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In geopolitical terms the G7 almost always garners the lion's share of political and media attention in the West and beyond, but when the BRICS summit began yesterday in Johannesburg, not only were Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa talking about expansion, there is also the ambition to become a counter to Western domination as they see it. There's no shortage of countries lining up to join BRICS - Argentina, Belarus, Indonesia and Nigeria among them - but while the leaders of the five nations are broadly in agreement about expansion, at the outset of the summit Brazil's president, Lula de Silva, insisted that BRICS is not meant to challenge the G7. Newsnight’s International Correspondent Emir Nader reports.

Nurse Lucy Letby was found guilty of murdering seven babies, attempting to murder another six and the jury was undecided on the attempted murder of a further four babies. She was found not guilty of two counts of attempted murder. The incidents occurred when Letby worked at the Countess of Chester Hospital between June 2015 and June 2016. Senior Crown Prosecutor Pascale Jones said the nurse "did her utmost to conceal her crimes, by varying the ways in which she repeatedly harmed babies in her care". She said Letby "sought to deceive her colleagues and pass off the harm she caused as nothing more than a worsening of each baby's existing vulnerability".

The Taliban marked the second anniversary of its return to power yesterday with a public holiday. But few Afghans, both women and men, have much to celebrate. The Taliban, recently stopped most Afghan female staff from working with aid agencies, closed beauty salons, barred women from parks and curtailed their travel in the absence of any male guardian. In March, the UN said that “Afghanistan under the Taliban remains the most repressive country in the world regarding women’s rights.” The fall of Kabul on 15 August 2021 followed the US decision to pull troops out of the country by September that year. Newsnight correspondent Yasminara Khan explores the situation in the country today.