re drinking more because they feel a need to maintain an intoxicated state.” For their research, Dr Grant and her colleagues used eight rhesus macaque monkeys, who were exposed to increasing concentrations of alcohol over four 30-day “induction” periods. The monkeys then had free access to alcohol and water for 21 hours a day for six months, during which they developed heavy drinking behaviours. This was then followed by a 12-week abstinence phase, with the GDNF treatment performed four weeks in for half of the subjects. The gene therapy was delivered using a a viral vector containing a copy of the human GDNF gene injected directly into the primate’s VTA, according to IFLScience. And the results were truly jaw-dropping. “Drinking went down to almost zero,” Dr Grant said. “For months on end, these animals would choose to drink water and just avoid drinking alcohol altogether. They decreased their drinking to the point that it was so low we didn’t record a blood-alcohol level.” The most exciting aspect of their findings is the suggestion that gene therapy could offer a permanent solution for people with the most severe cases of AUD. This will be a welcome glimmer of hope to many, given that some 29.5 million people were diagnosed with AUD in the US alone in 2021, according to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. Of these 29.5 million sufferers, almost a million (894,000) were aged between 12 and 17. It’ll likely be some time before we know for sure whether the gene therapy can be rolled out in humans, but it’s an important first step in tackling this devastating disorder. Sign up for our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.