Several major questions have emerged for the US Secret Service to answer in the aftermath of the shooting of Donald Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania.

The FBI has taken on the role of lead investigator into the incident, during which one person was killed and two others critically injured – while Trump was wounded in the ear.

As the US demands answers, the Secret Service says it is working to discover “what happened, how it happened, and how we can prevent an incident like this from ever taking place again”.

Its chief, Kimberly Cheatle, has been summoned to testify before a committee of the US House of Representatives on 22 July.

Here are some of the questions that experts have started asking.

It remains unclear how suspected gunman Thomas Matthew Crooks got access to the roof of a building near the rally that was little more than 130m (430 ft) from Trump.

The rooftop was a known vulnerability before the event, according to NBC News, which cited two sources familiar with Secret Service operations.

“Someone should have been on the roof or securing the building so no one could get on the roof,” NBC quoted one of the sources as saying.

As well as the access question, it has been suggested that the line of sight from the rooftop to Trump’s podium area should have been blocked off.

Crooks should not have been able to get a direct sight of Trump, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told ABC News on Monday.

Mr Mayorkas said officials would “really study the event independently, and make recommendations to the Secret Service and to me”.

An eyewitness to the shooting told the BBC that he and others had “clearly” spotted Crooks crawling around on the roof with a rifle. They alerted police but the suspect continuing moving around for several minutes before firing shots and then being shot dead himself, the eyewitness said.

FBI special agent Kevin Rojek admitted it had been “surprising” that the attacker had been able to open fire.

The county sheriff has confirmed that Crooks was spotted by a local police officer, who was unable to stop him in time. Something that remains unclear is whether this information reached the agents around Trump.

Crooks was already on officials’ radar, according to a senior law enforcement official. They anonymously told CNN that officers thought he was acting suspiciously near the event magnetometers. This information was allegedly relayed to the Secret Service.

• LIVE: Latest reaction, and lookahead to the Republican convention
• ANALYSIS: Tragedy at rally upends election campaign – for now
• THE SUSPECT: What we know about Thomas Matthew Crooks
• TRUMP INTERVIEW: ‘I was saved by luck or God,’ he says
• BIDEN ADDRESS: President urges America to ‘lower temperature’
• COREY COMPERATORE: What we know about father killed at rally

The gunman fired his shots from what police have described as a “secondary ring”, which was patrolled not by the Secret Service but by local and state officers.

A former Secret Service agent said this sort of arrangement only worked when there was a clear plan on what to do when a danger was spotted.

“When you rely on the local law enforcement partners, you better have carefully planned and told them what you expect them to do about a threat,” Jonathan Wackrow told the Washington Post.

The county sheriff has admitted there had been “a failure” but said there was no single party to blame.

A former chair of the House Oversight Committee has suggested that the Secret Service was “spread too thin”, which compounded the issue that local police would not have been “trained up” to secure an event like Saturday’s rally.

Jason Chaffetz, who has previously reported on Secret Service failures, told the Washington Post there was no bigger “threat profile” than for Trump or President Biden, but that this was not reflected in the security presence in Pennsylvania.

The Secret Service has denied suggestions that a request from the Trump team to beef up the staffing had been rebuffed in advance of the rally.

But the Post reported that it had seen an exchange of messages in which a former Secret Service officer asked colleagues how the suspect had got a gun so close to Trump. He was reported to have received the reply: “Resources.”

In a statement on Monday, Ms Cheatle said changes had been made to Trump’s Secret Service detail ahead of the start of the Republican National Convention, which kicks off in Milwaukee on Monday. She said she was “confident” in the overall plan.

The agents who shielded Trump have received praise, including from former agent Robert McDonald, who said they did a “fairly good job” despite there being no exact “playbook” on what to do in such a situation.

But the question has also been asked whether they were fast enough to whisk the former president away into a vehicle.

Footage of the incident shows them rapidly forming a shield around him in the immediate wake of the gunshots, but then appearing to pause as Trump asks to gather his shoes. The former president goes on to pump his fist for supporters.

A Secret Service veteran told the New York Times he would not have waited. “If that’s me there, no. We are going, and we are going now,” said Jeffrey James.

“If it’s me, I’m buying him a new pair of shoes.”

North America correspondent Anthony Zurcher makes sense of the race for the White House in his weekly US Election Unspun newsletter. Readers in the UK can sign up here. Those outside the UK can sign up here.

Former US President Donald Trump has said he is “supposed to be dead” after Saturday night’s assassination attempt at a rally in Pennsylvania.

In one of his first interviews since the incident, Mr Trump told conservative US media he felt that he had been saved “by luck or by God”.

“The most incredible thing was that I happened to not only turn [my head] but to turn at the exact right time and in just the right amount,” he said, adding that the bullet that grazed his ear could have easily killed him.

“I’m supposed to be dead, I’m not supposed to be here,” he said.

A spectator was killed in the attack, while two other people were seriously injured. The gunman, who also died, has been named as Thomas Matthew Crooks.

Mr Trump described the moment he looked up at the crowd after realising he had been shot.

“The energy coming from the people there in that moment, they just stood there. It’s hard to describe what that felt like, but I knew the world was looking.

“I knew that history would judge this, and I knew I had to let them know we are OK,” he told the Washington Examiner.

Speaking as he prepared to board a flight to the upcoming Republican National Convention (RNC) in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where he is expected to be confirmed as the party’s candidate for president, Mr Trump said he now had a “chance to bring the country together”.

He said his speech would now be completely different instead of the “humdinger” aimed mostly at current President Joe Biden’s policies he had previously planned.

“Had [Saturday’s attack] not happened, this would’ve been one of the most incredible speeches.

“Honestly, it’s going to be a whole different speech now. It is a chance to bring the country together.”

Earlier, Mr Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth Social that he had intended to delay his trip to Wisconsin by two days.

But he added that he was sticking to his original schedule as: “I cannot allow a ‘shooter,’ or potential assassin, to force change to scheduling”.

Mr Trump said that the assassination attempt “has had an impact” on him.

Little is known about the motivation of Crooks, the 20-year-old would-be assassin who was shot dead by the Secret Service at the scene.

The FBI has said that while its investigation suggests Crooks acted alone, it would continue to look into whether the kitchen worker had received help.

The spectator who was killed in Saturday’s attack has been named as Corey Comperatore, a 50-year-old volunteer fire chief who died trying to protect his family.

In a televised address following the attack, President Biden called for the “temperature of politics” to be lowered.

“We cannot, must not, go down this road again. We’ve travelled it before in our history,” said Mr Biden, listing off a growing number of violent political acts that had taken place in the US in recent years.

“In America we resolve our differences at the ballot box,” he added. “At the ballot box. Not with bullets.”

The 2024 election campaign has a new iconic image: Donald Trump, moments after narrowly avoiding serious injury or death from an assassin’s bullets, standing with his fist raised, lines of blood streaked across his face, an American flag billowing in the breeze behind him.

“Fight! Fight! Fight!” the former president said, as some of the supporters, who moments before had feared for their lives, began cheering.

The bloodshed in Pennsylvania will leave a lasting mark on the American psyche, puncturing the veneer of security around the highest levels of presidential politics – of magnetic screening, bulletproof limousines and heavily armed Secret Service agents. Even former presidents are not insulated from the violence that can erupt in everyday American life.

It was also a dramatic moment in American political history; one that is sure to be replayed in video clips, still photographs and testimonial accounts throughout the course of this presidential campaign and in campaigns to come.

In a rare address from the Oval Office Sunday evening, President Joe Biden called on Americans to cool the temperature around political debate.

“[It] must never be a battlefield and, God forbid, a killing field,” he warned. “No matter how strong our convictions, we must never descend into violence.”

The attack has already begun coursing through America’s partisan dialogue, as numerous Republicans have spoken out to condemn President Biden and the Democrats for creating a rhetorical environment conducive to the violence.

They point to dire warnings about the former president becoming a dictator and threatening democracy as examples of the overheated language that could inspire an assassin.

In particular, they highlight leaked comments the president made in private to donors just last week about increasing the attacks on the former president’s record and putting a “bull’s-eye” on him.

“They’ve tried to take him out in so many other ways, financially, they’ve tried to throw him in jail,” Donald Trump Jr said in a television interview on Sunday. “It’s almost as if they would love for this to happen.”

• LIVE: All the latest developments after assassination attempt on Trump
• WATCH: Videos show how gunman shot at Trump despite public alerting police
• FIRST PERSON: First panic, then fury – what I witnessed at Trump rally
• SHOOTING SUSPECT: What we know so far about Thomas Matthew Crooks
• VICTIMS: Man killed during Trump shooting dived on family to protect them

At least so far, however, the motives and political affiliations of the alleged assassin, 20-year-old Pennsylvania resident Thomas Matthew Crooks, are in doubt. They may ultimately defy an easy partisan narrative.

The former president’s oldest son went on to add that, after the assassination attempt, those on the left can no longer accuse the former president of culpability for the 6 January attack on the US Capitol.

That violent episode took place hours after the then-president had held a rally just a few dozen blocks away, challenging the 2020 election results. His actions on that day led to his impeachment by the House of Representatives and, more than a year later, indictment by a special counsel appointed by the US attorney general.

If the Pennsylvania shooting defuses this line of criticism by Democrats, it’s just one way in which it will have fundamentally reshaped this presidential campaign. Others may become clear over the course of the Republican National Convention, which starts on Monday in Milwaukee.

The failed attack on the former president plays into several themes the Trump campaign was already planning for the quadrennial gathering, which culminates with Trump taking the stage to accept his party’s nomination on Thursday night.

The first is that it could provide a boost to the politics of grievance and persecution that have been a central focus of his rally speeches and social media posts.

“They’re not really after me; they’re after you,” is a common Trump refrain, on t-shirts, billboards and car stickers. “I’m just in the way.”

That message will land with new force after the former president and his crowd of supporters were sprayed with bullets. Trump’s legions of fans – many of whose support borders on near-messianic hero-worship – will have all the more reason to identify with a man who almost lost his life while standing before them.

The former president’s brush with death, and subsequent acts of bloody defiance, will also fit with the contrast Trump campaign officials have said they are trying to draw at this week’s convention – one where their candidate, and party, embody rugged masculinity and strength, while their opponents are feeble.

President Biden’s age and capabilities have dogged his campaign for months – and prompted a Democratic crisis of confidence in his re-election effort after a stunningly poor performance at the presidential debate just over two weeks ago.

Saturday night’s attack, and Trump’s response to it, will allow Republicans to put that contrast in stark relief in the days ahead.

Democrats have spent the past two weeks in anguished soul-searching over their president’s political future. Now, they have a new set of concerns.

In a way, the assassination attempt may end up providing a political lifeline to Mr Biden, given that the focus has dramatically shifted away from his age-related struggles and internal attempts to oust him. But the president’s re-election strategy – which hinges on painting Trump as a danger to the nation if he again becomes president – could be seriously hampered if the American public is hostile to new, pointed criticisms of the man.

The Biden campaign has already pulled all negative advertising directed at the former president, lest it be viewed as inappropriate given the national mood. The president also rescheduled a trip to Texas planned for Monday.

It is only a pause, however, and Democrats will need to go back on the offensive if they hope to erase the narrow lead the former president holds.

That lead – small and not insurmountable, but still significant – has held stable for months, even as national politics have been buffeted by a seemingly endless stream of unprecedented news stories.

The former president’s trial and conviction, a series of landmark Supreme Court decisions, Mr Biden’s debate flop – none of these has seemed to move the American political needle in what has been, and appears destined to remain, a sharply divided nation.

While there has been considerable talk about how this presidential campaign has been upended by the assassination attempt, there is no guarantee that the race will not return to its near-dead-heat equilibrium point in the three months before election day.

Only now the Democrats have less time, less of a money advantage and less political oxygen to shift the electoral dynamics in their favour.

What Saturday night’s tragedy demonstrated most clearly, however, is that expectations and political narratives can shift in seconds.

Former US President Donald Trump has arrived in Wisconsin for the Republican National Convention, a day after surviving an assassination attempt.

The party conference in Milwaukee is going ahead as planned despite Saturday evening’s shooting at a rally in Pennsylvania, in which Trump was shot in the ear.

Trump posted on social media that he had considered delaying his trip by two days, “but have just decided that I cannot allow a ‘shooter,’ or potential assassin, to force change to scheduling, or anything else”.

The attack on the candidate has put a heightened focus on safety and security of the event, which begins on Monday at the arena that is home to the NBA Milwaukee Bucks basketball team.

But Audrey Gibson-Cicchino, RNC coordinator for the US Secret Service, said during a Sunday afternoon news conference in Milwaukee that there would be no changes to the security plan.

Some 50,000 people are expected to attend the four-day jamboree of pageantry, politics and policy as the party makes its case to voters ahead of November’s general election.

• LIVE: All the latest developments after assassination attempt on Trump
• WATCH: Video shows shooter on roof at Trump rally
• WATCH: Trump grimaces and ducks as several shots ring out
• MORE: Secret Service faces questions after Trump assassination attempt

Once every four years each of the two main US parties hosts a convention to formally select their respective White House standard-bearer and prepare for the final stretch of campaigning.

The conferences include high-profile speakers, as well as a prime-time speech from the presidential candidate.

During the convention, the delegates from each state pledge their support to the candidate of their choice and approve a platform.

It is merely a formality for Trump as the party’s presumptive nominee because he won 2,265 delegates in the primaries, which is enough for the nomination.

The Democrats will hold their convention next month in Chicago.

Trump is not expected to speak until Thursday night.

One of the biggest moments of the conference will be when he unveils his vice-presidential candidate.

But as the dust settles from the assassination attempt, it is unclear when Trump will announce who he has chosen as his running mate, or when he or she will speak.

Donald Trump Jr, the former president’s son, is expected to speak on Wednesday.

• Trump vice-president pick: Who will be the Republican’s running mate?

South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, one of Trump’s fiercest rivals during the Republican primary, was originally expected to skip the RNC.

But after the assassination attempt, it was reported that she will now not only attend but speak at the conference.

Other speakers reportedly include Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Georgia congresswoman, Arizona Senate contender Kari Lake, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, Dana White, head of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), former Fox News host Tucker Carlson and Teamsters union general president Sean O’Brien.

RNC co-chair Lara Trump, the daughter-in-law of the former president, said celebrities will also be among the speakers.

Amber Rose, model, reality star and former girlfriend of Kanye West, is expected address the crowd.

But former stalwarts of the Republican party establishment, such George W Bush, Mike Pence and Mitt Romney, are not on the guest list.

Former First Lady Melania Trump, who rarely makes public appearances, will attend the convention, according to US media.

Mrs Trump did not attend the 27 June debate between President Joe Biden and Trump. Neither did she attend her husband’s hush-money trial earlier this year.

While the former first lady has held Republican fundraisers in the past year, this would be her first major appearance of this election cycle.

Monday’s theme will be “Make America Wealthy Once Again”, Tuesday will be “Make America Safe Again”, Wednesday is “Make America Strong Again” and Thursday is “Make America Great Once Again”.

The party platform this year sits at 16 pages.

Some themes of Project 2025, a much longer think-tank proposal, are also likely to come up during the convention.

Project 2025 – from which Trump has distanced himself – calls for expanding presidential powers, eliminating thousands of civil servant posts, tax cuts and dismantling the Department of Education.

• Project 2025: A wish list for a Trump presidency, explained

A demonstration, the Coalition to March on the RNC, is scheduled for noon local time on Monday.

Organisers say they expect 5,000 protesters, with backing from 125 liberal activist groups around the country.

Omar Flores, co-chair of the coalition, said on Friday: “Join us to fight against the Republicans’ racist and reactionary agenda, to stand with Palestine; to defend women’s, LGBTQ and reproductive rights; to defend and expand immigrant rights and to advocate for peace, justice and equity.”

Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson said the city would ensure public safety is tantamount this week.

“A national special security event is the highest designation that you can get for a security event of its size and magnitude in the United States,” Mayor Johnson said.

You can follow the latest news, including live pages, at bbc.com/news.

The BBC News TV channel will broadcast Trump’s speech live on Thursday and bring you reaction and analysis afterwards.

And you can also watch on the RNC website.

The small Pittsburgh suburb of Bethel Park in Pennsylvania is reeling after the FBI named a young local man, Thomas Matthew Crooks, as the person who shot at Donald Trump during a campaign rally and shocked the nation.

Investigators believe that Crooks, armed with a semi-automatic AR-15 rifle, opened fire at the former president while he was addressing a crowd in Butler, Pennsylvania, leaving one audience member dead and two others wounded.

The 20-year-old kitchen worker was shot dead at the scene by a Secret Service sniper, officials said.

In his well-to-do hometown, however, neighbours are in shock, seemingly unable to grasp how a quiet young man is now accused in the shooting.

The FBI, for its part, has said only that Crooks was the “subject involved in the assassination attempt on the former president and that an active investigation was under way.”

• LIVE: All the latest developments after assassination attempt on Trump
• WATCH: How gunman shot at Trump despite public alerting police
• MORE: Secret Service facing questions as investigation launched
• ANALYSIS: Tragedy at Trump rally upends election campaign – for now
• VICTIMS: Who was shot at the Trump rally?

Thomas Crooks had not been carrying ID, so investigators used DNA and facial recognition technology to identify him, the FBI said.

He was from Bethel Park in Pennsylvania, about 70km (43 miles) from the site of the attempted assassination, and graduated in 2022 from Bethel Park High School with a $500 (£385) prize for maths and science, according to a local newspaper.

Crooks worked in a local nursing home kitchen just a short drive away from his home, the BBC understands.

State voter records show that he was a registered Republican, according to US media.

He is also reported to have donated $15 to liberal campaign group ActBlue in 2021.

He had a membership at a local shooting club, the Clairton Sportsmen’s Club, for at least a year.

According to its website, the club is based south of Pittsburgh and is “one of the premier shooting facilities in the tri-state area” of Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia. It has more than 2,000 members.

It has multiple gun ranges, including a high-power rifle facility with targets up to 171 metres away.

“Obviously, the club fully admonishes the senseless act of violence,” attorney Robert S Bootay III, who represents the organisation, told the Los Angeles Times.

Law enforcement officials believe the weapon used to shoot at Donald Trump was purchased by Crooks’ father, the Associated Press news agency reports.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, two officers told AP that Crooks’ father bought a weapon at least six months ago.

According to US media reports, Crooks was wearing a T-shirt from Demolition Ranch, a YouTube channel known for its guns and demolition content. The channel has millions of subscribers featuring videos on different guns and explosive devices.

The day after the shooting, law enforcement sources also told CBS, the BBC’s US partner, that suspicious devices were found in Crooks’ vehicle.

According to CBS, the suspect had a piece of commercially available equipment that appeared capable of initiating the devices.

Bomb technicians were called to the scene to secure and investigate the devices.

Having established Crooks’ identity, police and agencies are investigating his motive.

“We do not currently have an identified motive,” said Kevin Rojek, FBI Pittsburgh special agent in charge, at a briefing on Saturday night.

The inquiry into what took place could last for months and investigators would work “tirelessly” to identify what Crooks’ motive was, Mr Rojek said.

Speaking to CNN, Crooks’ father, Matthew Crooks, said he was trying to figure out “what the hell is going on” but would “wait until I talk to law enforcement” before speaking about his son.

Crooks’ family is cooperating with investigators, according to the FBI.

Police sealed off the road to the house where Crooks lived with his parents.

A neighbour told CBS that officers evacuated her in the middle of the night with no warning.

Bethel Park Police said there was a bomb investigation surrounding Crooks’ home.

Access to the area remains tightly controlled with police vehicles blocking the roads. Only residents have been allowed in or out.

Law enforcement sources told CBS that they believe some degree of planning ahead of the shooting.

How much time was spent in that planning, however, remains the subject of an ongoing investigation.

Police believe he acted alone, but are continuing to investigate whether he was accompanied to the rally.

So far, a confusing – and at times conflicting – picture has emerged of who Crooks was as a person.

Speaking to local news outlet KDKA, some young locals who went to school with him described him as a loner, who was frequently bullied and sometimes wore “hunting outfits to school”.

Another former classmate of his, Summer Barkley, cast him differently, telling the BBC that he was “always getting good grades on tests” and was “very passionate about history”.

“Anything on government and history he seemed to know about,” she said. “But it was nothing out of the ordinary… he was always nice.”

She described him as well-liked by his teachers.

Others simply remembered him as quiet.

“He was there but I can’t think of anyone who knew him well,” one former classmate, who asked to remain nameless, told the BBC. “He’s just not a guy I really think about. But he seemed fine.”

Jameson Myers, a former member of the Bethel Park High School varsity rifle team who graduated alongside Crooks in 2022, told CBS that Crooks did not make the team.

“He did not even make the junior varsity team after trying out,” Mr Myers added. “He never returned to try-outs for the remainder of high school.”

Another former classmate told ABC News he “shot terrible” and “wasn’t really fit for the rifle team”. The school district said there was no record of Crooks trying out for the team and he “never appeared on a roster”.

Mr Myers remembers Crooks as seemingly a “normal boy” who was “not particularly popular but never got picked on or anything.”

“He was a nice kid who never talked poorly of anyone and I never have thought him capable of anything I’ve seen him do in the last few days.”

Max Smith, who took an American history course with Crooks, told the Philadelphia Inquirer that his former classmate “definitely was conservative”.

Mr Smith recalled a mock debate in which they both took part, saying: “The majority of the class were on the liberal side, but Tom, no matter what, always stood his ground on the conservative side.”

“It makes me wonder why he would carry out an assassination attempt on the conservative candidate,” he said.

Other community members said simply that they were shocked that the alleged perpetrator of the shooting could have come from the quiet, tree-lined streets of Bethel Park.

Among them was Jason Mackey, a 27-year-old local man who lives near the Crooks residence and worked at his school while he was a student.

While Mr Mackey said that he did not know Crooks personally, he is still reeling from a sense of disbelief.

“It’s just shocking. You wouldn’t think an event of this magnitude would come right out of your backyard,” he said. “It’s just a crazy situation.”

One person was killed and two others were injured in the shooting.

All three victims are adult men and were audience members, CBS News reports.

At a news conference on Sunday, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro identified the deceased victim at Corey Comperatore, a 50-year-old volunteer fire chief who was killed when he “dived on his family” to protect them.

He said that Comperatore “died a hero”.

A GoFundMe page, organised by the Trump campaign’s national finance director Meredith O’Rourke, was set up in the hours after the attack with donations going to the families of the injured.

It has so far raised more than $340,000 (£267,000).

In a post to his Truth Social platform, Trump said he was “shot with a bullet that pierced the upper part of my right ear” and said he felt the bullet “ripping through the skin”.

Blood was visible on Trump’s ear and face as protection officers rushed him away.

Trump is “doing well” and is grateful to law enforcement officers, according to a statement published on the Republican National Committee (RNC) website.

One witness told the BBC that he had seen a man – believed to be Crooks – with a rifle on the roof of a building before Trump was shot.

Video footage obtained by TMZ shows the moment the shooting began.

The assailant opened fire with “an AR-style rifle”, CBS News reports.

Law enforcement sources also told CBS that he was reported by a bystander and identified as a suspicious person by police, but that officers lost track of him before the shooting began.

However, the FBI says it did not immediately know what type of firearm was used or how many shots were fired.

A Secret Service sniper returned fire and killed the gunman, officials said.

Footage later shows armed officers approaching a body on the roof of the building.

An attempt to assassinate former US president Donald Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania has left one bystander dead and two seriously injured.

Trump suffered an upper ear injury but was otherwise unharmed, later telling reporters that if he had moved his head slightly, he would have been hit in the head.

Three other men who were attending the rally on 13 July were not so lucky.

Here is what we know about them.

The 50-year-old volunteer fire chief died while trying to protect his family during the attempted assassination – diving onto them to shield them from the bullets.

“Corey died a hero,” Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro said at a news conference following the shooting, adding that Comperatore went to church every Sunday and “loved his community”.

“Most especially, Corey loved his family,” said Mr Shapiro.

Mr Comperatore’s daughter Allyson later wrote on social media about how her father had thrown her and her mother to the ground and “shielded my body from the bullet that came at us”.

“He truly loved us enough to take a real bullet for us. And I want nothing more than to cry on him and tell him thank you.”

Allyson described her father as the “best dad a girl could ever ask for” and said he “could talk and make friends with anyone”.

“This feels like a terrible nightmare but we know it is our painful reality,” Mr Comperatore’s sister Dawn wrote on Facebook.

• LIVE: Latest reaction, and lookahead to the Republican convention
• ANALYSIS: Tragedy at rally upends election campaign – for now
• THE SUSPECT: What we know about Thomas Matthew Crooks
• TRUMP INTERVIEW: ‘I was saved by luck or God,’ he says
• BIDEN ADDRESS: President urges America to ‘lower temperature’
• COREY COMPERATORE: Father killed at the rally dived to protect family

He was said to be an avid Trump supporter and to have been excited to attend the Pennsylvania rally where he was later killed.

According to Pennsylvania police, Mr Comperatore lived in Sarver, about 12 miles (19km) away from the rally site in Butler, outside the city of Pittsburgh.

“He was a man that just wanted to protect and serve and love. He was truly a man of love,” fellow firefighter Craig Cirrincione told the Associated Press.

In addition to his volunteer firefighting work, he was employed as a project and tooling engineer at a plastics manufacturing company, according to his social media profiles.

“He was a good person,” neighbour Matt Achilles told the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. “We might not have agreed on the same political views, but that didn’t stop him from being a good friend and neighbour.”

“He donated money to us when I was in the hospital and he would always come by at our yard sales. He always waved hello when I drove past his house,” Mr Achilles said.

Mr Dutch is from the Pennsylvania city of New Kensington and is a long-time employee of the technology company Siemens, according to his sister.

Jennifer Veri-Grazier told the New York Times that the 57-year-old suffered damage to his liver and broken ribs in the shooting and has had to have more than one operation.

She described him as a long-time Trump supporter.

“He was exercising his rights and went to the rally, and he didn’t deserve any of this,” Ms Veri-Grazier said.

The Pennsylvania branch of the Marine Corps League, a veterans’ association, has identified Mr Dutch as one of its members on social media.

Mr Copenhaver, 74, is from Moon Township, Pennsylvania, and was a registered Democrat, the New York Times reports.

Albert Quaye, a supervisor in Moon Township, told the newspaper that Mr Copenhaver was retired and had become very interested in local politics.

Mr Copenhaver is listed as a member of Moon Township’s Military Banner Committee, which organises tributes for the area’s veterans.

Shares in Donald Trump’s social media company have surged after he survived an assassination attempt on Saturday.

Shares in Trump Media, which runs the Truth Social platform, opened for formal trading on Monday up about 30%. The price had risen as much as 70% over the weekend before falling back again.

Analysts said the gains reflected bets that the shooting had improved Mr Trump’s chances of winning the US presidential election in November.

A bullet caught the former president’s ear during one of his election rallies, shortly before the gunman was shot dead by a Secret Service sniper.

“I’m supposed to be dead, I’m not supposed to be here,” Mr Trump said in one of his first interviews since the attack.

Billionaire Elon Musk is among those who have formally endorsed Mr Trump since the shooting.

“This is a trade about the election more than the business,” said Wall Street analyst Cary Leahey, noting that Truth Social had been struggling to grow.

“If his chances of being elected go up, is his firm more valuable? Some traders think so.

“I am confident that if Biden dropped out, Truth Social shares would go down,” he added.

Mr Trump founded the Trump Media and Technology Group in 2021 after he lost the 2020 presidential election and was temporarily booted off major social platforms, including Twitter and Facebook, which accused him of inciting violence after the Capitol Hill riots.

Truth Social largely follows the same format as X, formerly Twitter, and has about 2 million active users, although claims vary according to difference sources.

Mr Trump is the majority shareholder.

At the current share price – roughly $40 a share – his holdings are worth roughly $5bn – far more than analysts say is justified by the company’s sales and operations.

The firm’s share price has been notoriously volatile, often tied to events in Mr Trump’s life – and his election odds.

Shares of its predecessor company started rallying in January, after Mr Trump defeated Republican challengers in the primaries.

The price soared further after Trump Media formally debuted on the Nasdaq stock exchange in March.

But shares slumped at the start of his criminal trial in April, in which he was later convicted of fraud charges linked to hush-money that was paid to adult-film actress Stormy Daniels.

The current share price remains below levels seen in March.

“There is no current fundamental business performance of the company that supports this current ‘price’ but buyers are likely political supporters purchasing shares to support the President’s wealth ahead of the election,” said Thomas J Hayes, chairman of Great Hill Capital.

On Saturday, images of Mr Trump holding up his fist defiantly to show he had survived the assassination attempt elicited roars from his supporting crowd.

Mr Trump later told US media he felt that he had been saved “by luck or by God”.

“The most incredible thing was that I happened to not only turn [my head] but to turn at the exact right time and in just the right amount,” he said, adding that the bullet that grazed his ear could have easily killed him.

One audience member was killed in the attack, while two other people were seriously injured. The gunman has been named as Thomas Matthew Crooks.

The motive of the shooter remains unclear.

US President Joe Biden has condemned the assassination attempt on his predecessor Donald Trump in a primetime address from the White House, telling Americans that US politics must never be a “killing field”.

Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, was wounded in the ear after a gunman opened fire at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. One person was killed and two more were critically injured in the attack.

In the Oval Office address – just the third of his presidency – Mr Biden urged Americans to “take a step back” and warned that “political rhetoric in this country has gotten very heated”.

“No matter how strong our convictions, we must never descend into violence,” Mr Biden said in remarks that lasted just under seven minutes.

His short, but forceful, address largely went off without a hitch, amid ongoing scrutiny following a number of high-profile verbal slips.

In his primetime address, the president called on Americans to come together and warned that increasing political polarisation meant November’s election would be “a time of testing”.

Mr Biden and Trump remain locked neck-and-neck in opinion polls ahead of the election.

Speaking from behind the Resolute Desk, Mr Biden listed off a growing number of violent political acts that have taken place in recent years.

“We cannot, must not, go down this road again. We’ve travelled it before in our history,” he said, citing shootings targeting congressional members in both parties, the assault on ex-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband and the 6 January riots.

“In America we resolve our differences at the ballot box,” he said. “At the ballot box. Not with bullets.”

Saturday’s attack left America reeling, as Trump was struck in the ear shortly after he began speaking in Butler, Pennsylvania.

In images beamed around the world, the 78-year-old could be seen with blood dripping from his ear and down his face, raising a defiant fist as Secret Service agents pulled him off stage and into a waiting car.

The gunman – identified by the FBI as 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks – was shot dead at the scene by Secret Service agents. Law enforcement agents told the BBC’s US partner, CBS News, that they discovered explosive materials in his vehicle nearby and at his home.

Officials say they are still investigating what motivated the attack. Crooks was a registered Republican who had previously donated $15 to a liberal campaign group in 2021, according to media reports.

Classmates described him as a quiet young man who was bullied throughout school. A local gun club near his home in Pennsylvania confirmed he had been a member.

In his speech, Mr Biden said he was praying for the family of Corey Comperatore, a 50-year-old former firefighter who was shot and killed – along with two others who were critically injured – during the rally. The father-of-two was killed while shielding his family from bullets as they whizzed past Trump and struck members of the audience.

Mr Biden called Mr Comperatore a “hero” who was killed “while simply exercising his freedom to support a candidate of his choosing”.

• Follow live: Biden urges America to ‘lower temperature’ of politics after Trump shooting
• Tragedy at Trump rally upends election campaign – for now
• Videos show how gunman shot at Trump despite public alerting police

Allies of Trump’s have been quick to blame President Biden and his campaign for the attack, alleging that the top Democrat had sought to stoke fears about his rival’s return to office.

“The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs,” JD Vance – a Republican senator who is under consideration for the vice-presidential nomination – wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

President Biden avoided addressing those criticisms in his address on Sunday night, though his campaign has temporarily pulled attack ads against Trump.

The former president himself has sought to strike a conciliatory tone since the shooting, thanking his Secret Service detail for their quick actions and calling on citizens to “stand united” and to “show our True Character as Americans”.

He arrived in Milwaukee on Sunday night for the Republican National Convention, where he will accept his party’s nomination for president.

Trump is also expected to announce his running-mate. US media has reported that just three men are still under consideration for the vice-presidential slot: Florida Senator Marco Rubio, North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum and Senator Vance of Ohio.

In a news conference earlier on Sunday, the Secret Service said they had no plans to impose additional security measures around the convention, saying they were satisfied with existing arrangements.

The agency has come under scrutiny as to how Crooks was able to get so close to Trump, despite members of the audience reportedly pointing him out to police.

Sometimes sounds can be deceptive. A car backfiring can make you jump; a firework can make you flinch; but as soon as we heard the gunfire at the Butler Farm showgrounds shortly after 6pm on Saturday evening, we all knew straight away that these were gunshots, and there were lots of them.

Donald Trump was mid-way through a sentence as the shots rang out. He grabbed his ear before dropping to the ground and being smothered by Secret Service agents.

We didn’t know it at the time, but the gunman was perhaps 150m away from where we stood, lying flat on the roof of a shed and firing at least six rounds using an AR-15 rifle at the former president and terrifed spectators.

I was about to go on air, with radio colleagues from the BBC World Service waiting on the end of a line. Instead all three of us in my team – me, producer Iona Hampson and cameraman Sam Beattie – went to the ground, using our car as some kind of shelter, the only shelter we had.

We had no idea where the shooting was coming from; how many shooters there were; and how long it would go on for. Frankly it was terrifying.

As we lay on the ground, Sam turned on his camera and I tried to give my first impressions of what was happening. In that moment, we had no more concrete information than that about six minutes into Donald Trump’s speech, the shooting had begun.

As I listened I could hear screams from the crowd but I could no longer hear the former president speaking. Was he hit, was he dead? All these thoughts flash through your mind.

When we felt the shooting was over, Iona picked me up off the ground and we went live on television as shocked members of the crowd poured out of the exits. The range of emotions we encountered was immense, as Iona persuaded terrified spectators to come and talk to me live on television.

Many were understandably frightened; many were dazed and bewildered; some were angry, very angry.

One witness, a man named Greg, said he had seen the gunman “bear-crawling” onto the roof of the shed minutes before the chaos began and had been frantically trying to point him out to police and the Secret Service.

Another man – and I can understand this – was furious that we were broadcasting; he put himself between me and Sam yelling at me to stop. I laid my hand as gently as I could on his arm and explained to him while we were on air that it was important people knew what had just happened; the public, I said, had to know.

Eventually, as I pleaded with him, he relented – still unhappy and still fuming, rightly so, at what he’d just experienced.

Others expressed their anger in more political ways.

One man approached me and simply said: “They shot first. This is [expletive] war.”

Another just yelled “civil war” as he passed behind me.

And a few minutes later a huge electronic billboard appeared on the side of a truck – Donald Trump’s face framed in a target – the words simply read “Democrats attempted assassination – President Trump”.

It sent a shiver right up my spine – and the horror of the potential consequences of this act started to sink in.

But amid the fear and anger, there was profound sorrow. People who were loyal Trump supporters, committed gun owners, wondered out loud to me about the way America was going. It was as if they could no longer recognise the country they lived in – as if everything had become strange and foreign.

Devin, a local farmer, was there with his son Kolbie. It was their first ever political rally – Kolbie, just 14, still not old enough to vote.

But Kolbie’s first experience of the rawness of democracy was to see two wounded people loaded onto stretchers and rushed off to ambulances. It’s hard not to believe that those images of muzzle flashes he witnessed from the Secret Service snipers who took down the gunman won’t stay with him for the rest of his life.

I’ve covered at least half a dozen shootings in my ten years as a correspondent in the US – but always the immediate aftermath – never have I been present until now when someone actually pulled the trigger.

I don’t want to experience it again, and in this gun-loving country, even those committed to their handguns and rifles in this rural part of Western Pennsylvania seemed sickened and worried about the randomness of the violence they witnessed in late-afternoon sunshine as they wondered whether their political hero was still alive.

But what happened in Butler goes much wider than arguments over gun control.

America has been spiralling towards this moment for years – a political culture that is not just adversarial but downright poisonous. People here – or should I say some people here – find it easy to hate their political opponents – it’s visceral; it’s become part of the nation’s DNA to hate.

And it’s not just political. You can see it in the divisions between the coasts and the centre. Between the north and the south; between the cities and rural America – everything being defined in terms of not being something or someone else.

Moments in history can only really be judged in retrospect. But I’ll take a guess that last night will go down as one of those moments. The question for the leaders of public opinion in this country is what will they now choose to do – to inflame or to calm. To further divide or to reunite.

As an outsider but someone who truly loves this nation, I’m not hopeful.

China’s economy stumbled in the second quarter, official data shows, just as the country’s top leaders gathered for a key meeting to address its sluggish growth.

It grew 4.7% in the three months to June, falling short of expectations after a stronger start in the first three months of 2024. The government’s annual growth target is around 5%.

“China’s economy hit the brakes in the June quarter,” said Heron Lim at Moody’s Analytics, adding that analysts are hoping for solutions from the meeting under way in Beijing, also called the Third Plenum.

The world’s second-largest economy is facing a prolonged property crisis, steep local government debt, weak consumption and high unemployment.

Past outcomes of the Plenum have changed the course of history in China – in 1978, then leader Deng Xiaoping began opening China’s markets to the world, and in 2013 President Xi Jinping hinted at loosening the controversial one-child policy.

And so there are expectations of this year’s Plenum, where Mr Xi is presiding over a closed-door gathering of 370-plus high-ranking Chinese Communist Party members.

The rhetoric on state-controlled media has certainly been encouraging.

An editorial in The Global Times said a “wide range of reform-focused polices” are “high on the agenda” and would usher in a “new chapter”. Xinhua referred to “comprehensive” and “unprecedented” reforms. The editorial in the People’s Daily was headlined on a “new era of reform and opening up”, invoking the very phrase Deng coined in 1978.

Observers, however, are unsure of how much room there is for bold ideas or debate in the Party under Mr Xi’s heavily-centralised leadership. Some see the meeting as a mere rubber-stamping exercise for decisions that have already been made.

Economists are also sceptical the meeting will deliver a quick fix.

It has “little impact on near-term growth,” says Qian Wang, Asia Pacific chief economist at Vanguard, because its focus will be on longer-term and more significant reforms to “unleash the long-term growth potential”.

Still, analysts will be watching for announcements that signal the Party’s economic priorities.

Separate data on Monday showed that prices for new homes in June fell at the fastest pace in nine years.

This is more evidence of the crisis that has engulfed China’s property sector and led to the demise of giants such as Evergrande. The fear is that it could spread to other parts of the economy.

“There are more than 4,000 banks in China and over 90% are smaller, regional banks which are highly exposed to the housing market and local government debt,” says Shanghai-based economist Dan Wang.

She believes Party leaders will “push for consolidation of small banks”.

Another issue is falling prices – a symptom of weak demand.

Producer prices continued to drop in the last month, while consumer prices rose by a mere 0.2%, the slowest pace in three months.

Meanwhile, retail sales in June grew by just 2%, which is below expectations and a sign that consumers are still cautious about spending and uncertain of the future.

“A major concern is the loss of household, business, and investor confidence in the government’s ability to navigate the perilous economic environment,” said Eswar Prasad, former head of the International Monetary Fund’s China division.

Still, questions remain about Beijing’s willingness to deliver the sort of solution that would satisfy observers and the markets.

“The government is reluctant to turn to short-term stimulus plans such as cash transfer to families,” Dan Wang said. “Instead, we expect them to stress once again on bolstering supply chains and high tech.”

That is in line with Beijing’s bets on high-tech industries such as renewable energy, artificial intelligence and chip-making, and exports to revive the economy. Last month, China reported a record trade surplus – $99bn (£76.4bn) – as exports soared and imports struggled.

But even that bet faces challenging odds. Major trading partners such as the European Union and the United States have imposed tariffs and other barriers on goods made in China, from electric vehicles to advanced chips.

When two young Brazilian women were reported missing in September 2022, their families and the FBI launched a desperate search across the US to find them. All they knew was that they were living with wellness influencer Kat Torres.

Torres has now been sentenced to eight years in prison for the human trafficking and slavery of one of those women. The BBC World Service has also been told that charges have been filed against her in relation to a second woman.

How did the former model who partied with Leonardo DiCaprio and graced the cover of international magazines come to groom her followers and lure them into sexual exploitation?

“She kind of resembled hope for me,” says Ana, describing her reaction on stumbling across Torres’ Instagram page in 2017.

Ana was not one of the missing women targeted in the FBI search – but she too was a victim of Torres’ coercion and would be key to their rescue.

She says she was attracted to Torres’ trajectory from impoverished Brazilian favela to international catwalks, partying with Hollywood A-listers along the way.

“She seemed like she had overcome violence in her childhood, abuse, all these traumatic experiences,” Ana told BBC Eye Investigations and BBC News Brasil.

Ana was in a vulnerable situation herself. She says she had suffered a violent childhood, moved alone to the US from southern Brazil, and was previously in an abusive relationship.

Torres had recently published her autobiography called A Voz [The Voice], in which she claimed she could make predictions as a result of her spiritual powers, and had been interviewed on reputable Brazilian media shows.

“She was on the cover of magazines. She was seen with famous people such as Leonardo DiCaprio. Everything I saw seemed credible,” she says.

Ana says she was particularly taken with Torres’ approach to spirituality.

What Ana didn’t know was that the inspirational story Torres told was based on half-truths and lies.

Torres’ ex-flatmate in New York, Luzer Twersky, told us that her Hollywood friends had introduced her to the hallucinogenic drug ayahuasca, and she was never the same again.

”That’s when she kind of… started going off the deep end,” he says.

He said he also believed that she was working as a sugar baby – paid for romantic involvement with wealthy and powerful men who were also paying for the flat they shared together.

Torres’ wellness website and subscription service promised customers: “Love, money and self-esteem that you always dreamed of.” Self-help videos offered advice on relationships, wellness, business success and spirituality – including hypnosis, meditation and exercise programmes.

For an extra $150 (£120) clients could unlock exclusive one-to-one video consultations with Torres during which she would claim to solve any of their problems.

Amanda, another former client who lives in the Brazilian capital, says Kat made her feel special.

“All my doubts, my questions, my decisions: I always took them to her first, so that we could make decisions together,” she says.

But it appears that advice had a dark side. Ana, Amanda, and other former followers say they found themselves becoming increasingly psychologically isolated from friends and family and willing to do anything Torres suggested.

When Torres asked Ana in 2019 to move to New York to work as her live-in assistant, she agreed. She had been studying nutrition at university in Boston, but arranged to study online instead, and says she accepted the offer to look after Torres’ animals – and do her cooking, laundry and cleaning – for about $2000 (£1,564) a month.

Like, Follow, Trafficked: Insta’s Fake Guru

BBC Eye Investigations and BBC News Brasil uncover the truth behind the rise of wellness influencer and spiritual life coach, Kat Torres, and the international search for her trafficked followers

Watch now on BBC iPlayer (UK Only) or on the BBC World Service YouTube channel (outside UK)

When she arrived at Torres’ apartment, though, she quickly realised it did not match the curated perfection projected on the influencer’s Instagram.

“It was shocking because the house was really messy, really dirty, didn’t smell good,” she says.

Ana says Torres seemed unable to do even basic things without her, like taking a shower, because she couldn’t bear to be alone. She describes having to constantly be available for Torres, only being allowed to sleep for a few hours at a time, on a sofa covered in cat urine.

She says some days she would hide in the apartment building’s gym, grabbing a few hours’ sleep rather than working out.

“Now, I see that she was using me as a slave… she had satisfaction in it,” Ana says.

Ana says she was never paid.

“I felt like, ‘I’m stuck here, I don’t have a way out,’” she says. “I was probably one of her first victims of human trafficking.”

She had given up her university accommodation back in Boston, so she had nowhere to return to, and no income to pay for alternative housing.

Ana says when she tried to confront Torres, she became aggressive, triggering Ana’s painful history with domestic violence.

Eventually, after three months, Ana found a way to escape by moving in with a new boyfriend.

But that wasn’t the end of Ana’s role in Torres’ life. When the families of two other young Brazilian women reported them missing in September 2022, Ana knew she had to act.

By this point, Torres’ life had grown in scale. She was now married to a man called Zach, a 21-year-old she had met in California, and they were renting a five-bedroom house in the suburbs of Austin, Texas.

Repeating the pattern she had begun with Ana, Torres had targeted her most dedicated followers, trying to recruit them to come and work for her. In return, she had promised to help them achieve their dreams, capitalising on the intimate personal details they had shared with her during life-coaching sessions.

Desirrê Freitas, a Brazilian woman living in Germany, and Brazilian Letícia Maia – the two women whose disappearance would go on to spark the FBI-led search – moved to live with Torres. Another Brazilian woman, who we are calling Sol, was also recruited.

Posting on her social media channels, Torres introduced her “witch clan” to her followers.

The BBC has discovered at least four more women were almost persuaded to join Torres in the house but had pulled out.

Some of the women were too scared to appear in the BBC’s film – afraid of receiving online abuse and still traumatised by their experiences – but we have been able to verify their accounts using court documents, text messages, bank statements, and Desirrê’s memoir about her experiences – @Searching Desirrê, published by DISRUPTalks.

Desirrê says that in her case, Torres had bought her a plane ticket from Germany, having told her she was suicidal and needed Desirrê’s support.

Torres is also accused of persuading Letícia, who was 14 when she started life-coaching sessions with her, to move to the US for an au pair programme and then drop out to live and work with her.

As for Sol, she says she agreed to move in with Torres after becoming homeless and was hired to carry out tarot readings and yoga classes.

But it was not long before the women discovered their reality was very different to the fairytale they had been promised.

Within weeks, Desirrê says Torres pressured her into working at a local strip club, saying if she did not comply Desirrê would have to repay all the money she had spent on her: flights, accommodation, furniture for her room, and even the “witchcraft” Torres had performed. Desirrê says not only she did not have this money, she also believed at the time in the spiritual powers Torres claimed to have, so when Torres threatened to curse her for not following orders she was terrified.

Reluctantly, Desirrê agreed to work as a stripper.

A manager from the strip club, James, told the BBC she would work extremely long hours, seven days a week.

Desirrê and Sol say the women in the Austin mansion were subjected to strict house rules. They describe being forbidden from speaking to each other, needing Torres’ permission to leave their rooms – even to use the bathroom – and being required to immediately hand over all earnings.

“It was very difficult to, you know, get out of the situation because she holds your money,” Sol told the BBC.

“It was terrifying. I thought something could happen to me because she had all my information, my passport, my driving licence.”

But Sol says she realised she needed to somehow escape after overhearing a phone call in which Torres was telling another client she must work as a prostitute in Brazil as a “punishment”.

Sol was able to leave with the help of an ex-boyfriend.

Meanwhile, the guns Torres’ husband kept began to regularly feature on her Instagram stories, and became a source of fear for the remaining women.

Around this time, Desirrê says Torres tried to persuade her to swap the strip club for work as a prostitute. She says she refused and the following day Torres took her on a surprise day out to a gun range.

Scared, Desirrê says she eventually gave in to Torres’ demand.

“Many questions haunted me: ‘Could I stop whenever I wanted?’” Desirrê writes in her book.

“And if the condom broke, would I get a disease? Could [the client] be an undercover cop and arrest me? What if he killed me?”

If the women didn’t meet the earning quotas that Torres set, which had risen from $1,000 (£782) to $3,000 (£2,345) a day, they were not allowed to return to the house that night, they say.

“I ended up sleeping on the street several times because I couldn’t reach that,” Desirrê adds.

Bank statements, seen by the BBC, show Desirrê transferring more than $21,000 (£16,417) into Torres’ account in June and July 2022 alone. She says that she was forced to hand over a substantially higher figure in cash.

Prostitution is illegal in Texas and Desirrê says Torres would threaten to report her to the police if she ever talked about wanting to stop.

In September, friends and family of Desirrê and Letícia back in Brazil launched social media campaigns to find them, having become increasingly concerned following months without contact.

By this time, they were barely recognisable. Their brunette hair had been dyed platinum blonde to eerily match Torres’. Desirrê says by this point all her phone contacts had been blocked and she obeyed the influencer’s orders without question.

As the Instagram page @searchingDesirrê gained momentum, the story dominated news outlets in Brazil. Desirrê’s friends even worried she might have been murdered, and Letícia’s family put out desperate pleas for their safe return home.

Ana, having lived with Torres in 2019, said alarm bells rang as soon as she saw the news stories. She says she immediately guessed that “[Torres] was keeping other girls”.

• More information and support about human trafficking and modern slavery is available via BBC Action Line.

Along with other former clients, Ana began to contact as many law enforcement agencies as possible, including the FBI, in an attempt to get the influencer arrested. Five months earlier, both she and Sol had reported Torres to the US police – but say they weren’t taken seriously.

In a video she recorded at the time for evidence, since shared with the BBC, a distressed Ana can be heard saying, “this person is very dangerous and she has already threatened to kill me”.

Then the missing women’s profiles on escort and prostitution websites were discovered. Suspicions of sexual exploitation, shared on social media, appeared to be confirmed.

Panicked by the media attention, Torres and the women travelled more than 2,000 miles (3,219 km) from Texas to Maine. In chilling Instagram videos, Desirrê and Letícia denied being held captive and demanded people stop searching for them.

But a recording, obtained by BBC News, gives an insight into what was really happening at this time. By now the US authorities were aware of the concerns about the women’s safety. Homeland security had tipped off a police officer who managed to FaceTime Torres to check on the women. But just before this starts, Torres can be heard saying on the video:

“He will start asking questions. Guys, they are full of tricks. He’s a detective, be very careful. For God’s sake, I’ll kick you out if you say anything. I’ll scream.”

In November 2022, the police finally convinced Torres and the two other women to attend a welfare check in person at Franklin County Sheriff’s Office in Maine.

The detective who questioned Torres, Desirrê and Letícia – Detective David Davol – told the BBC he and his colleagues had been immediately concerned, noticing a number of red flags, including a distrust of law enforcement, isolation and their reluctance to speak without Torres’ permission.

“Human traffickers aren’t always like in the movies, where you have… a gang that kidnapped people. It’s far more common that it’s someone you trust.”

By December 2022, the two women had been safely returned to Brazil.

Det Davol says, in his experience, human trafficking is on the rise. His observation is backed up by the UN, which says it is one of the fastest growing crimes, generating an estimated $150bn (£117bn) in profits a year worldwide.

He believes social media gives it a platform on which to thrive, making it much easier for traffickers to find and groom victims.

In April this year, our team was granted a rare court order to interview Torres in a Brazilian prison – the first media interview with her since her arrest. At that point, she was still waiting for the verdict of a trial against her relating to her treatment of Desirrê.

Smiling, Torres approached us with a calm and collected demeanour.

She was adamant that she was completely innocent, denying that any women had ever lived with her or that she had ever coerced anyone to take part in sex work.

“When I was seeing the people testifying, they were saying so many lies. So many lies that at one point, I couldn’t stop laughing,” she told us.

“People are saying I am a fake guru, but at the same time, they are also saying that… ‘She is a danger to society because she can change people’s mind with her words.’”

When we confronted her with the evidence that we ourselves had seen, she became more hostile, accusing us of lying too.

“You choose to believe whatever you choose to believe. I can tell you I’m Jesus. And you can see Jesus, or you can see the devil, that’s it. It’s your choice. It’s your mind.”

As she got up to return to her cell, she issued a parting threat, claiming we would soon find out if she had powers or not. She pointed at me, and said: “I didn’t like her.”

The BBC can reveal that earlier this month Torres was sentenced by a Brazilian judge to eight years in prison for subjecting Desirrê to human trafficking and slavery. He concluded that she had lured the young woman to the US for the purpose of sexual exploitation.

More than 20 women have reported being scammed or exploited by Torres – many of whom the BBC has spoken to and are still undergoing psychiatric therapy to recover from what they say they experienced as a result of her treatment of them.

Torres’ lawyer told the BBC she has appealed her conviction and maintains her innocence.

An investigation into the allegations from other women is ongoing in Brazil.

Ana believes yet further victims may come forward, once they read about Torres’ crimes. This is the first time Ana has spoken publicly.

She says she wants people to recognise that Torres’ actions amount to a serious crime and not some “Instagram drama”.

In the closing pages of her book Desirrê also reflects on her experiences.

“I’m not fully recovered yet, I’ve had a challenging year. I was sexually exploited, enslaved and imprisoned.

“I hope my story serves as a warning.”

You can get in touch by following this link

A small town mayor in the Philippines who has been accused of being a Chinese spy has gone into hiding, officials said.

Police could not carry out a warrant for the arrest of Alice Guo over the weekend as she was not at any of her known addresses.

Scam centres were uncovered in Ms Guo’s town of Bamban in March, concealed in online casinos that cater to mainland Chinese.

Her story has played out like a TV drama, as she had also been questioned on her Chinese parentage and suspicions that she was working as an “asset” or spy for Beijing.

Ms Guo’s case has gripped the nation as Manila and Beijing continue to spar over reefs and outcrops in the South China Sea.

The Senate ordered the arrest of Ms Guo and some members of her family last Friday after she twice snubbed summons to appear in hearings on the scam centres.

“Show yourselves. Hiding will not erase the truth,” Senator Risa Hontiveros, who is leading parliament’s investigation on Ms Guo, said in a statement.

Ms Guo has denied wrongdoing. She claims her Chinese father and Filipina mother raised her on their pig farm.

But Senator Sherwin Gatchalian, who is part of the investigation, claims Ms Guo is a Chinese national whose real name is Guo Hua Ping, based on immigration records.

“She is hiding to evade arrest,” Mr Gatchalian told local radio. “Our tracker teams will continue looking for her.”

On the day the arrest warrant was signed, Ms Guo posted a statement on Facebook, addressing her constituents and alluding to the fact that she would not be around.

“Sorry for not being physically present with each one of you. I miss you all,” she said, adding her absence would be “temporary”.

In the post, she added that she did not regret joining politics, even if it hurt her so much that she “almost lost myself”.

“I am a Filipino with a big heart for Bamban. I love the Philippines very much,” she said.

Ms Guo’s lawyer, Nicole Jamilla, told local television that her client would “definitely” cooperate with official investigations.

Aside from the investigation by the Senate, Ms Guo is the subject of a separate anti-graft probe that has led to her suspension.

The scam centres in Bamban have underscored how online casinos or Pogos (Philippine Online Gaming Operations) have been used as cover for text scams, human trafficking and other criminal activities.

Crime rings hiding beneath Pogos have even gone to the extent of building hospitals that provide cosmetic surgery to fugitives who want new faces.

Pogos flourished during the tenure of Rodrigo Duterte, whose presidency, which ended in 2022, was marked by close ties to China.

But under current president Ferdinand Marcos, Pogos have come under close scrutiny.

If proven that she is a Chinese citizen, Ms Guo would be not be eligible to serve as mayor. Only Filipino citizens are allowed to hold elective office.

But this does not matter to her constituents who benefit from her social outreach programmes, that are widely documented on her social media pages.

Ms Guo “brought change” to Bamban, and its people are thankful, resident Erica Miclat told ANC television.

Kenyan police have arrested a man who they have described as a “serial killer” suspected to have been behind the gruesome murder of nine women whose mutilated bodies were found in a disused quarry used as a rubbish dump.

Police say Jomaisi Khalisia, 33, confessed to having killed 42 women since 2022, including his own wife.

The suspect was arrested at a bar early on Monday morning as he was watching the Euro final.

There has been shock and outrage in Kenya since the first of the dismembered bodies were found on Friday at the Mukuru quarry in the capital, Nairobi.

“[He] confessed to have lured, killed and disposed of 42 female bodies at the dumping site, all murdered between 2022 and as recent as Thursday,” said Mohamed Amin, head of the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI).

He said that after his arrest, the suspect led police officers to his house, about 100m (yards) from the crime scene.

The police displayed to the media some of the items said to have been recovered from the suspect’s house, including 10 phones, a laptop, identity cards and personal female clothing.

They also found a machete they “believed was being used to dismember the victims”, and nine sacks like the ones used to dispose of the bodies.

Since Friday, police have cordoned off the dumpsite where the bodies were found in various stages of decomposition.

The victims were aged between 18 and 30 and were all killed in the same way, according to the police.

Police said they were still interrogating the suspect to establish the motive for the killings and he would be arraigned in court on Tuesday.

They said his arrest followed a “forensic analysis” of a mobile phone that belonged to one of the victims, Josephine Mulongo Owino, “where some mobile money transactions were conducted on the very day [she] went missing”.

Post-mortem examinations on the bodies were being conducted, the police said.

They have asked families “who believe that their beloved ones may have fallen prey to these macabre murders” to report to the police.

“It is crystallising that we are dealing with a serial killer, a psychopathic serial killer who has no respect for human life, who has no respect and dignity,” Mr Amin said.

A second person with a phone belonging to one of the victims has also been arrested and would be treated either as an accomplice or suspect, he said.

Kenya’s police watchdog earlier said it was investigating whether there was any police involvement in the crimes as the dumpsite is close to a police station.

The officers working there have been transferred, to ensure “fair and unbiased investigations” into the “heinous” deaths, the acting police chief, Douglas Kanja said earlier.

The Independent Police Oversight Authority said “widespread allegations of police involvement in unlawful arrests [and] abductions” meant it was undertaking a preliminary investigation to establish whether there was any police connection.

Human rights groups have accused the police of shooting dozens of people who were demonstrating against planned tax rises earlier this month, some of them fatally.

On Friday, Kenya’s police chief Japhet Koome resigned, a day after President William Ruto fired his entire cabinet in the wake of the deadly protests.

• Was there a massacre after Kenya’s anti-tax protests?
• Protesters traumatised by abductions – lawyer
• ‘We are the Church’: Kenyan tax protesters take on Christian leaders
• Historic first as president takes on Kenya’s online army
• Kenyan president’s humbling shows power of African youth

Dozens of Indian farm labourers have been freed from slave-like working conditions in northern Italy, police have said.

The 33 workers were lured to Italy on the promise of jobs and a better future by two fellow Indian nationals, police say.

But instead, they were allegedly forced to work more than 10 hours a day, seven days a week for a tiny wage which was used to pay off debts to the alleged gangmasters.

The two men – who were found with approximately $545,300 (£420,000) – have been arrested.

The exploitation of farmhands – both Italian and migrant – in Italy is a well-known issue. Thousands of people work in fields, vineyards and greenhouses dotted across the country, often without contracts and in highly dangerous conditions.

Just last month, an Indian fruit picker died after his arm was severed in a work accident.

The man had allegedly been left on the side of the road following the accident, which also left his legs crushed.

His employer is now under investigation for criminal negligence and manslaughter.

The 33 men rescued by police in the Province of Verona had paid €17,000 ($18,554, £14,293) or 1.5m rupees each in return for seasonal work permits and jobs, according to a police statement sent to the BBC.

To raise the funds, police said, some pawned their family assets, while others borrowed the money from their employers.

But they were only paid €4 per hour for their 10 to 12-hour days, with that sum settling any debt owed.

Their passports were also confiscated as soon as they arrived in Italy and they were banned from leaving their “dilapidated” apartments.

“Every morning, the workers piled into vehicles covered in tarpaulin where they hid among boxes of vegetables until they reached the Verona countryside for work,” the police statement said.

Searches of their apartments showed the workers were “forced to live in precarious and degrading conditions” and “in total violation of health and hygiene regulations”, it added.

The rescued workers have received their passports back and are being helped by social services and a migration organisation to relocate to safer housing and working conditions.

The two alleged gangmasters are now facing charges related to exploitation and slavery, police told Reuters news agency.

Undocumented labourers across Italy are often subject to a system known as “caporalato” – a gangmaster system which sees middlemen illegally hiring labourers who are then forced to work for very low salaries. Even workers with regular papers are often paid well below the legal wage.

Almost a quarter of the agricultural workforce in Italy in 2018 was employed under this method, according to a study by the Italian National Institute of Statistics. The practice also affects workers in the service industry and building sectors.

It was outlawed in Italy in 2016 after an Italian woman died of a heart attack after working 12-hour shifts picking and sorting grapes, for which she was paid €27 a day.

Shannen Doherty has been remembered as a “beloved” actress with “heart, courage and kindness”, following her death from cancer at the age of 53.

Doherty was known for roles in 1990s teen drama Beverly Hills, 90210 and supernatural series Charmed.

Jason Priestley, who played her twin brother on 90210, wrote on Instagram he was “shocked and saddened” by the news.

“She was a force of nature and I will miss her,” he said. “Sending love and light to her family in this dark time.”

Jennie Garth, who played Kelly, the sometime love rival of Doherty’s character Brenda, said she was “still processing my tremendous grief over the loss of my long-time friend Shannen, the woman I have often described as one of the strongest people I have ever known”.

“We were so often pitted against each other – but none of that reflected the truth of our real relationship, which was one built on mutual respect and admiration,” Garth wrote.

“She was courageous, passionate, determined and very loving and generous. I will miss her and will always honour her deeply in my heart and in my memories. My heart breaks for her family and [her dog] Bowie and all the people who loved her.”

Buffy the Vampire Slayer star Sarah Michelle Gellar, a good friend, posted: “How do you possibly find the right words to sum up 30 years of friendship?

“I keep reminding myself it only hurts this much because, there was so much love. Thank you, for all your kind words and support.”

Recalling Doherty’s love of pets, Gellar asked well-wishers to donate to an animal charity in her memory. “I know that would make our girl happy.”

Doherty’s death comes five years after that of her fellow Beverly Hills, 90210 star, Luke Perry.

Gabrielle Carteris, who played Andrea in the hit series, paid tribute to Doherty, writing: “So young – so sad. May you RIP Shannon. I know Luke is there with open arms to love you.”

Tori Spelling, who played Donna, posted a photo of herself and Doherty, alongside a string of broken-heart emojis and the message: “I don’t have outwards words yet… but we knew and that’s what matters.”

Another Beverly Hills 90210 co-star, Brian Austin Green, addressed his tribute to “Shan, my sister”.

“You loved me through everything. You were a big part of my understanding of love,” he wrote.

“I’ll miss you more than I know how to process right now. Thank you for the gift of you.”

Carol Potter, who played Brenda’s mother, Cindy, wrote Doherty had “gone too soon”.

“Throughout, she stayed true to herself and gave us an example of courage and perseverance in facing her own death,” Potter said. “May she rest in peace.”

On Charmed, Doherty played one of three sisters who were witches.

Rose McGowan, who replaced Doherty in the show, as half-sister Paige, wrote she “had the heart of a lion”.

“My head bows to this warrior on her journey home,” McGowan wrote. “Her intense will to live places in her in the hall of legends. Forever our sister.”

Alyssa Milano, who played sister Phoebe, acknowledged the pair’s “complicated relationship”, with reports they had fallen out on set, leading to Doherty’s departure.

“But at its core was someone I deeply respected and was in awe of,” Milano added in a statement.

“She was a talented actress, beloved by many, and the world is less without her. My condolences to all who loved her.”

Another Charmed co-star, Brian Krause, wrote: “You showed me what strength is. You taught me to be fearless and live with purpose, to know your value and stick to your determination. Forever loved. Truly heartbroken.”

Others paying tribute included actress Olivia Munn, herself diagnosed with breast cancer earlier this year, who was “absolutely heartbroken”.

“We bonded through a shared battle and a desire to help other women,” she wrote. “Looking back on the last text she sent me, just a couple months ago, she asked how I was doing and if she could do anything for me.

“True to form, Shannen was offering her support even though she was in the final stage of fighting this horrific disease.”

Doherty had faced the disease with “such dignity, strength and grace”, Munn added.

Actress Kate Beckinsale said on Instagram: “Love you. Fly high lovely kind sweetheart woman. This hits hard. Your heart, courage and kindness will be so missed.”

And Oscar winner Viola Davis wrote: “Your bravery and ability to share your cancer journey left something ‘in’ people. Rest well. God bless your loved ones.”

It’s been more than a year-and-a-half since Brazil’s Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva returned to the country’s presidency, back from the political dead after his conviction on corruption charges was dramatically annulled.

In that time, President Lula’s comeback has given renewed force to one of the world’s most unlikely economic alliances – the Brics, a grouping that unites Brazil with Russia, India, China and South Africa.

In his previous time as president from 2003 to 2010, Lula was instrumental in efforts to weld the Brics into a geopolitical entity, and an emerging counterweight to the West.

Now the bloc has momentum on its side once again. It’s come to be known as Brics Plus, after the original members agreed at a watershed summit in Johannesburg in August last year to admit a handful of new joiners, including Saudi Arabia and Iran.

Not bad for a grouping that was originally willed into being by sheer high-concept financial whimsy, the brainchild of economist Jim O’Neill, who saw it more as an investment opportunity than a new gang of nations.

“When the Brics were invented, it was pretty much an asset class,” says Monica de Bolle, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington.

“But it caught on in Brazil, because it directly spoke to Lula’s aspirations in foreign policy.”

At the Johannesburg meeting, Lula was particularly bullish about the group’s long-term economic prospects.

“We have already surpassed the G7 and account for 32% of global GDP in purchasing power parity,” he said.

“Projections indicate that emerging and developing markets will be those that will show the highest growth rate in the coming years,” he went on.

“This shows that the dynamism of the economy is in the global south and the Brics is its driving force.”

But that is disingenuous on Lula’s part, to say the least. As has been pointed out by the originator of the Bric acronym, who now rejoices in the title of Baron O’Neill of Gatley, all the economic growth in the group has actually come from Xi Jinping’s China and Narendra Modi’s India.

“None of the other Brics has performed anywhere near as well as those two,” he said in an article written in reaction to the bloc’s expansion.

“Brazil and Russia account for around the same share of global GDP as they did in 2001, and South Africa is not even the largest economy in Africa [Nigeria has surpassed it].”

As he also points out, China “dominates the Brics by being twice the size of all the others combined”, in much the same way that the US dominates the G7.

So what does slow-growth Brazil gain from being dragged along in China’s economic slipstream?

Rodrigo Zeidan, a Brazilian economist based at China’s New York University Shanghai, tells the BBC that Brazil and China alike see the Brics as a “hedge” in terms of global alliances, rather than as a top priority.

“The Brics right now, for Brazil, cost almost nothing,” he says. “So if the benefits are not high, it’s fine. They are neither a big benefit nor a hindrance.”

Since China is its biggest trading partner, Brazil is comfortable maintaining close relations with Beijing, even if the Brics grouping provides it with some “strange bedfellows”, as Mr Zeidan puts it.

Lula has certainly maintained an ambiguous position on Russia’s war in Ukraine, but that is more due to Brazil’s traditional neutrality in foreign policy than to a wish to support a fellow Brics nation.

For Monica de Bolle at the Peterson Institute, herself a Brazilian economist, President Lula showed “a lot of naivety” in committing to the Brics because of his belief in furthering relations among the big so-called global south nations.

As a result, Brazil has now acquired “a China dependency” that could harm it in other foreign policy relations, she says.

“If you are in the US, you know that the US stance on China is not going to change [whoever wins the presidential election in November],” she adds.

“In either case, it’s moving in the direction of greater anti-China sentiment. At some point, that’s going to create additional reactions from China, which could put Brazil in a very difficult position, because it’s perceived as being aligned with China.”

One tangible gain for Brazil from the alliance comes in the shape of the New Development Bank (NDB), a multilateral lender founded by the Brics and described by Lula as “a milestone in effective collaboration between emerging economies”.

It is currently headed by Brazilian ex-President Dilma Rousseff. She was President Lula’s political protegee, and succeeded him in 2011. But her time in office came to a chaotic end when she was impeached in 2016 for breaking budgetary laws.

The NDB has not only returned her to public life, but since the bank’s headquarters are in Shanghai, it makes her key to maintaining links between Brazil and China.

“Dilma is definitely huge in terms of political image. Having Dilma here in Shanghai is very important for strengthening Brazil-China relations,” says Mr Zeidan.

Brazil has also benefited directly from NDB money. In June, Ms Rousseff and Brazilian Vice-President Geraldo Alckmin signed a loan deal worth more than $1.1bn (£880m) to help pay for reconstruction after widespread floods in the state of Rio Grande do Sul.

Regarding the NDB and Russia, the bank put all transactions involving the country on hold in March 2022, shortly after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. And the NDB has complied with international sanctions against Russia.

But Russia is due to take over the rotating presidency of the bank in mid-2025 and there is some uncertainty over what will happen then.

In the meantime, Ms Rousseff is not averse to attending financial gatherings in Russia, and shaking hands with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has praised her work at the helm of the NDB.

President Lula is a passionate advocate of the Brics as a means of reforming global governance and giving a greater voice to the developing world.

He has criticised the “paralysis” of global institutions, while praising the expansion of the Brics as strengthening the fight for more diverse perspectives.

But other observers retort that the Brics are themselves paralysed by their own internal contradictions, with Russia at war in Ukraine, while China and India have their own mutual squabbles.

Ultimately, says Ms de Bolle in Washington, the Brics are “a heterogeneous group of countries that have nothing in common, apart from the fact that they are big”.

“The Brics have no clear agenda that has any real weight,” agrees Mr Zeidan in Shanghai.

“Right now, China doesn’t ask much of Brazil. However, anything that China asks, Brazil does.

“It’s fine to be part of the Brics when the stakes are low. But what if the stakes rise?”

In other words, the effect of the Brics, on Brazil and on the world, may be minor for now. But if China decides to become more assertive, that could change rapidly – and Brazil could be faced with some uncomfortable choices.

On the face of it, this past week’s Nato summit in Washington has ticked the boxes. The alliance can show it is bigger and stronger than ever, its military support for Ukraine appears undiminished and it has just sent a robust message to China to stop secretly supporting Russia’s war on Kyiv.

Sir Keir Starmer’s new government has had a chance to position itself as a linchpin in the transatlantic alliance at a time when political uncertainty hovers over the White House and much of Europe.

Back home in Britain, the priorities for this new government are pressing: the economy, housing, immigration, the NHS, to name but a few.

Yet unwanted threats and scenarios can often have a habit of turning up and upsetting the best laid plans.

So what could be coming down the track during the life of this new UK government?

No surprises here, this one is on everybody’s radar. But that does not make it any less dangerous, for Lebanon, Israel and the entire Middle East.

“The possibility of a large-scale Israeli invasion of Lebanon this summer should be at the top of the new government’s geopolitical risk register.”

That’s according to Professor Malcolm Chalmers, the Deputy Director-General of the Whitehall think tank, the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI).

With the conflict continuing in Gaza and the Houthi attacks on Red Sea shipping continuing, Prof Chalmers believes “we could be entering a period of sustained multi-front warfare in the region, for which neither Israel nor its Western partners will be prepared.”

Ever since the Hamas-led raid into southern Israel on 7 October last year, there have been fears that Israel’s subsequent military campaign in Gaza could escalate across borders into a full-scale regional war.

Israel’s troubled northern border with Lebanon is where such a war is most at risk of igniting.

The daily exchange of fire across this border, between the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) and Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Shia militia, have already resulted in hundreds killed, mostly in Lebanon.

More than 60,000 Israelis have been forced to abandon their homes and livelihoods in the north and an even greater number of people on the Lebanese side.

Domestic pressure is mounting for the Israeli government to “deal with” Hezbollah by pushing its forces north of Lebanon’s Litani River, from where they would have less chance of sending rockets into Israel.

“We don’t want to go to war,” says Lt Col Nadav Shoshani of the IDF, “but I don’t think any country could accept 60,000 of its citizens displaced. The situation has to end. We would like it to be a diplomatic solution, but Israeli patience is wearing thin.”

There are strong reasons for both sides not to go to war.

Lebanon’s economy is already fragile. It has barely recovered from the 2006 war with Israel and a renewed full-scale conflict would have a devastating impact on the country’s infrastructure and its people.

Hezbollah, for its part, would likely respond to a major Israeli attack and invasion with a massive and sustained missile, drone and rocket barrage that could potentially overwhelm Israel’s Iron Dome air defences.

Nowhere in Israel is beyond its reach.

At this point, the US Navy, positioned offshore, could well join in on Israel’s side. Which then begs the question of what Iran would do.

It too has a sizeable arsenal of ballistic missiles as well as a network of proxy militias in Iraq, Yemen and Syria that could be mobilised to intensify their attacks on Israel.

One way to take the heat out of the tension on the Israel-Lebanon border would be for the conflict in Gaza to come to an end. But after nine months and a horrific death toll, a lasting peace has yet to be achieved.

The Iran nuclear deal, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), designed to contain and monitor Iran’s nuclear programme, was the crowning foreign policy achievement of the Obama administration in 2015.

But it has long since fallen apart.

One year after President Trump unilaterally withdrew from it, Iran stopped abiding by its rules.

Buried deep beneath gigantic mountains, ostensibly beyond the reach of even the most powerful of bunker-busting bombs, Iran’s nuclear centrifuges have been spinning frantically, enriching uranium to well beyond the 20% needed for peaceful civil purposes. (A nuclear bomb requires highly enriched uranium.)

Officially, Iran insists its nuclear programme remains entirely peaceful, that it is purely for generating energy.

But Israeli and Western experts have voiced fears that Iran has a clandestine programme to reach what is known as “breakout capability”: achieving a position where it has the capacity to build a nuclear bomb, but does not necessarily do so.

It will not have escaped Iran’s notice that North Korea, an isolated, global pariah, has been steadily amassing an arsenal of nuclear warheads and the means to deliver them, constituting a major deterrent to any would-be attacker.

If Iran gets the Bomb, then it is almost inevitable that Saudi Arabia, its regional rival, would also go after acquiring it. So would Turkey and so would Egypt.

And suddenly there is a nuclear arms race all across the Middle East.

This depends on what you define as “winning”.

At its maximalist, it means Russian forces overwhelming Ukraine’s defences and seizing the rest of the country including the capital Kyiv, replacing the pro-West government of President Volodymyr Zelensky with a puppet regime appointed by Moscow.

That, of course, was the original plan behind the full-scale Russian invasion of February 2022, a plan which failed spectacularly.

This scenario is currently thought unlikely.

But Russia does not need to conquer the whole of Ukraine to be able to declare some kind of “victory”, something that it can present to its population to justify the astronomically high casualties it is sustaining in this war.

Russia already occupies around 18% of Ukraine and, in the east, its forces are slowly gaining ground.

Although more Western weapons are on their way, Ukraine is critically short of manpower. Its troops, fighting bravely, often heavily outnumbered and outgunned, are exhausted.

Russian commanders, who seem to care little for the lives of their men, have mass on their side. Russia’s entire economy has been placed on a war footing, with close to 40% of the state budget now devoted to defence.

President Vladimir Putin, whose recent “conditions for peace talks” equated to total capitulation by Ukraine, believes he has time on his side. He knows there is a high chance that his old friend Donald Trump will be back in the White House within months and that Western support for Ukraine will start to crumble.

Russia needs only to hang on to the territory it has already seized, and to deny Ukraine the chance of joining Nato and the EU, to declare a partial victory in the war it has portrayed as a fight for Russian survival.

Again, there are plenty of warnings that this one might be coming.

China’s President Xi Jinping and his officials have stated on numerous occasions that the self-governing island democracy of Taiwan must be “returned to the Motherland”, by force if necessary.

Taiwan does not want to be ruled by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in Beijing.

But China considers Taiwan a renegade province and it wants to see it “reunited” well before the centenary of the founding of the CCP in 2049.

The US has adopted a position of what it calls “strategic ambiguity” over Taiwan.

It is legally bound to help defend Taiwan, but Washington prefers to keep China guessing as to whether that means sending US forces to fight off a Chinese invasion.

China would almost certainly prefer not to invade Taiwan.

It would be hugely costly, in both blood and treasure. Ideally, Beijing would like Taiwan to give up on its dreams of full independence and volunteer to be ruled by the mainland.

But as that currently looks unlikely – the Taiwanese have watched with horror the crushing of democracy in Hong Kong – Beijing has another option up its sleeve.

If and when it decides to move on Taiwan, it is likely to try to seal it off from the outside world, making life unbearable for its citizens, but with the minimum of bloodshed so as to avoid provoking a war with the US.

Does Taiwan matter? It does.

This is about more than lofty principles of defending a democratic ally on the other side of the world.

Taiwan produces more than 90% of the world’s top-end microchips, the miniscule bits of tech that power almost everything that runs our modern-day lives.

A US-China war over Taiwan would have catastrophic consequences for the global economy that would dwarf the war in Ukraine.

Not exactly, but there are some moderating factors here.

For China, trade is all-important. Beijing’s ambitious plans to squeeze the US Navy out of the western Pacific and dominate the entire region may well be tempered by its reluctance to trigger damaging sanctions and a global trade war.

In Ukraine, President Putin may be making slow, incremental territorial gains but this comes at a horrendous cost in casualties.

When the Red Army occupied Afghanistan in the 1980s, it suffered around 15,000 killed over a decade, triggering protests at home and hastening the demise of the Soviet Union.

In Ukraine, in just one quarter of that time, Russia has suffered many multiples of that death toll. To date, protest has been limited – the Kremlin largely controls what news Russians see – but the longer this war goes on, the greater the risk that the Russian public will eventually baulk at the mounting number of their fellow citizens getting killed.

In Europe, where worries abound over a future Trump presidency withdrawing its historic protection, a new UK-led security pact is being prepared.

As the US presidential election in November draws closer, plans are accelerating to try to mitigate any possible downsides to the continent’s security.

It’s 07:00 on a chilly winter morning and a group of students has just arrived at Chanyanya Primary and Secondary school, a little over an hour’s drive south-west of Zambia’s capital, Lusaka.

“You need to come early to school because there is a shortage of desks,” says 16-year-old pupil Richard Banda. “Two days ago I came late and I ended up sitting on the floor – it was so cold.”

His discomfort encapsulates the problem of a lack of resources and overcrowding that has come as a result of offering free primary and secondary school education here.

The school is in a compound made up of 10 classrooms arranged in a horseshoe shape around a playground where acacia trees and plants spring out of the sandy soil.

The rays of the early-morning sun are caught in a cloud of dust stirred up by boys and girls sweeping the classrooms.

Just before the bell rings, one of the students sprints to the middle of the playground and raises the Zambian flag atop a tall pole.

These start-of-the-day rituals have become part of a new routine for two million extra children who since 2021 have been able to go to state-run schools without having to pay, because the government made schooling free for everyone.

But without enough infrastructure investment, experts say overcrowding is now threatening the quality of education, especially for low-income students.

“I stopped going to school in 2016 when I was in grade four,” says 18-year-old Mariana Chirwa donning the Chanyanya’s girls uniform, a light-blue shirt topped with a tartan bow.

“Without free education I don’t know how my parents would have managed to take me back to school. They don’t work and just stay at home.”

A poster of the class sizes hanging on the wall of the headteacher’s office spells out the challenge schools like Chanyanya face.

In one of the classrooms, 75 boys and 85 girls are squeezed into a space that would comfortably fit only 30 pupils.

“When I started in 2019 I had about 40 students, but now it’s around 100 plus, and that is just in one class,” says 33-year-old teacher Cleopatra Zulu.

“Each and every day we receive new learners because of free education. Talking one-on-one is difficult, even marking is a challenge. We have even reduced the number of subjects that we are giving them”.

The experience of pupil Richard Banda reflects this.

“We don’t learn in the same way as those times when we used to pay, there’s a little bit of a difference,” he tells the BBC.

“When we were few the teacher would explain a topic again if you didn’t understand, but now because we are many, the teacher doesn’t repeat it again. That’s the difference.”

The uptick in the number of learners is reflected across sub-Saharan Africa with more children in school than ever before, the UN children’s agency Unicef says.

But with nine out of 10 primary school students in the region still struggling to read and understand simple texts, according to Unicef, the focus for policy-makers is now shifting to the quality of the education, the hiring of qualified teachers and the physical infrastructure and resources.

“When you don’t sit properly in a classroom, that affects the way that you pay attention to teaching, the way that you write your notes,” says Aaron Chansa, the director of the National Action of Quality Education in Zambia (NAQEZ), which the government consults.

“We are seeing learners getting into secondary school when they can’t read properly,” he says, adding that there are problems across the country.

“In Eastern Province we have more than 100 learners in one class. This has also worsened the book-to-pupil ratio. In some instances you find one book being fought over by six or seven learners.”

The government says it is listening and taking steps to address the challenges created by making education free.

“This is a good problem,” says Education Minister Douglas Syakalima. “I’d rather let the children be in a congested classroom than in the street.”

“The president launched mass production of desks, mass infrastructure-building is happening.”

Zambia has invested over $1bn (£784m) in the education sector since the introduction of free education three years ago – a much-needed boost after years of decline in spending as a proportion of GDP in this sector.

The government has announced plans to build over 170 new schools and has committed to the recruitment of 55,000 new teachers by the end of 2026, of whom 37,000 have already been hired.

The move has provided fresh job opportunities, but it has also led to a shortage of accommodation in rural areas. Some teachers are reporting having to live in grass-thatched houses and share pit latrines, which are at risk of overflowing.

“When it’s the rainy season here, you don’t really want to visit us,” says Ms Zulu, who lives in the school compound and remembers being nervous about the risk of cholera during the outbreak earlier this year.

Just outside her house, a large patch of dried-up shower gel marks the spot where one of the residents bathed earlier, in the open, with privacy provided only by the darkness before sunrise.

“The houses we live in are more like a death-trap,” says Ms Zulu. “The government should do something about the houses, especially the toilets.”

Worried about learning outcomes, some families have quietly begun to take action.

Robert Mwape is a taxi driver based in Lusaka.

In 2022, he moved his 11-year-old son from a private, fee-paying school to a public one to take advantage of free education, but he soon came to regret the move.

“I noticed [my son’s] results began going down. So one day I decided to visit the classroom. There were too many of them. You know what young people are like – so many of them, they waste time talking. The teacher couldn’t focus the entire class.”

The following year Mr Mwape, who did not want us to use his real name, reversed his original decision. Now aged 13, his son is back at a private school.

With Zambia slowly emerging from a debt default in 2020, some experts have cast doubt over the sustainability of the free education policy.

A 2023 report from the Zambia Institute for Policy Analysis and Research says that if all eligible students take up the offer of free education, government expenditure is estimated to double, “raising questions on the commitment of subsequent governments to continue the policy”.

But the education minister says he is confident the administration can shoulder the cost.

“I don’t see [the challenge] myself. Education is the best economic policy, ” says Mr Syakalima.

Making school free is widely seen as a first step towards giving young Zambians a fair chance to a brighter future.

But the country’s experience so far shows the challenges of managing a growing number of students while trying to maintain the quality of the education they receive.

• Zambia cholera: Families grieve as infection kills loved ones
• Why free schools have not solved Kenya’s problems
• Zimbabwe education: Parents of school dropouts face jail

For the last few months, Asia’s richest man Mukesh Ambani has been grabbing the spotlight in India.

It’s not because he has completed a major acquisition or cut a big philanthropic cheque, but it’s his son’s grandiose wedding celebrations that have entranced the entire nation and the world.

The pre-wedding parties, which began in March, have put the Ambani family firmly at the centre of many breakfast, lunch and dinner table conversations.

Anant Ambani, the youngest son of Mukesh Ambani, tied the knot with his long-time girlfriend Radhika Merchant at a family-owned convention centre in Mumbai on Friday, in a culmination of six-month-long festivities that have taken place across the globe.

Indian weddings can be lavish, but the sheer scale and size of the Ambani jamboree have perhaps eclipsed the celebratory fervour displayed by erstwhile royals.

• India tycoon’s son to marry after months of festivities
• The marathon Indian wedding turning heads around the world

The unerring presence of Bollywood A-listers at every party, the million-dollar performances by global pop-stars like Rihanna and Justin Bieber, and a bevy of VVIP dignitaries descending upon the celebrations have been a source of endless fodder for the paparazzi.

Consider some of the global elite who made it to the functions – Meta’s Mark Zuckerburg, Samsung CEO Han-Jong Hee, Bill Gates, former US President Donald Trump’s daughter Ivanka, former UK prime ministers Boris Johnson and Sir Tony Blair, Fifa president Gianni Infantino and the Kardashian sisters.

And the list goes on.

“These are very busy people. They aren’t coming just to have fun,” James Crabtree, author of The Billionaire Raj: A Journey Through India’s New Gilded Age, told the BBC.

“What this tells you is that global business leaders believe the Ambanis are strategically important and also that they see India as a very big market.”

Meet the family

The Ambanis are often described as India’s most prominent business family.

They run Reliance Industries, an oil to telecoms conglomerate that was founded by Mukesh Ambani’s father Dhirubhai Ambani – a man with a controversial legacy who attained legendary status for deftly navigating India’s controversial pre-liberalisation polity, while creating enormous wealth for his company’s shareholders.

Dhirubhai died in 2002, and the empire he founded was split between his two sons – Anil and Mukesh – after what could be described as one of India’s most acrimonious succession battles.

Since then, the brothers’ fortunes have diverged, with the younger Anil declaring bankruptcy and Mukesh pivoting more and more to consumer-facing businesses, even while retaining his pole position in Reliance’s mainstay – petrochemicals.

His oil refinery in the western town of Jamnagar is the largest in the world.

In recent years, Reliance has brought some of the world’s most celebrated luxury brands to India, from Valentino to Versace and Burberry to Bottega.

Among other things, the company now owns a team in the world’s richest cricket tournament and the iconic British toy retailer Hamleys.

In 2021, it acquired the historic country club Stoke Park in Buckinghamshire for £57m.

Earlier this year, Reliance signed a binding pact to merge its entertainment platforms with Disney, in its latest attempt to transform the company’s industrial moorings. It is a deal that makes Mukesh Ambani a formidable player in the digital streaming space, with rights to cricketing tournaments and international shows.

But the conglomerate really began its shopping spree during the Covid-19 pandemic, when it got billions of dollars in investment from more than a dozen global players, including Meta and Google. The plan with Meta has been to connect WhatsApp’s more than 400 million users in India with its online grocery platform JioMart.

The company’s aggressive pricing strategy has mounted a serious challenge to foreign entrants like Netflix and Amazon.

Privately, foreign players, who compete in the same sectors as Reliance, sometimes complain of a lack of level playing field, claiming the Ambanis are among a select few who’ve benefited from the Indian government’s policy of awarding preferential contracts to local tycoons.

“Foreign players face a difficult choice,” says Mr Crabtree. “They can either fight with Reliance or get into bed with Reliance. Zuckerburg has chosen to partner with them, while Amazon has decided to fight. But these battles are often very costly, and foreigners end up losing.”

Now, Mukesh Ambani’s next target is financial services, with Reliance entering into a joint venture with US-based BlackRock for a brokering and wealth management business.

Not surprisingly then, for the Ambanis, this is much more than just a wedding.

It is a show of strength and of the clout they command, says Harish Bijoor, a brand strategy specialist. “It’s a show of the fact that this family is a magnet that attracts people from all walks of life – business, politics and entertainment.”

The media blitzkrieg around it, he adds, is also a way for them to make a personal event “even more personal to the whole world” – such as the consumers of Reliance products and services for instance – who would never have got an invite.

If the Ambani patriarch, Dhirubhai, was credited with introducing the stock market to India’s retail investors, his son Mukesh is well recognised for creating a myriad touchpoints between his businesses and the average Indian consumer.

A bulk of what Indians consume today, from the shows they watch, to the clothes they wear and potentially even how they will transact in the future, comes from the Ambani stable.

And that is why there couldn’t have been a better occasion than a dazzling wedding for the family to market its brand to India’s burgeoning consumer class.

And sure enough, the wedding has captivated people in India and across the world.

America’s Sweethearts, which lifts the lid on life in the most famous cheerleading team in the US, has been climbing up the Netflix charts since its release last month.

The series follows the gruelling recruitment and coaching process for the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders – DCC for short – and how much pressure the members face to be perfect.

Among the hopefuls is 24-year-old Ariana McClure – a medical sales rep who moved to Dallas to pursue her dream.

It is her second attempt at making the team, having been cut in training camp the previous year.

Dancers have to go through a tough audition process and training camp before they’re high-kicking in formation on the football pitch, all without a piece of hair or false eyelash being out of place. It’s ruthlessly competitive.

As well as learning the demanding acrobatic routines, they are required to stay the same size, so they can continue to fit in to the trademark uniform of tiny shorts, crop top and cowboy boots.

It’s not the first show about the cheerleaders, who are nicknamed America’s Sweethearts – there had already been 16 seasons of a reality show about the team on US network CMT.

But Netflix has brought DCC to a new audience. And many viewers have expressed shock at the demands on the cheerleaders, and the comparatively low wages they are paid.

In addition to intense training, most of the women have other full-time jobs.

In the opening episode, Cowboys boss Charlotte Jones admits the cheerleaders are “not paid a lot” – but says women on the team do not join for the pay, rather to be part of something bigger than themselves.

Ariana thinks pay has slightly improved across the board, but still says the cheerleaders should be compensated better.

“I definitely [don’t think we have to earn] anything near what the football players are making,” she tells the BBC.

“But I do think that these organisations have enough money.

“We like to say it’s a part-time job with a full time schedule. Apart from just the hours of practising, it’s also two hours beforehand, getting ready, you have to have your hair and make-up done.

“It’s also finding time within the day to work out so that you stay in shape, not only physically but to make sure you can get through the routines.”

She adds: “We would all ultimately do it for free because we love it and it’s our passion, but it is at the end of the day a job and they treat it as a job and so I think we should be rewarded for our work a little better – but it’s getting there.”

The series also touches on the mental health of the dancers.

Four-year veteran Victoria Kalina – who has since left the team – spoke about struggling with depression and eating disorders while she was on the team.

“I applaud Victoria for being so brave to speak about it because it’s a vulnerable thing and it’s hard to speak about that and we all have the same thoughts,” Ariana says.

In order to cope with the pressure of training, Ariana started journalling and seeing a therapist.

But she thinks, in order to help others, sports therapists should be offered to cheerleaders on NFL teams.

“My therapist was great, but she’s not a dancer, or wasn’t an athlete,” she explains. “And so having just some tools offered for the girls to talk to would be really beneficial.”

A DCC spokesperson told the BBC that all chearleaders, like its football players, have access to “immediate, independent and confidential support resources”.

“Also, just like our Cowboys players, they have access to our dedicated team Mental Health and Wellness Consultant on staff, as needed.”

The women featured in the series have won praise from viewers and TV critics for how they face the exacting expectations.

“America’s Sweethearts is a disturbing show on many levels, but the resilience of its women is impressive,” the Guardian said.

Emma Beddington wrote that there is “plenty to horrify” in the series, including the physical toll on the team members’ bodies, the “abysmal pay” and “the objectification”.

Time’s Judy Berman wrote: “At best, they’re athletes working at the apex of their sport; at worst, they’re casualties of a job market, a form of entertainment, and a society in which misogyny is so deeply ingrained, it’s often enforced by the women it oppresses.”

Writing in the New York Times, Jessica Grose said: “If there’s another season of the Netflix show, perhaps a more complete picture of the Cowboys cheerleading experience could force this elite institution to evolve, and it may make more of these talented women reach the conclusion that making the team isn’t worth the cost.”

For Ariana, the experience ended when she was cut from training camp on the last day.

She says she only found out why she was cut from the team while watching the show “at the same time as everyone else”.

In the emotional chat with director Kelli Finglass and choreographer Judy Trammel, Ari was told she was being dropped because there were only 36 spaces, without much further explanation.

But earlier, Jones – the team’s executive vice-president and daughter of owner Jerry – had told Kelli and Judy that Ariana looked like a “little girl” and “left behind” on the team, due to her 5ft 2in (1.57m) height.

“I found out details that I didn’t know,” she tells BBC News.

“And I think it allowed for me to not so much blame myself, not be so hard on myself – knowing it’s the one thing God gave me that I can’t change or fix.”

There are no height restrictions for the team, with guidelines simply saying there are no height or weight requirements, and women are expected to “look well-proportioned in dancewear”.

After watching the show, does Ariana think there should have been a height restriction?

“Had I known even going in the first year that height was a concern, I probably wouldn’t have tried out for Cowboys again,” she says.

“I do think they need to install a height requirement.

“But I also I know that the team changes throughout the years, and the demographic of the team, and they may have more taller rookies, may have shorter rookies.”

DCC were asked by the BBC to comment on the team not having a height restriction.

But Ariana’s hard work hasn’t gone to waste – she is about to start the season as a cheerleader for the Miami Dolphins.

“It’s nice, because the new director of the Dolphins squad was at the Cowboys, and so I knew her in Dallas for a little bit.

“And so a lot of the things I loved about Cowboys in that organisation, she’s taking over to Dolphins – but it is the most mentally positive, happy environment I’ve been in.”

The Prince and Princess of Wales have called the England team “an inspiration to all of us, young and old” in a personal message posted on social media.

In the post, they also shared a picture of their children Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis watching Sunday night’s Euros final defeat to Spain, wearing England shirts bearing their names and ages.

The couple’s full message reads: “England, your teamwork, grit and determination were an inspiration to all of us, young and old. Congratulations to Spain. W & C”

Prince William and his eldest son Prince George watched the game at the Olympiastadion in Berlin on Sunday evening.

The Prince of Wales shook hands with the England team and handed them runners-up medals after the match.

King Charles also sent a message to the England team after the match. In a letter to manager Gareth Southgate, he urged him and the team to “hold your heads high”.

England’s heartbreaking 2-1 defeat left fans devastated, as many had hoped to see the men’s team win a major trophy for the first time in 58 years. But many still had hope for the future.

Matthew Adams, 30, from Bournemouth, said: “The future is so bright with the young players in the squad that have performed so well.

“If that’s the future of England, then it’s a positive future.”

Preethi Rai, 38, from London said Gareth Southgate “deserves some credit” for his work as England manager.

Speaking after the screening at London’s O2 Arena she added: “He’s brought us up to a level where we can compete with an amazing Spain team.”

Southgate and several England players were seen leaving their hotel in Berlin on Monday morning.

In a post on X, formerly Twitter, England captain Harry Kane said he was “heartbroken” over the loss.

“It was a long tough tournament and I’m so proud of the boys and staff for getting to the final,” he said.

Prince William was pictured with Prince George in the stands at the final on Sunday, seated near King Felipe and Princess Leonor of Spain, and Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer.

He also attended earlier games in the tournament, watching England’s quarter final victory over Switzerland, and the group stage match against Denmark.

Downing Street said Gareth Southgate had “provided great leadership and done the country proud”.

Asked if Mr Southgate would be knighted, a spokesman said: “Honours are a matter for the independent committee.”

Earlier on Sunday, Catherine, Princess of Wales, took Princess Charlotte to Wimbledon to watch Carlos Alcaraz beat Novak Djokovic in the men’s singles final.

It was Catherine’s second public appearance following her cancer diagnosis and abdominal surgery earlier this year, and she was met with a standing ovation by spectators.

An Egyptian track cyclist who collided with a rival team-mate will no longer compete in the Paris 2024 Olympics, after the Egyptian Olympic Committee (EOC) ruled that she should be barred over the incident.

The EOC said Shahd Saeed, 19, was not eligible because of the one-year suspension from local competitions that was imposed by the Egyptian Cycling Federation in April.

Many Egyptians had criticised her selection for the Olympics by the federation, whose president had said it was acting “in favour of Egypt”.

In a TV interview following the EOC’s decision, Saeed admitted she was at fault for the crash with Ganna Eliwa but insisted it was “not deliberate”.

“I wish I had represented Egypt in the Olympics and my efforts over three years had paid off,” she told a talk show.

Eliwa, who is also 19, said she was happy that Saeed would be unable to compete.

“It was expected,” she added. “Saeed does not deserve to be at Paris.”

Eliwa was left concussed and with a broken right collarbone and severe cuts and bruises to the right-hand side of her body, according to a medical report, after she was pushed off her bike 300m (980ft) before the finishing line of an event in Suez on 27 April.

In video footage of the incident, Saeed is seen riding behind Eliwa before she swerves, forcing Eliwa into the barrier. The latter underwent an operation to fix her right shoulder, suffered temporary loss of memory and is still unable to resume competitive cycling.

Saeed said several times that it was an accident, but Eliwa said she never apologised for what happened. It was unclear what caused Saeed to swerve into her opponent.

After an investigation into the incident, the Egyptian Cycling Federation suspended Saeed from the sport for one year and fined her the equivalent of $100 (£77) – the maximum penalty.

Despite that, the federation still registered her for the track cycling at the Olympics.

The decision sparked public anger in Egypt. Many social media users urged authorities to reconsider, with some saying the selection violated the values of Olympism – excellence, respect and friendship.

In a statement issued late on Saturday, the EOC noted that the cycling federation had found that Saeed violated “the regulations, customs, values and ethics of sports” during April’s event.

“Shahd Saeed is not eligible to participate in any international competition, including the 2024 Paris Olympic Games, due to her one-year suspension until 26 April 2025,” it said.

The EOC also urged Egyptian media and public to support the remaining members of the national team at the Olympics.

Hungary’s Viktor Orban has no peace plan of his own, but he has spent the past two weeks on a whistle-stop tour of Kyiv, Moscow, Azerbaijan, Beijing, Washington and even Mar-a-Lago, on a one-man mission that has infuriated leaders in the EU and US.

“Peace will not come by itself in the Russia-Ukraine war, someone has to make it,” he proclaims in videos posted daily on his Facebook page.

He has been bitterly attacked by both Brussels and Washington for breaking EU and Nato unity and cosying up to Vladimir Putin and China’s leader Xi Jinping.

Few argue with his central premise, that there can be no peace without peacemakers. But his close economic relationship with Russia’s president leaves him open to the charge of acting as Mr Putin’s puppet.

The right-wing Hungarian PM says a ceasefire tied to a specific deadline would be a start.

“I am not negotiating on behalf of anyone,” he told Hungarian radio during a brief stopover in Budapest between visits to Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv and Mr Putin in Moscow.

For the next six months, Hungary holds the rotating presidency of the European Union.

Mr Orban followed up his first visit to Kyiv since the start of the war with the first trip by an EU leader to Russia since April 2022. That visit to the Kremlin clearly angered his European partners.

Charles Michel, the head of the European Council of 27 EU governments, said the rotating presidency gave no mandate to engage with Russia on the EU’s behalf.

Mr Orban admitted that was the case, but insisted: “I’m clarifying the facts… I’m asking questions.”

In Kyiv he posed “three or four” to President Zelensky “so that we can understand his intentions, and where the red line is, the boundary up to which he can go in the interest of peace”.

He has also been generous in his praise of two other allies, Xi Jinping and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Meeting Mr Erdogan on arrival at the Nato summit in Washington, he spoke of him as “the only man who has overseen an agreement between Russia and Ukraine” so far, referring to a now defunct Black Sea grain agreement.

“China not only loves peace but has also put forward a series of constructive and important initiatives [for resolving the war],” he said of President Xi Jinping, according to Chinese state media.

The final visit on his whirlwind tour was to presidential candidate Donald Trump, another close ally who he strongly backs to win again in November and who he refers to as a man of peace.

In one interview, he declared that during Trump’s four-year term as president “he did not initiate a single war”.

This has been a remarkable trip in the international limelight for the leader of a small East European country with 9.7 million inhabitants. But who is it designed to impress, and could it have any effect?

A key target of his message is the domestic public.

Viktor Orban has had a relatively bad year so far, losing the two most prominent female politicians in his party to a scandal in February, and witnessing the emergence of his first serious challenger for more than a decade – Peter Magyar.

In June, Mr Orban’s Fidesz party won an impressive 45% in European elections, to 30% for Mr Magyar’s three-month-old Tisza party.

But he lost more than 700,000 votes (one in four) compared with the last parliamentary elections in 2022.

For the first time, he does not look invincible.

What better way to show Hungarians that their leader was still strong than to parade across the world stage, in a global tour “to make peace”?

His mission was also targeted at an international public, in the week that his new Patriots for Europe (PfE) group in the European Parliament attracted 84 MEPs from mainly far-right parties in 11 countries.

Patriots for Europe has emerged as the third largest faction in parliament, edging aside the rival Conservatives and Reformist group of Italy’s Giorgia Meloni.

Mr Orban’s visit to Moscow won him effusive praise from the Russians: “We take it very, very positively. We believe it can be very useful,” said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov.

The US was less impressed.

“We would welcome, of course, actual diplomacy with Russia to make it clear to Russia that they need to respect Ukraine’s sovereignty, that they need to respect Ukraine’s territorial integrity,” said US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller. “But that is not at all what this visit appears to have been.”

At the same time, the US did welcome Mr Orban’s first visit to neighbouring Ukraine since the start of the full-scale Russian invasion.

The Hungarian leader has given very little away about the actual content of his talks in Kyiv, Moscow or Beijing.

A leaked version of his letter to Charles Michel, sent from Azerbaijan, offers some clues.

Mr Putin was open to a ceasefire, Mr Orban told the European Council president, provided it did not provide Ukraine with a chance to reorganise its army on the front lines.

Three days earlier in Kyiv, on 2 July, the Ukrainian leader used a similar argument, telling Mr Orban that the Russians would abuse any ceasefire to regroup their invading forces.

Mr Orban was apparently “surprised” that President Zelensky still believed Ukraine could win back its lost territories.

And Vladimir Putin told Mr Orban that “time favours Russian forces”, according to the leaked letter.

Arriving in Washington days later, Mr Orban posted yet another video on Facebook, saying he would argue that Nato “should return to its original spirit: Nato should win peace, not the wars around it”.

Unlike his Nato allies, Viktor Orban views Russia’s two-and-a-half year war in Ukraine as a civil war between two Slav nations, prolonged by US support for one of them.

One thing he probably does agree on is that this autumn the conflict will become only worse.

A Trump presidential victory in November, he believes, would force the Ukrainians and Russians to the negotiating table.

Lavish wedding celebrations for the son of Asia’s richest man resumed on Saturday with a star-studded guestlist including Hollywood celebrities, global business leaders and two former British prime ministers.

Billionaire tycoon Mukesh Ambani’s youngest son Anant and fiancee Radhika Merchant, both 29, are tying the knot this weekend in Mumbai, India, following months of pre-marriage parties.

Saturday will see a blessing ceremony during which the world’s rich and famous will greet and pay their respects to the couple at a 16,000-capacity convention centre owned by the Ambani family’s conglomerate.

This will be followed by a grand party where unconfirmed reports say pop stars Drake, Lana Del Rey and Adele are likely to perform.

It follows a formal ceremony and party on Friday evening which was attended by the likes of socialite Kim Kardashian, actor John Cena and former British leaders Tony Blair and Boris Johnson.

Fifa boss Gianni Infantino, Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan and Samsung chairman Jay Y Lee were also among hundreds of famous figures who made an appearance.

“Great wedding!” China’s ambassador to India Xu Feihong wrote on social media platform X along with footage of the couple from inside the venue.

“Best wishes to the new couple and double happiness!”

This weekend’s celebrations end on Sunday with a reception party.

• In photos: Kim Kardashian, Priyanka Chopra and Tony Blair at grand India wedding
• The marathon Indian wedding turning heads around the world

Wedding events earlier this year included a party at the Ambanis’ ancestral home, where a purpose-built Hindu temple was unveiled alongside private performances by singers Rihanna and Justin Bieber.

Guests included Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and former US president Donald Trump’s daughter Ivanka.

In June, the couple embarked on a four-day Mediterranean cruise with 1,200 guests, while singer Katy Perry performed at a masquerade ball at a French chateau in Cannes.

The Backstreet Boys, US rapper Pitbull and Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli also provided entertainment.

Rajan Mehra, chief executive of air charter company Club One Air, told Reuters that the family had rented three Falcon-2000 jets to ferry wedding guests to this week’s string of events.

“The guests are coming from all over and each aircraft will make multiple trips across the country,” he said.

On Wednesday, the family hosted a bhandara – a community feast for underprivileged people.

Anant’s father Mukesh, 66, is chairman of Reliance Industries, a family-founded conglomerate that has grown into India’s biggest company by market capitalisation.

The patriarch is the world’s 11th richest person with a fortune of more than $123bn, according to Forbes.

The family’s lucrative interests include retail partnerships with Armani and other luxury brands, more than 40% of India’s mobile phone market and an Indian Premier League cricket team.

His 27-floor family home Antilia is one of Mumbai’s most prominent landmarks, reportedly costing more than $1bn to build, with a permanent staff of 600 servants.

Merchant is the daughter of well-known pharmaceutical moguls.

Key roads in Mumbai are being sealed off for several hours a day until the festivities end on Monday, while social media is awash with minute-by-minute updates.

But the extraordinary opulence has also led to a backlash.

People living in the city have complained that road closures have worsened traffic problems caused by monsoon flooding, while others have questioned the ostentatious display of wealth.

The Ambanis have not revealed how much this wedding is costing them, but wedding planners estimate they have already spent anywhere between 11bn and 13bn rupees [$132m-$156m].

It was rumoured Rihanna was paid $7m (£5.5m) for her performance, while the figure suggested for Justin Bieber is $10m.

One unnamed executive at Reliance claimed the event was a “powerful symbol of India’s growing stature on the global stage” in a note shared with reporters.

But opposition politician Thomas Isaac said it was “obscene”.

“Legally it may be their money but such ostentatious expenditure is a sin against mother earth and [the] poor,” he posted on X.

• Meet the tycoons behind the grand Indian wedding

Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame, feared and admired in equal measure, is seeking to extend his 24-year rule in an election analysts say he will win by a landslide.

He has dominated every election since becoming president in 2000, with over 90% of the vote. In 2017 he won with a staggering 99% in an election criticised by human rights groups.

Mr Kagame, 66, is accused of not allowing any real opposition and ruthlessly targeting his critics, even outside the country.

He faces the only two contenders who were authorised to run – other candidates were barred by the state-run electoral commission.

Mr Kagame cast his vote without speaking to reporters.

He has been the real force in Rwanda since his rebel forces took power at the end of the 1994 genocide which killed some 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus.

Since then, he has been praised for overseeing the country’s dramatic economic revival and unifying the country.

“Rwanda was 30 years ago essentially written off – but thanks to some extent to the leadership under Kagame and his ruling party, Rwanda managed to build some stability,” Dr Felix Ndahinda, a scholar on the Great Lakes region, told the BBC.

Mr Kagame has always fiercely defended Rwanda’s record on human rights, saying his country respects political freedoms.

But one analyst told the BBC the election was a mere “formality”.

About nine million people are registered to vote, according to the electoral body, and at least two million are first-time voters.

Counting has already begun at polling stations and provisional results might be announced by Tuesday morning.

Voters are electing the president and 53 members of the lower House of Parliament on Monday, while 27 other MPs will be chosen on Tuesday.

“I am very excited about voting for my first time, I can’t wait,” Sylvia Mutoni told the BBC.

For most young people in Rwanda, Mr Kagame is the only leader they have ever known.

Even while vice-president and defence minister from 1994 to 2000 he was the country’s real leader, and has been president since 2000.

• Rwanda’s 99% man who wants to extend his three decades in power
• Rwanda genocide: My return home after 30 years

The two opposition candidates – Frank Habineza, of the Democratic Green Party and independent Philippe Mpayimana – both ran in the 2017 election, where they took just over 1% of the vote between them.

But they are undeterred.

Mr Habineza cast his vote in the capital, Kigali, on Monday morning and said he hoped his party can get 20 MPs – 10 times the number of seats his party secured in 2017.

Before the election, he told the BBC Focus on Africa podcast: “I believe democracy is a process.

“People still have a fear of expressing their opinions. I’m fighting for freedom of speech, freedom of the media,” he said.

And some Rwandans are listening to him. One voter told the BBC he would not be voting for the incumbent president.

Celestin Mutuyeyezu, 28, used to support Mr Kagame, but this election has been swayed by Mr Habineza.

“He said great things on fighting unemployment, and he’s got me,” he said.

But defeating President Kagame may prove difficult.

Diane Rwigara, an outspoken critic of the president, was barred from running in the election. She was also disqualified in 2017.

“Rwanda is portrayed as a country where the economy has been growing. But on the ground, it’s different. People do lack the basics of life, food, water, shelter,” she told the BBC.

The electoral commission said she had failed to provide correct documentation.

Though the country continues to struggle with high rates of youth unemployment, it is one of the fastest-growing economies in Africa.

Mr Kagame is credited for Rwanda’s remarkable economic transformation and stability over the last three decades.

Rwanda is known globally for its clean capital city and having the world’s highest proportion of female MPs, 61%.

In the book Rwanda, Inc. American authors Patricia Crisafulli and Andrea Redmond describe Mr Kagame more as a company CEO than a political leader because of “his drive for excellence” in every sector in the country.

He is also a shrewd politician.

Despite often criticising the West, he tries to cultivate useful allies – for example by working with the UK on its now-abandoned scheme to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda.

Rwanda has also been flexing its soft power on the international stage, by building its appeal through sports, culture, and entertainment.

The small East African country is home to the African Basketball League, which is a partnership with the NBA. It hosted the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in 2022 and international stars like Kendrick Lamar have played concerts there.

But Mr Kagame’s diplomacy also has a very tough side.

The election comes days after a UN report said there were some 4,000 Rwandan troops in neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo, where they are accused of backing the M23 rebel group.

Rwanda did not deny the allegation and told the BBC the DR Congo government lacked the political will to resolve the crisis in its mineral-rich east, which has witnessed decades of unrest.

On the campaign trail Mr Kagame promised to protect Rwanda from “external aggression” amid tensions with neighbouring DR Congo and Burundi.

• The genocide orphans still searching for their names
• Rwanda genocide: ‘I forgave my husband’s killer – our children married’
• Rwanda’s 100 days of slaughter

We asked our readers to send in their best pictures on the theme of “time”. Here is a selection of the photographs we received from around the world.

The next theme is “in the kitchen” and the deadline for entries is 6 August 2024.

The pictures will be published later that week and you will be able to find them, along with other galleries, on the In Pictures section of the BBC News website.

You can upload your entries directly here or email them to yourpics@bbc.co.uk.

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Further details and themes are at: We set the theme, you take the pictures.

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A small town mayor in the Philippines who has been accused of being a Chinese spy has gone into hiding, officials said.

Police could not carry out a warrant for the arrest of Alice Guo over the weekend as she was not at any of her known addresses.

Scam centres were uncovered in Ms Guo’s town of Bamban in March, concealed in online casinos that cater to mainland Chinese.

Her story has played out like a TV drama, as she had also been questioned on her Chinese parentage and suspicions that she was working as an “asset” or spy for Beijing.

Ms Guo’s case has gripped the nation as Manila and Beijing continue to spar over reefs and outcrops in the South China Sea.

The Senate ordered the arrest of Ms Guo and some members of her family last Friday after she twice snubbed summons to appear in hearings on the scam centres.

“Show yourselves. Hiding will not erase the truth,” Senator Risa Hontiveros, who is leading parliament’s investigation on Ms Guo, said in a statement.

Ms Guo has denied wrongdoing. She claims her Chinese father and Filipina mother raised her on their pig farm.

But Senator Sherwin Gatchalian, who is part of the investigation, claims Ms Guo is a Chinese national whose real name is Guo Hua Ping, based on immigration records.

“She is hiding to evade arrest,” Mr Gatchalian told local radio. “Our tracker teams will continue looking for her.”

On the day the arrest warrant was signed, Ms Guo posted a statement on Facebook, addressing her constituents and alluding to the fact that she would not be around.

“Sorry for not being physically present with each one of you. I miss you all,” she said, adding her absence would be “temporary”.

In the post, she added that she did not regret joining politics, even if it hurt her so much that she “almost lost myself”.

“I am a Filipino with a big heart for Bamban. I love the Philippines very much,” she said.

Ms Guo’s lawyer, Nicole Jamilla, told local television that her client would “definitely” cooperate with official investigations.

Aside from the investigation by the Senate, Ms Guo is the subject of a separate anti-graft probe that has led to her suspension.

The scam centres in Bamban have underscored how online casinos or Pogos (Philippine Online Gaming Operations) have been used as cover for text scams, human trafficking and other criminal activities.

Crime rings hiding beneath Pogos have even gone to the extent of building hospitals that provide cosmetic surgery to fugitives who want new faces.

Pogos flourished during the tenure of Rodrigo Duterte, whose presidency, which ended in 2022, was marked by close ties to China.

But under current president Ferdinand Marcos, Pogos have come under close scrutiny.

If proven that she is a Chinese citizen, Ms Guo would be not be eligible to serve as mayor. Only Filipino citizens are allowed to hold elective office.

But this does not matter to her constituents who benefit from her social outreach programmes, that are widely documented on her social media pages.

Ms Guo “brought change” to Bamban, and its people are thankful, resident Erica Miclat told ANC television.

Several major questions have emerged for the US Secret Service to answer in the aftermath of the shooting of Donald Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania.

The FBI has taken on the role of lead investigator into the incident, during which one person was killed and two others critically injured – while Trump was wounded in the ear.

As the US demands answers, the Secret Service says it is working to discover “what happened, how it happened, and how we can prevent an incident like this from ever taking place again”.

Its chief, Kimberly Cheatle, has been summoned to testify before a committee of the US House of Representatives on 22 July.

Here are some of the questions that experts have started asking.

It remains unclear how suspected gunman Thomas Matthew Crooks got access to the roof of a building near the rally that was little more than 130m (430 ft) from Trump.

The rooftop was a known vulnerability before the event, according to NBC News, which cited two sources familiar with Secret Service operations.

“Someone should have been on the roof or securing the building so no one could get on the roof,” NBC quoted one of the sources as saying.

As well as the access question, it has been suggested that the line of sight from the rooftop to Trump’s podium area should have been blocked off.

Crooks should not have been able to get a direct sight of Trump, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told ABC News on Monday.

Mr Mayorkas said officials would “really study the event independently, and make recommendations to the Secret Service and to me”.

An eyewitness to the shooting told the BBC that he and others had “clearly” spotted Crooks crawling around on the roof with a rifle. They alerted police but the suspect continuing moving around for several minutes before firing shots and then being shot dead himself, the eyewitness said.

FBI special agent Kevin Rojek admitted it had been “surprising” that the attacker had been able to open fire.

The county sheriff has confirmed that Crooks was spotted by a local police officer, who was unable to stop him in time. Something that remains unclear is whether this information reached the agents around Trump.

Crooks was already on officials’ radar, according to a senior law enforcement official. They anonymously told CNN that officers thought he was acting suspiciously near the event magnetometers. This information was allegedly relayed to the Secret Service.

• LIVE: Latest reaction, and lookahead to the Republican convention
• ANALYSIS: Tragedy at rally upends election campaign – for now
• THE SUSPECT: What we know about Thomas Matthew Crooks
• TRUMP INTERVIEW: ‘I was saved by luck or God,’ he says
• BIDEN ADDRESS: President urges America to ‘lower temperature’
• COREY COMPERATORE: What we know about father killed at rally

The gunman fired his shots from what police have described as a “secondary ring”, which was patrolled not by the Secret Service but by local and state officers.

A former Secret Service agent said this sort of arrangement only worked when there was a clear plan on what to do when a danger was spotted.

“When you rely on the local law enforcement partners, you better have carefully planned and told them what you expect them to do about a threat,” Jonathan Wackrow told the Washington Post.

The county sheriff has admitted there had been “a failure” but said there was no single party to blame.

A former chair of the House Oversight Committee has suggested that the Secret Service was “spread too thin”, which compounded the issue that local police would not have been “trained up” to secure an event like Saturday’s rally.

Jason Chaffetz, who has previously reported on Secret Service failures, told the Washington Post there was no bigger “threat profile” than for Trump or President Biden, but that this was not reflected in the security presence in Pennsylvania.

The Secret Service has denied suggestions that a request from the Trump team to beef up the staffing had been rebuffed in advance of the rally.

But the Post reported that it had seen an exchange of messages in which a former Secret Service officer asked colleagues how the suspect had got a gun so close to Trump. He was reported to have received the reply: “Resources.”

In a statement on Monday, Ms Cheatle said changes had been made to Trump’s Secret Service detail ahead of the start of the Republican National Convention, which kicks off in Milwaukee on Monday. She said she was “confident” in the overall plan.

The agents who shielded Trump have received praise, including from former agent Robert McDonald, who said they did a “fairly good job” despite there being no exact “playbook” on what to do in such a situation.

But the question has also been asked whether they were fast enough to whisk the former president away into a vehicle.

Footage of the incident shows them rapidly forming a shield around him in the immediate wake of the gunshots, but then appearing to pause as Trump asks to gather his shoes. The former president goes on to pump his fist for supporters.

A Secret Service veteran told the New York Times he would not have waited. “If that’s me there, no. We are going, and we are going now,” said Jeffrey James.

“If it’s me, I’m buying him a new pair of shoes.”

North America correspondent Anthony Zurcher makes sense of the race for the White House in his weekly US Election Unspun newsletter. Readers in the UK can sign up here. Those outside the UK can sign up here.

Former US President Donald Trump has said he is “supposed to be dead” after Saturday night’s assassination attempt at a rally in Pennsylvania.

In one of his first interviews since the incident, Mr Trump told conservative US media he felt that he had been saved “by luck or by God”.

“The most incredible thing was that I happened to not only turn [my head] but to turn at the exact right time and in just the right amount,” he said, adding that the bullet that grazed his ear could have easily killed him.

“I’m supposed to be dead, I’m not supposed to be here,” he said.

A spectator was killed in the attack, while two other people were seriously injured. The gunman, who also died, has been named as Thomas Matthew Crooks.

Mr Trump described the moment he looked up at the crowd after realising he had been shot.

“The energy coming from the people there in that moment, they just stood there. It’s hard to describe what that felt like, but I knew the world was looking.

“I knew that history would judge this, and I knew I had to let them know we are OK,” he told the Washington Examiner.

Speaking as he prepared to board a flight to the upcoming Republican National Convention (RNC) in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where he is expected to be confirmed as the party’s candidate for president, Mr Trump said he now had a “chance to bring the country together”.

He said his speech would now be completely different instead of the “humdinger” aimed mostly at current President Joe Biden’s policies he had previously planned.

“Had [Saturday’s attack] not happened, this would’ve been one of the most incredible speeches.

“Honestly, it’s going to be a whole different speech now. It is a chance to bring the country together.”

Earlier, Mr Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth Social that he had intended to delay his trip to Wisconsin by two days.

But he added that he was sticking to his original schedule as: “I cannot allow a ‘shooter,’ or potential assassin, to force change to scheduling”.

Mr Trump said that the assassination attempt “has had an impact” on him.

Little is known about the motivation of Crooks, the 20-year-old would-be assassin who was shot dead by the Secret Service at the scene.

The FBI has said that while its investigation suggests Crooks acted alone, it would continue to look into whether the kitchen worker had received help.

The spectator who was killed in Saturday’s attack has been named as Corey Comperatore, a 50-year-old volunteer fire chief who died trying to protect his family.

In a televised address following the attack, President Biden called for the “temperature of politics” to be lowered.

“We cannot, must not, go down this road again. We’ve travelled it before in our history,” said Mr Biden, listing off a growing number of violent political acts that had taken place in the US in recent years.

“In America we resolve our differences at the ballot box,” he added. “At the ballot box. Not with bullets.”

When two young Brazilian women were reported missing in September 2022, their families and the FBI launched a desperate search across the US to find them. All they knew was that they were living with wellness influencer Kat Torres.

Torres has now been sentenced to eight years in prison for the human trafficking and slavery of one of those women. The BBC World Service has also been told that charges have been filed against her in relation to a second woman.

How did the former model who partied with Leonardo DiCaprio and graced the cover of international magazines come to groom her followers and lure them into sexual exploitation?

“She kind of resembled hope for me,” says Ana, describing her reaction on stumbling across Torres’ Instagram page in 2017.

Ana was not one of the missing women targeted in the FBI search – but she too was a victim of Torres’ coercion and would be key to their rescue.

She says she was attracted to Torres’ trajectory from impoverished Brazilian favela to international catwalks, partying with Hollywood A-listers along the way.

“She seemed like she had overcome violence in her childhood, abuse, all these traumatic experiences,” Ana told BBC Eye Investigations and BBC News Brasil.

Ana was in a vulnerable situation herself. She says she had suffered a violent childhood, moved alone to the US from southern Brazil, and was previously in an abusive relationship.

Torres had recently published her autobiography called A Voz [The Voice], in which she claimed she could make predictions as a result of her spiritual powers, and had been interviewed on reputable Brazilian media shows.

“She was on the cover of magazines. She was seen with famous people such as Leonardo DiCaprio. Everything I saw seemed credible,” she says.

Ana says she was particularly taken with Torres’ approach to spirituality.

What Ana didn’t know was that the inspirational story Torres told was based on half-truths and lies.

Torres’ ex-flatmate in New York, Luzer Twersky, told us that her Hollywood friends had introduced her to the hallucinogenic drug ayahuasca, and she was never the same again.

”That’s when she kind of… started going off the deep end,” he says.

He said he also believed that she was working as a sugar baby – paid for romantic involvement with wealthy and powerful men who were also paying for the flat they shared together.

Torres’ wellness website and subscription service promised customers: “Love, money and self-esteem that you always dreamed of.” Self-help videos offered advice on relationships, wellness, business success and spirituality – including hypnosis, meditation and exercise programmes.

For an extra $150 (£120) clients could unlock exclusive one-to-one video consultations with Torres during which she would claim to solve any of their problems.

Amanda, another former client who lives in the Brazilian capital, says Kat made her feel special.

“All my doubts, my questions, my decisions: I always took them to her first, so that we could make decisions together,” she says.

But it appears that advice had a dark side. Ana, Amanda, and other former followers say they found themselves becoming increasingly psychologically isolated from friends and family and willing to do anything Torres suggested.

When Torres asked Ana in 2019 to move to New York to work as her live-in assistant, she agreed. She had been studying nutrition at university in Boston, but arranged to study online instead, and says she accepted the offer to look after Torres’ animals – and do her cooking, laundry and cleaning – for about $2000 (£1,564) a month.

Like, Follow, Trafficked: Insta’s Fake Guru

BBC Eye Investigations and BBC News Brasil uncover the truth behind the rise of wellness influencer and spiritual life coach, Kat Torres, and the international search for her trafficked followers

Watch now on BBC iPlayer (UK Only) or on the BBC World Service YouTube channel (outside UK)

When she arrived at Torres’ apartment, though, she quickly realised it did not match the curated perfection projected on the influencer’s Instagram.

“It was shocking because the house was really messy, really dirty, didn’t smell good,” she says.

Ana says Torres seemed unable to do even basic things without her, like taking a shower, because she couldn’t bear to be alone. She describes having to constantly be available for Torres, only being allowed to sleep for a few hours at a time, on a sofa covered in cat urine.

She says some days she would hide in the apartment building’s gym, grabbing a few hours’ sleep rather than working out.

“Now, I see that she was using me as a slave… she had satisfaction in it,” Ana says.

Ana says she was never paid.

“I felt like, ‘I’m stuck here, I don’t have a way out,’” she says. “I was probably one of her first victims of human trafficking.”

She had given up her university accommodation back in Boston, so she had nowhere to return to, and no income to pay for alternative housing.

Ana says when she tried to confront Torres, she became aggressive, triggering Ana’s painful history with domestic violence.

Eventually, after three months, Ana found a way to escape by moving in with a new boyfriend.

But that wasn’t the end of Ana’s role in Torres’ life. When the families of two other young Brazilian women reported them missing in September 2022, Ana knew she had to act.

By this point, Torres’ life had grown in scale. She was now married to a man called Zach, a 21-year-old she had met in California, and they were renting a five-bedroom house in the suburbs of Austin, Texas.

Repeating the pattern she had begun with Ana, Torres had targeted her most dedicated followers, trying to recruit them to come and work for her. In return, she had promised to help them achieve their dreams, capitalising on the intimate personal details they had shared with her during life-coaching sessions.

Desirrê Freitas, a Brazilian woman living in Germany, and Brazilian Letícia Maia – the two women whose disappearance would go on to spark the FBI-led search – moved to live with Torres. Another Brazilian woman, who we are calling Sol, was also recruited.

Posting on her social media channels, Torres introduced her “witch clan” to her followers.

The BBC has discovered at least four more women were almost persuaded to join Torres in the house but had pulled out.

Some of the women were too scared to appear in the BBC’s film – afraid of receiving online abuse and still traumatised by their experiences – but we have been able to verify their accounts using court documents, text messages, bank statements, and Desirrê’s memoir about her experiences – @Searching Desirrê, published by DISRUPTalks.

Desirrê says that in her case, Torres had bought her a plane ticket from Germany, having told her she was suicidal and needed Desirrê’s support.

Torres is also accused of persuading Letícia, who was 14 when she started life-coaching sessions with her, to move to the US for an au pair programme and then drop out to live and work with her.

As for Sol, she says she agreed to move in with Torres after becoming homeless and was hired to carry out tarot readings and yoga classes.

But it was not long before the women discovered their reality was very different to the fairytale they had been promised.

Within weeks, Desirrê says Torres pressured her into working at a local strip club, saying if she did not comply Desirrê would have to repay all the money she had spent on her: flights, accommodation, furniture for her room, and even the “witchcraft” Torres had performed. Desirrê says not only she did not have this money, she also believed at the time in the spiritual powers Torres claimed to have, so when Torres threatened to curse her for not following orders she was terrified.

Reluctantly, Desirrê agreed to work as a stripper.

A manager from the strip club, James, told the BBC she would work extremely long hours, seven days a week.

Desirrê and Sol say the women in the Austin mansion were subjected to strict house rules. They describe being forbidden from speaking to each other, needing Torres’ permission to leave their rooms – even to use the bathroom – and being required to immediately hand over all earnings.

“It was very difficult to, you know, get out of the situation because she holds your money,” Sol told the BBC.

“It was terrifying. I thought something could happen to me because she had all my information, my passport, my driving licence.”

But Sol says she realised she needed to somehow escape after overhearing a phone call in which Torres was telling another client she must work as a prostitute in Brazil as a “punishment”.

Sol was able to leave with the help of an ex-boyfriend.

Meanwhile, the guns Torres’ husband kept began to regularly feature on her Instagram stories, and became a source of fear for the remaining women.

Around this time, Desirrê says Torres tried to persuade her to swap the strip club for work as a prostitute. She says she refused and the following day Torres took her on a surprise day out to a gun range.

Scared, Desirrê says she eventually gave in to Torres’ demand.

“Many questions haunted me: ‘Could I stop whenever I wanted?’” Desirrê writes in her book.

“And if the condom broke, would I get a disease? Could [the client] be an undercover cop and arrest me? What if he killed me?”

If the women didn’t meet the earning quotas that Torres set, which had risen from $1,000 (£782) to $3,000 (£2,345) a day, they were not allowed to return to the house that night, they say.

“I ended up sleeping on the street several times because I couldn’t reach that,” Desirrê adds.

Bank statements, seen by the BBC, show Desirrê transferring more than $21,000 (£16,417) into Torres’ account in June and July 2022 alone. She says that she was forced to hand over a substantially higher figure in cash.

Prostitution is illegal in Texas and Desirrê says Torres would threaten to report her to the police if she ever talked about wanting to stop.

In September, friends and family of Desirrê and Letícia back in Brazil launched social media campaigns to find them, having become increasingly concerned following months without contact.

By this time, they were barely recognisable. Their brunette hair had been dyed platinum blonde to eerily match Torres’. Desirrê says by this point all her phone contacts had been blocked and she obeyed the influencer’s orders without question.

As the Instagram page @searchingDesirrê gained momentum, the story dominated news outlets in Brazil. Desirrê’s friends even worried she might have been murdered, and Letícia’s family put out desperate pleas for their safe return home.

Ana, having lived with Torres in 2019, said alarm bells rang as soon as she saw the news stories. She says she immediately guessed that “[Torres] was keeping other girls”.

• More information and support about human trafficking and modern slavery is available via BBC Action Line.

Along with other former clients, Ana began to contact as many law enforcement agencies as possible, including the FBI, in an attempt to get the influencer arrested. Five months earlier, both she and Sol had reported Torres to the US police – but say they weren’t taken seriously.

In a video she recorded at the time for evidence, since shared with the BBC, a distressed Ana can be heard saying, “this person is very dangerous and she has already threatened to kill me”.

Then the missing women’s profiles on escort and prostitution websites were discovered. Suspicions of sexual exploitation, shared on social media, appeared to be confirmed.

Panicked by the media attention, Torres and the women travelled more than 2,000 miles (3,219 km) from Texas to Maine. In chilling Instagram videos, Desirrê and Letícia denied being held captive and demanded people stop searching for them.

But a recording, obtained by BBC News, gives an insight into what was really happening at this time. By now the US authorities were aware of the concerns about the women’s safety. Homeland security had tipped off a police officer who managed to FaceTime Torres to check on the women. But just before this starts, Torres can be heard saying on the video:

“He will start asking questions. Guys, they are full of tricks. He’s a detective, be very careful. For God’s sake, I’ll kick you out if you say anything. I’ll scream.”

In November 2022, the police finally convinced Torres and the two other women to attend a welfare check in person at Franklin County Sheriff’s Office in Maine.

The detective who questioned Torres, Desirrê and Letícia – Detective David Davol – told the BBC he and his colleagues had been immediately concerned, noticing a number of red flags, including a distrust of law enforcement, isolation and their reluctance to speak without Torres’ permission.

“Human traffickers aren’t always like in the movies, where you have… a gang that kidnapped people. It’s far more common that it’s someone you trust.”

By December 2022, the two women had been safely returned to Brazil.

Det Davol says, in his experience, human trafficking is on the rise. His observation is backed up by the UN, which says it is one of the fastest growing crimes, generating an estimated $150bn (£117bn) in profits a year worldwide.

He believes social media gives it a platform on which to thrive, making it much easier for traffickers to find and groom victims.

In April this year, our team was granted a rare court order to interview Torres in a Brazilian prison – the first media interview with her since her arrest. At that point, she was still waiting for the verdict of a trial against her relating to her treatment of Desirrê.

Smiling, Torres approached us with a calm and collected demeanour.

She was adamant that she was completely innocent, denying that any women had ever lived with her or that she had ever coerced anyone to take part in sex work.

“When I was seeing the people testifying, they were saying so many lies. So many lies that at one point, I couldn’t stop laughing,” she told us.

“People are saying I am a fake guru, but at the same time, they are also saying that… ‘She is a danger to society because she can change people’s mind with her words.’”

When we confronted her with the evidence that we ourselves had seen, she became more hostile, accusing us of lying too.

“You choose to believe whatever you choose to believe. I can tell you I’m Jesus. And you can see Jesus, or you can see the devil, that’s it. It’s your choice. It’s your mind.”

As she got up to return to her cell, she issued a parting threat, claiming we would soon find out if she had powers or not. She pointed at me, and said: “I didn’t like her.”

The BBC can reveal that earlier this month Torres was sentenced by a Brazilian judge to eight years in prison for subjecting Desirrê to human trafficking and slavery. He concluded that she had lured the young woman to the US for the purpose of sexual exploitation.

More than 20 women have reported being scammed or exploited by Torres – many of whom the BBC has spoken to and are still undergoing psychiatric therapy to recover from what they say they experienced as a result of her treatment of them.

Torres’ lawyer told the BBC she has appealed her conviction and maintains her innocence.

An investigation into the allegations from other women is ongoing in Brazil.

Ana believes yet further victims may come forward, once they read about Torres’ crimes. This is the first time Ana has spoken publicly.

She says she wants people to recognise that Torres’ actions amount to a serious crime and not some “Instagram drama”.

In the closing pages of her book Desirrê also reflects on her experiences.

“I’m not fully recovered yet, I’ve had a challenging year. I was sexually exploited, enslaved and imprisoned.

“I hope my story serves as a warning.”

You can get in touch by following this link

A Florida judge has dismissed the US justice department’s classified documents case against Donald Trump in a huge victory for the former president just days after a gunman attempted to assassinate him.

Judge Aileen Cannon granted Trump’s motion to dismiss the federal case on the basis that the justice department’s appointment of special prosecutor Jack Smith violates the Appointments Clause of the US Constitution.

Trump pleaded not guilty to several charges in the case over his handling of classified documents, including willful retention of national defence information.

Dozens of classified files were found in Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, including in a shower and storage room, after Trump left the White House in 2021.

“The Court is convinced that Special Counsel’s Smith’s prosecution of this action breaches two structural cornerstones of our constitutional scheme—the role of Congress in the appointment of constitutional officers, and the role of Congress in authorizing expenditures by law,” Judge Cannon concluded in her 93-page order.

The former president faced 40 felony counts over his alleged mishandling of classified documents.

He was charged alongside aide Walt Nauta and former employee Carlos de Oliveira, who had also pleaded not guilty.

Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Mr Smith in 2022 to oversee two federal investigations into the former president.

Judge Cannon said in her ruling that this decision applies to this case and not a second one overseen by Mr Smith over alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

The former president’s lawyers did not make a similar request to dismiss that case.

The Trump-appointed Florida judge had recently indefinitely postponed the federal classified documents trial, saying there were significant questions over trial evidence.

Legal experts have debated the strengths and weakness of the two federal criminal cases brought by Mr Smith.

On Monday, Judge Cannon stepped in and said those details did not matter.

She held that the mere existence of special counsels – how they are appointed and how they are funded – violates the US Constitution.

Judge Cannon’s ruling cuts against the ruling of judges in other US courts that have dealt with these specially appointed prosecutors.

It draws from theories advanced by some conservative legal scholars and, most notably, by Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas in the top court’s recently decided presidential immunity case.

Former federal prosecutor Neama Rahmani told the BBC on Monday that Judge Cannon’s ruling was “stunning, to say the least”.

“Even though she says it’s limited to this case, her ruling casts doubt upon the appointment of special counsels in other cases, most notably Hunter Biden,” he said.

President Joe Biden’s son was investigated by a special counsel and convicted on gun charges last month.

Mr Rahmani said he would not be surprised if Judge Cannon’s order was overturned by the Eleventh Circuit or the US Supreme Court.

Mr Smith is able to appeal Monday’s ruling and ask for a new judge to be assigned to the case. The case could end up before the Supreme Court.

The special counsel has yet to publicly comment on Judge Cannon’s ruling.

Judge Cannon’s decision also comes as Republicans gather in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, for the Republican National Convention, where Trump will accept the party’s nomination for president.

On Monday, Trump said on his social media site that the dismissal of the case “should be just the first step, followed quickly by the dismissal of ALL the Witch Hunts”.

“Let us come together to END all Weaponization of our Justice System, and Make America Great Again!”

While many Republican lawmakers cheered the decision, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat, described the dismissal as a “breathtakingly misguided ruling” that must be appealed immediately.

In May, Trump was found guilty of falsifying business records in a New York hush-money case. He is due to be sentenced in September.

He has also been charged with four criminal counts, including conspiracy to defraud the US and conspiracy against the rights of citizens, in the 2020 election case.

Trump and some 18 other defendants are also accused of criminally conspiring to overturn his very narrow defeat in the state of Georgia in the 2020 election in a separate case.

He has denied any wrongdoing.

China’s economy stumbled in the second quarter, official data shows, just as the country’s top leaders gathered for a key meeting to address its sluggish growth.

It grew 4.7% in the three months to June, falling short of expectations after a stronger start in the first three months of 2024. The government’s annual growth target is around 5%.

“China’s economy hit the brakes in the June quarter,” said Heron Lim at Moody’s Analytics, adding that analysts are hoping for solutions from the meeting under way in Beijing, also called the Third Plenum.

The world’s second-largest economy is facing a prolonged property crisis, steep local government debt, weak consumption and high unemployment.

Past outcomes of the Plenum have changed the course of history in China – in 1978, then leader Deng Xiaoping began opening China’s markets to the world, and in 2013 President Xi Jinping hinted at loosening the controversial one-child policy.

And so there are expectations of this year’s Plenum, where Mr Xi is presiding over a closed-door gathering of 370-plus high-ranking Chinese Communist Party members.

The rhetoric on state-controlled media has certainly been encouraging.

An editorial in The Global Times said a “wide range of reform-focused polices” are “high on the agenda” and would usher in a “new chapter”. Xinhua referred to “comprehensive” and “unprecedented” reforms. The editorial in the People’s Daily was headlined on a “new era of reform and opening up”, invoking the very phrase Deng coined in 1978.

Observers, however, are unsure of how much room there is for bold ideas or debate in the Party under Mr Xi’s heavily-centralised leadership. Some see the meeting as a mere rubber-stamping exercise for decisions that have already been made.

Economists are also sceptical the meeting will deliver a quick fix.

It has “little impact on near-term growth,” says Qian Wang, Asia Pacific chief economist at Vanguard, because its focus will be on longer-term and more significant reforms to “unleash the long-term growth potential”.

Still, analysts will be watching for announcements that signal the Party’s economic priorities.

Separate data on Monday showed that prices for new homes in June fell at the fastest pace in nine years.

This is more evidence of the crisis that has engulfed China’s property sector and led to the demise of giants such as Evergrande. The fear is that it could spread to other parts of the economy.

“There are more than 4,000 banks in China and over 90% are smaller, regional banks which are highly exposed to the housing market and local government debt,” says Shanghai-based economist Dan Wang.

She believes Party leaders will “push for consolidation of small banks”.

Another issue is falling prices – a symptom of weak demand.

Producer prices continued to drop in the last month, while consumer prices rose by a mere 0.2%, the slowest pace in three months.

Meanwhile, retail sales in June grew by just 2%, which is below expectations and a sign that consumers are still cautious about spending and uncertain of the future.

“A major concern is the loss of household, business, and investor confidence in the government’s ability to navigate the perilous economic environment,” said Eswar Prasad, former head of the International Monetary Fund’s China division.

Still, questions remain about Beijing’s willingness to deliver the sort of solution that would satisfy observers and the markets.

“The government is reluctant to turn to short-term stimulus plans such as cash transfer to families,” Dan Wang said. “Instead, we expect them to stress once again on bolstering supply chains and high tech.”

That is in line with Beijing’s bets on high-tech industries such as renewable energy, artificial intelligence and chip-making, and exports to revive the economy. Last month, China reported a record trade surplus – $99bn (£76.4bn) – as exports soared and imports struggled.

But even that bet faces challenging odds. Major trading partners such as the European Union and the United States have imposed tariffs and other barriers on goods made in China, from electric vehicles to advanced chips.

The 2024 election campaign has a new iconic image: Donald Trump, moments after narrowly avoiding serious injury or death from an assassin’s bullets, standing with his fist raised, lines of blood streaked across his face, an American flag billowing in the breeze behind him.

“Fight! Fight! Fight!” the former president said, as some of the supporters, who moments before had feared for their lives, began cheering.

The bloodshed in Pennsylvania will leave a lasting mark on the American psyche, puncturing the veneer of security around the highest levels of presidential politics – of magnetic screening, bulletproof limousines and heavily armed Secret Service agents. Even former presidents are not insulated from the violence that can erupt in everyday American life.

It was also a dramatic moment in American political history; one that is sure to be replayed in video clips, still photographs and testimonial accounts throughout the course of this presidential campaign and in campaigns to come.

In a rare address from the Oval Office Sunday evening, President Joe Biden called on Americans to cool the temperature around political debate.

“[It] must never be a battlefield and, God forbid, a killing field,” he warned. “No matter how strong our convictions, we must never descend into violence.”

The attack has already begun coursing through America’s partisan dialogue, as numerous Republicans have spoken out to condemn President Biden and the Democrats for creating a rhetorical environment conducive to the violence.

They point to dire warnings about the former president becoming a dictator and threatening democracy as examples of the overheated language that could inspire an assassin.

In particular, they highlight leaked comments the president made in private to donors just last week about increasing the attacks on the former president’s record and putting a “bull’s-eye” on him.

“They’ve tried to take him out in so many other ways, financially, they’ve tried to throw him in jail,” Donald Trump Jr said in a television interview on Sunday. “It’s almost as if they would love for this to happen.”

• LIVE: All the latest developments after assassination attempt on Trump
• WATCH: Videos show how gunman shot at Trump despite public alerting police
• FIRST PERSON: First panic, then fury – what I witnessed at Trump rally
• SHOOTING SUSPECT: What we know so far about Thomas Matthew Crooks
• VICTIMS: Man killed during Trump shooting dived on family to protect them

At least so far, however, the motives and political affiliations of the alleged assassin, 20-year-old Pennsylvania resident Thomas Matthew Crooks, are in doubt. They may ultimately defy an easy partisan narrative.

The former president’s oldest son went on to add that, after the assassination attempt, those on the left can no longer accuse the former president of culpability for the 6 January attack on the US Capitol.

That violent episode took place hours after the then-president had held a rally just a few dozen blocks away, challenging the 2020 election results. His actions on that day led to his impeachment by the House of Representatives and, more than a year later, indictment by a special counsel appointed by the US attorney general.

If the Pennsylvania shooting defuses this line of criticism by Democrats, it’s just one way in which it will have fundamentally reshaped this presidential campaign. Others may become clear over the course of the Republican National Convention, which starts on Monday in Milwaukee.

The failed attack on the former president plays into several themes the Trump campaign was already planning for the quadrennial gathering, which culminates with Trump taking the stage to accept his party’s nomination on Thursday night.

The first is that it could provide a boost to the politics of grievance and persecution that have been a central focus of his rally speeches and social media posts.

“They’re not really after me; they’re after you,” is a common Trump refrain, on t-shirts, billboards and car stickers. “I’m just in the way.”

That message will land with new force after the former president and his crowd of supporters were sprayed with bullets. Trump’s legions of fans – many of whose support borders on near-messianic hero-worship – will have all the more reason to identify with a man who almost lost his life while standing before them.

The former president’s brush with death, and subsequent acts of bloody defiance, will also fit with the contrast Trump campaign officials have said they are trying to draw at this week’s convention – one where their candidate, and party, embody rugged masculinity and strength, while their opponents are feeble.

President Biden’s age and capabilities have dogged his campaign for months – and prompted a Democratic crisis of confidence in his re-election effort after a stunningly poor performance at the presidential debate just over two weeks ago.

Saturday night’s attack, and Trump’s response to it, will allow Republicans to put that contrast in stark relief in the days ahead.

Democrats have spent the past two weeks in anguished soul-searching over their president’s political future. Now, they have a new set of concerns.

In a way, the assassination attempt may end up providing a political lifeline to Mr Biden, given that the focus has dramatically shifted away from his age-related struggles and internal attempts to oust him. But the president’s re-election strategy – which hinges on painting Trump as a danger to the nation if he again becomes president – could be seriously hampered if the American public is hostile to new, pointed criticisms of the man.

The Biden campaign has already pulled all negative advertising directed at the former president, lest it be viewed as inappropriate given the national mood. The president also rescheduled a trip to Texas planned for Monday.

It is only a pause, however, and Democrats will need to go back on the offensive if they hope to erase the narrow lead the former president holds.

That lead – small and not insurmountable, but still significant – has held stable for months, even as national politics have been buffeted by a seemingly endless stream of unprecedented news stories.

The former president’s trial and conviction, a series of landmark Supreme Court decisions, Mr Biden’s debate flop – none of these has seemed to move the American political needle in what has been, and appears destined to remain, a sharply divided nation.

While there has been considerable talk about how this presidential campaign has been upended by the assassination attempt, there is no guarantee that the race will not return to its near-dead-heat equilibrium point in the three months before election day.

Only now the Democrats have less time, less of a money advantage and less political oxygen to shift the electoral dynamics in their favour.

What Saturday night’s tragedy demonstrated most clearly, however, is that expectations and political narratives can shift in seconds.

Shannen Doherty has been remembered as a “beloved” actress with “heart, courage and kindness”, following her death from cancer at the age of 53.

Doherty was known for roles in 1990s teen drama Beverly Hills, 90210 and supernatural series Charmed.

Jason Priestley, who played her twin brother on 90210, wrote on Instagram he was “shocked and saddened” by the news.

“She was a force of nature and I will miss her,” he said. “Sending love and light to her family in this dark time.”

Jennie Garth, who played Kelly, the sometime love rival of Doherty’s character Brenda, said she was “still processing my tremendous grief over the loss of my long-time friend Shannen, the woman I have often described as one of the strongest people I have ever known”.

“We were so often pitted against each other – but none of that reflected the truth of our real relationship, which was one built on mutual respect and admiration,” Garth wrote.

“She was courageous, passionate, determined and very loving and generous. I will miss her and will always honour her deeply in my heart and in my memories. My heart breaks for her family and [her dog] Bowie and all the people who loved her.”

Buffy the Vampire Slayer star Sarah Michelle Gellar, a good friend, posted: “How do you possibly find the right words to sum up 30 years of friendship?

“I keep reminding myself it only hurts this much because, there was so much love. Thank you, for all your kind words and support.”

Recalling Doherty’s love of pets, Gellar asked well-wishers to donate to an animal charity in her memory. “I know that would make our girl happy.”

Doherty’s death comes five years after that of her fellow Beverly Hills, 90210 star, Luke Perry.

Gabrielle Carteris, who played Andrea in the hit series, paid tribute to Doherty, writing: “So young – so sad. May you RIP Shannon. I know Luke is there with open arms to love you.”

Tori Spelling, who played Donna, posted a photo of herself and Doherty, alongside a string of broken-heart emojis and the message: “I don’t have outwards words yet… but we knew and that’s what matters.”

Another Beverly Hills 90210 co-star, Brian Austin Green, addressed his tribute to “Shan, my sister”.

“You loved me through everything. You were a big part of my understanding of love,” he wrote.

“I’ll miss you more than I know how to process right now. Thank you for the gift of you.”

Carol Potter, who played Brenda’s mother, Cindy, wrote Doherty had “gone too soon”.

“Throughout, she stayed true to herself and gave us an example of courage and perseverance in facing her own death,” Potter said. “May she rest in peace.”

On Charmed, Doherty played one of three sisters who were witches.

Rose McGowan, who replaced Doherty in the show, as half-sister Paige, wrote she “had the heart of a lion”.

“My head bows to this warrior on her journey home,” McGowan wrote. “Her intense will to live places in her in the hall of legends. Forever our sister.”

Alyssa Milano, who played sister Phoebe, acknowledged the pair’s “complicated relationship”, with reports they had fallen out on set, leading to Doherty’s departure.

“But at its core was someone I deeply respected and was in awe of,” Milano added in a statement.

“She was a talented actress, beloved by many, and the world is less without her. My condolences to all who loved her.”

Another Charmed co-star, Brian Krause, wrote: “You showed me what strength is. You taught me to be fearless and live with purpose, to know your value and stick to your determination. Forever loved. Truly heartbroken.”

Others paying tribute included actress Olivia Munn, herself diagnosed with breast cancer earlier this year, who was “absolutely heartbroken”.

“We bonded through a shared battle and a desire to help other women,” she wrote. “Looking back on the last text she sent me, just a couple months ago, she asked how I was doing and if she could do anything for me.

“True to form, Shannen was offering her support even though she was in the final stage of fighting this horrific disease.”

Doherty had faced the disease with “such dignity, strength and grace”, Munn added.

Actress Kate Beckinsale said on Instagram: “Love you. Fly high lovely kind sweetheart woman. This hits hard. Your heart, courage and kindness will be so missed.”

And Oscar winner Viola Davis wrote: “Your bravery and ability to share your cancer journey left something ‘in’ people. Rest well. God bless your loved ones.”

Kenyan police have arrested a man who they have described as a “serial killer” suspected to have been behind the gruesome murder of nine women whose mutilated bodies were found in a disused quarry used as a rubbish dump.

Police say Jomaisi Khalisia, 33, confessed to having killed 42 women since 2022, including his own wife.

The suspect was arrested at a bar early on Monday morning as he was watching the Euro final.

There has been shock and outrage in Kenya since the first of the dismembered bodies were found on Friday at the Mukuru quarry in the capital, Nairobi.

“[He] confessed to have lured, killed and disposed of 42 female bodies at the dumping site, all murdered between 2022 and as recent as Thursday,” said Mohamed Amin, head of the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI).

He said that after his arrest, the suspect led police officers to his house, about 100m (yards) from the crime scene.

The police displayed to the media some of the items said to have been recovered from the suspect’s house, including 10 phones, a laptop, identity cards and personal female clothing.

They also found a machete they “believed was being used to dismember the victims”, and nine sacks like the ones used to dispose of the bodies.

Since Friday, police have cordoned off the dumpsite where the bodies were found in various stages of decomposition.

The victims were aged between 18 and 30 and were all killed in the same way, according to the police.

Police said they were still interrogating the suspect to establish the motive for the killings and he would be arraigned in court on Tuesday.

They said his arrest followed a “forensic analysis” of a mobile phone that belonged to one of the victims, Josephine Mulongo Owino, “where some mobile money transactions were conducted on the very day [she] went missing”.

Post-mortem examinations on the bodies were being conducted, the police said.

They have asked families “who believe that their beloved ones may have fallen prey to these macabre murders” to report to the police.

“It is crystallising that we are dealing with a serial killer, a psychopathic serial killer who has no respect for human life, who has no respect and dignity,” Mr Amin said.

A second person with a phone belonging to one of the victims has also been arrested and would be treated either as an accomplice or suspect, he said.

Kenya’s police watchdog earlier said it was investigating whether there was any police involvement in the crimes as the dumpsite is close to a police station.

The officers working there have been transferred, to ensure “fair and unbiased investigations” into the “heinous” deaths, the acting police chief, Douglas Kanja said earlier.

The Independent Police Oversight Authority said “widespread allegations of police involvement in unlawful arrests [and] abductions” meant it was undertaking a preliminary investigation to establish whether there was any police connection.

Human rights groups have accused the police of shooting dozens of people who were demonstrating against planned tax rises earlier this month, some of them fatally.

On Friday, Kenya’s police chief Japhet Koome resigned, a day after President William Ruto fired his entire cabinet in the wake of the deadly protests.

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