Relatives of the more than 330 victims of the Beslan school siege have released a video that they say proves Russian security forces caused the massacre by firing grenades on the besieged building.

Even by Russian standards, the Litvinenko affair has been exceptionally murky. But, paradoxically, it has also been marked by a heightened sense of mirror-image symmetry. Either President Vladimir Putin is the villain or anti-Putin tycoon Boris Berezovsky is; Andrei Lugovoi was either the killer or himself a victim.

Up to eight million Iraqis require immediate emergency aid, with nearly half of the population living in “absolute poverty”, according to a report by Oxfam and a coalition of Iraqi groups.