The Russian plane that landed in Moscow last week as part of the biggest prisoner exchange with the US since the Cold War carried "spies, assassins and criminals", but also two "wide-eyed and confused" children, said The Guardian.

Sofia, 11, and Daniel, eight, were raised in a seemingly Argentinian family, completely unaware their parents were actually Russian and part of "an elaborate network of deep-cover sleeper spies". Their parents – real names Anna Dultseva and Artem Dultsev – are one of the most high-profile cases of Russian "illegals" since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
 
What are 'illegals'?
Most spies are "legals", working as diplomats in their country's foreign embassies while secretly gathering intelligence. "Illegals" are undercover agents who live under false identities – sometimes for decades, like the Dultsevs. 

Marjan Miklavcic, the former head of Slovenia's military intelligence, told The New York Times that sleeper agents were often planted with "no clear mission": a "hidden reserve force" that could be activated in a crisis. That makes them Russia's "most prized assets", said The Guardian. 

How are they trained?
Illegals spend about six years training intensively to perfect their cover story, including mastering the language and mannerisms of their new nationality. It is an "expensive and detailed process", said Business Insider, and even so one detail is "almost impossible to eliminate": accents. 

The Dultsevs reportedly spoke flawless Spanish. But Vladimir Guryev, arrested for espionage in 2010 while posing as "American" student Richard Murphy, "looked like Boris Yeltsin and had a heavy Russian accent", his teacher told The New York Times.

What now?
Recent years have been "awful" for Russian "legals," said The Economist, with about 600 diplomats expelled from embassies across Europe since the invasion of Ukraine. Experts believe that Russia is "gearing up" its deep-cover programme as an alternative, said Business Insider, increasingly sourcing its fake identities from South America, where corruption is "rife" and the Kremlin can "count on the support of decades-old allies".

Putin, a former KGB foreign intelligence officer, has "thrown huge resources at this quite eccentric priority", said Calder Walton, director of research for the Intelligence Project at Harvard's Kennedy School. He has a "real fetish" for illegals, Walton told The New York Times. 

Eluned Morgan will be Wales' next first minister after winning the votes of 28 Senedd members in a vote in the Welsh Parliament.

The Senedd was recalled from its summer break to nominate her, after the resignation of Vaughan Gething. "It is the greatest pleasure and privilege of my life to stand before you as the first woman to become first minister of Wales," Morgan told her fellow members after the vote, which makes her Wales' first female first minister in the post's 25-year history.

Political prowess
Morgan's world has been "steeped in politics" since she was born in Ely, Cardiff, in 1967, said the London Evening Standard. She was "out delivering leaflets aged six" and as an "idealistic youngster" she picked coffee in Nicaragua alongside the Sandinistas, said The Guardian.

Elected as the youngest member of the European Parliament aged 27 in 1994, in 2011 she entered the House of Lords as Baroness Morgan of Ely. Five years later she moved to the Welsh assembly, where she has served as health minister in 2021, inheriting the "devastating legacy of Covid" and "soaring waiting times", said the BBC.

Morgan is an "interesting figure", said The Guardian, a "passionate champion of the Welsh language", and an "avid internationalist". She can also be "blunt and to the point", said the London Evening Standard. At the Covid Inquiry she admitted to using "fruity language" in text messages to colleagues, including one which read, "we are all f*****". 

Big questions
Morgan has "promised big changes, but there's a fairly limiting factor – there isn't a huge pool of people to pick from, and there are some egos to massage", said WalesOnline, including the question of "what she will do with Vaughan Gething". "Will she keep him in the cabinet, and does he even want to be there?"

Morgan will be "hoping for a gentler ride than her predecessor enjoyed", said Gareth Lewis, BBC Wales political editor, but she faces a daunting in-tray of "party unity, NHS waiting lists, steel jobs, farming subsidies" and "support needed from elsewhere to pass a budget".

In his new memoir, "All in the Family: The Trumps and How We Got This Way", New York real estate executive Fred Trump III – son of the late Fred Trump Jr and nephew of the former president – attempts to separate himself from his troubled lineage.

The "352-page portrait of Trumpian dysfunction" is a "well-paced and engrossing read", said Lloyd Green in The Guardian. It becomes clear early on that the author "thinks his uncle is a jerk" who is unable to accept responsibility for anything. "The buck always stops elsewhere."

Among the "most lethal" moments, said Peter Conran in The Observer, is when Donald Trump "helpfully suggests" that, instead of continuing to spend money on his disabled son's care, Fred III should "just let him die and move down to Florida".

Another "damning" encounter that Fred III recalls about his uncle is Donald using the N-word when "ranting about his vandalised Cadillac Eldorado" in the early 1970s, said Laura Miller in Slate.

Much effort is made to understand the roots of the dysfunction – something Fred III traces back to the destructive environment created generations earlier by his "domineering" grandfather, the real estate mogul Fred Sr. Trump, said Manuel Roig-Franzia in The Washington Post.

And, while his book as a whole isn't as "scathing" as his sister Mary's best-selling memoir, "Too Much and Never Enough", it still paints a "dishy" portrait of the polarising family as "chronically toxic, narcissistic, conniving and cruel".

What I learned about Nigel Farage when I ran against him to be Clacton MP
Jovan Owusu-Nepaul in The Mirror
As the Labour candidate in Clacton, I saw Nigel Farage's politics "first hand", writes Jovan Owusu-Nepaul. The Reform leader was a "mastermind in stoking up division, employing dog whistles and unleashing a wrath of misinformation". It's this "style of politics" that led to the burning of hotels with asylum seekers in them and the "vandalisation of mosques". We must "bat away the divisive politics" of "Farage, Tommy Robinson and the like".

I'm a vaccine scientist. The devastating impacts of vaccine hesitancy have touched my life, too
Mohamed Bassyouni for CNN
I have seen the "impact of serious diseases", writes vaccine development expert Mohamed Bassyouni, and "the promise of new vaccines", but "sadly, I also have seen how these tools are not universally embraced." We're seeing an "alarming surge in measles", an illness we "thought we had under control" and people "even resort to violence", shooting at polio vaccine workers in Pakistan. It is important to "appreciate vaccines as a gift from medicine".

China is stockpiling – we must do the same
Roger Boyes in The Times
What is China hoarding commodities for, asks Roger Boyes – a "further bid to supplant the US in world markets" or "something more sinister?" The current stockpiling by the Chinese authorities "makes some sense" – President Xi has hinted that 2027 is the "target year for China 'reunifying' with Taiwan" and "that's when the world changes". So "now's the time, as they used to say in the trenches, to dig or die."