Donald Trump, wearing a bandage partially covering his right ear, appeared in public for the first time since surviving an assassination attempt over the weekend.

Trump made a dramatic entrance to loud cheers on Monday during the first night of the Republican national convention in Milwaukee, emerging on the floor of the convention hall at about 9pm CT to cheers of “USA!” and “fight!” Lee Greenwood played “Proud to be an American” as Trump entered the convention hall.

Trump worked his way across the convention floor before making his way to a box, where he joined several notable Republicans, including Tucker Carlson, congressman Byron Donalds, and JD Vance, whom he named his running mate earlier in the day.

“He has proven to be one tough SOB,” Sean O’Brien, the president of the Teamsters union said to thunderous applause after Trump appeared.

His appearance came after a slew of speakers including Marjorie Taylor Greene, the far right congresswoman from Georgia, called Trump a “founding father” of the “America First movement.”

The speakers hailed Trump’s survival as a godly act. They also offered dueling visions of America: a country in decline under Joe Biden, beset by soaring grocery and housing prices while politicians were more concerned with undocumented immigrants and transgender issues. They tried to paint an opposite vision of America under Trump, claiming it was a prosperous country where these problems did not exist.

Greene directly referenced the attempted assassination of Trump on Saturday.

“Unfortunately, this is also a somber moment for our nation. Two days ago, evil came for the man we admire and love so much. I thank God that his hand was on President Trump,” she said.

Senator Tim Scott, of South Carolina, also suggested divine intervention had played a role in the event. “If you didn’t believe in miracles before Saturday, you better be believing right now,” he said. “A devil came to Pennsylvania holding a rifle, but a lion got back on his feet and he roared,” he added, to thunderous applause in the Fiserv Forum.

Kristi Noem, the South Dakota governor , also brought up Saturday’s assassination attempt. “Two days ago, the whole world changed. Evil displayed itself in the very worst way through a cowardly act,” she said.

“An innocent American lost his life and we will continue to lift his family up in our prayers every single day,” added the governor, who was considered a potential vice presidential pick until she published a story about killing her dog and goat. “Prior to this week, we already knew the President Donald Trump was a fighter. He is the toughest man that I have ever met. Nobody has endured more than what he has gone through.”

Amid calls for unity during the convention, Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin said that Democrats and their policies represented a “clear and present danger to America, to our institutions, our values and our people”. A Johnson staffer later told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel that the senator did not intend to read the line during the speech and said it was from an old version that was inadvertently loaded into the teleprompter.

Mark Robinson, the lieutenant governor of North Carolina, who has attracted criticism for violent, racist and sexist remarks also spoke on Monday. Speaking at a church last month, Robinson had said: “Some folks need killing.

But much of his speech on focused on his personal story and rising prices – in alignment with the convention’s Monday theme of “Make America wealthy again”.

“Grocery prices have skyrocketed, gas is nearly double, factories, just like the one I worked at closing, leaving North Carolina families feeling hopeless.”

“Democrats have given hundreds of billions of dollars to the illegals and foreign nations while Gen Z has to pinch and it’s just so that they can never own a home, never married and work until they die,” Charlie Kirk, a Republican founder who is the founder of Turning Points USA. “Donald Trump refuses to accept this vacant, pathetic, and mutilated version of the American dream.”

The evening also featured speeches from several handpicked “ordinary Americans” who offered a firsthand account of how Biden’s policies had harmed them.

Several speakers also focused on LGBTQ issues and immigration as decisive issues.

“Let me state this clearly, there are only two genders,” Greene said during her remarks.

The speeches underscored how Republicans are moving into the final stretch of the election with confidence, offering a succinct encapsulation of the way Republicans plan to frame the choice between Biden and Trump.

“We don’t have to imagine a brighter day, we just have to remember,” John James, a Republican congressman from Michigan, said during his speech.

Donald Trump named JD Vance, the Ohio senator who has aligned himself with the populist right, as his running mate at the Republican national convention on Monday.

“After lengthy deliberation and thought, and considering the tremendous talents of many others, I have decided that the person best suited to assume the position of Vice President of the United States is Senator JD Vance of the Great State of Ohio,” wrote Trump on Truth Social.

When Trump first ran for office, Vance’s eventual nomination to run alongside him would have seemed implausible. Vance, a venture capitalist who rocketed into the public eye with his 2016 memoir turned Netflix movie Hillbilly Elegy, was once among Trump’s conservative critics.

“I’m a never-Trump guy, I never liked him,” Vance said during an October 2016 interview with Charlie Rose. Trump was, by Vance’s estimation at the time, a “terrible candidate”.

He even wondered aloud, in texts to a former roommate, whether Trump was more of “a cynical asshole like Nixon”, or worse, “America’s Hitler”.

Since then, Vance has undergone a dramatic transformation into a Maga power figure and close ally of the former president who has supported some of Trump’s more authoritarian impulses, like questioning the results of the 2020 election and, in a 2021 podcast interview, suggesting Trump should purge civil servants from the federal government if re-elected.

Vance’s response to the assassination attempt at a Trump rally on Saturday was also notable. “The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs,” Vance wrote on X. “That rhetoric led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination.”

Vance has already vied for Trump’s blessing once before, while campaigning for a seat representing Ohio in the US Senate. During the primary, Vance pitched himself as a Trump-style rightwing populist. He criticized “elites”, fired off contemptuous tweets about crime in New York City, promoted the racist and antisemitic “great replacement” theory on Tucker Carlson’s show and grew a beard. He faced a storm of negative ads from the conservative, free market-oriented Club for Growth, which pointed to his past identity as a “never Trumper” as proof of his phoneyness.

The tech billionaire Peter Thiel, who had previously backed Vance’s venture capital startup, poured record-breaking sums of money into the race, and Trump endorsed Vance – ushering in his victory in the primary. When he beat the former Democratic congressman Tim Ryan in the November 2022 general election, it cemented his place on the Maga right.

“I think we need more people like him in politics, who are energetic, dynamic, clear-headed about their ideology,” Vivek Ramaswamy, the biotech entrepreneur who ran for president during the Republican party primaries, said of Vance. “The only negative of it – if there is a negative to point out – is he’s probably one of the best we have in the US Senate, and he’s a principled fighter.”

Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr, celebrated the announcement on the convention floor.

“I watched JD go into sort of – let’s call it enemy territory, from a media perspective, doing the most liberal TV shows, and prosecute the case for my father and against the Democrat lunacy that we’ve seen,” he said.

Outside the floor of the convention in Milwaukee, news spread slowly on Monday that Trump had picked Vance.

“I think it’s a great choice. I like that he’s young. I like that he’s from Ohio. There’s a lot of positives about him. Future of the party,” said Nick D’Alessandro, an alternate delegate from New York.

Larry Johnson, a convention attendee from West Virginia, said he thought Vance could bring more attention to Appalachia: “I think for a long time that area has been kind of overlooked.”

Asa Hutchinson, the former Arkansas governor who was one of the most outspoken Trump critics during the Republican party said Vance was a “strategic” choice.

In an early response from the Democratic party, the Democratic National Committee chair, Jaime Harrison, wrote that the “Trump-Vance ticket would undermine our democracy, our freedoms, and our future”.

In office, Vance has consistently aligned with the populist right, calling into question the US’s role in foreign conflicts and backing rightwing domestic legislation. In 2023, for example, he introduced a bill that would make English the official language of the US.

In a fundraising email, Trump speculated that media outlets “will say MAGA-Patriots like YOU won’t vote for me with JD Vance on the ticket. NOW’S THE TIME FOR US TO PROVE THEM WRONG!”

FBI agents went house to house scouring the Bethel Park neighborhood lived in by Thomas Matthew Crooks and his family as mystery continued to surround the motives of the gunman who tried to assassinate Donald Trump while he was addressing a crowd in nearby Butler, Pennsylvania.

The FBI said it had managed to access Crooks’s phone but preliminary analysis of the information at the FBI lab in Quantico, Virginia, had reportedly not advanced the search into Crooks’s reasons for shooting at Trump, injuring the former US president, killing a rally-goer and wounding two more.

Crooks was almost instantly killed by Secret Service agents returning fire, but the shocking incident has plunged America into political turmoil and roiled an already brutal election campaign, marred by fears of political violence and growing unease about the prospect of civil unrest.

The FBI is investigating whether Crooks was a politically motivated homegrown domestic violent extremist. In an updated statement on Monday, the agency said that the search of the suspect’s residence and vehicle were complete, and it had conducted nearly 100 interviews of law enforcement personnel, event attendees and other witnesses who had been at Big Butler Fairgrounds on Saturday.

“The firearm used in the shooting was purchased legally. The shooter was not known to the FBI prior to this incident,” the agency said.

It added: “While the investigation to date indicates the shooter acted alone, the FBI continues to conduct logical investigative activity to determine if there were any co-conspirators associated with this attack. At this time, there are no current public safety concerns.”

On Monday, it was disclosed that Crooks, 20, may have been trained in marksmanship at the local Clairton Sportsmen’s Club where he was registered as a member.

In a statement to the New York Times, the club’s general counsel said the organization “fully admonishes the senseless act of violence that occurred yesterday” but declined to describe what training Crooks may have had, citing the FBI investigation.

At the gun club, a ramshackle collection of huts on a hillside 15 miles south of Pittsburgh, a US and a POW/MIA flag, symbolizing US commitment to prisoners of war and missing in action during the Vietnam war and all conflicts, flew over the range.

The sharp crack of rounds could be heard as two club members fired at rifle targets, some farther away than the estimated 130 yards between Crooks’s rifle and Trump’s podium when the shooter squeezed off as many as eight shots, striking Trump’s ear, killing a member of the audience and injuring two others.

A manager at Clairton refused to discuss what instruction Crooks had received, and ordered reporters to leave the property.

A firearms instructor at a local gun shop, Legion Arms, said Crooks had not been a customer at that store but opined that the distance of the shot was not great for the type of gun, an AR-15-style rifle, to be fired accurately in the right hands.

“That kind of round and gun are good for 700 or 800 yards,” the instructor, who declined to be identified, said. Crooks, he added, had shown inexperience in his aim, which may also have been affected because he had been rushed after being spotted on his perch above a glass research factory.

“He shot at the head and not the body – the body is what you shoot at when you’re shooting long distance,” the instructor said. “Shooting for the head is what people do because they’ve seen it in movies.”

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette newspaper reported that Crooks purchased 50 rounds of ammunition at Allegheny Arms and Gun Works in Bethel Park hours before the Butler rally. Investigators also said Crooks bought 50 rounds the morning of the shooting.

The Allegheny county bomb squad confirmed on Monday that it had joined the investigation after explosives, some appearing to be grenades, were found in Crooks’s car.

Separately, the Butler sheriff, Michael Slupe, confirmed to the news outlet KDKA-TV that an armed municipal officer with the Butler Township had encountered Crooks before he fired shots at the former president from outside the perimeter of the fairground.

“All I know is the officer had both hands on the roof to get up on the roof, never made it because the shooter had turned towards the officer, and rightfully and smartly, the officer let go,” Slupe said.

In Bethel Park, where Crooks lived with his mother, attended Bethel Park high school, and later got a job in the kitchens of a nursing home, residents continued to puzzle over his motives for attempting to assassinate Trump.

Multiple school friends have described an isolated student who excelled at math but fell short socially. Some described him as conservative-leaning in his politics but overall the picture that has emerged so far is unclear. Unusually for many young people, Crooks had little online presence which might have revealed his political leanings or state of mind in the run-up to the attack.

Alex Williams, 23, who graduated a year before Crooks, said the local community was still reeling.

“Nothing really crazy happens in Bethel so I think a lot of people are disturbed, because it’s not normal,” Williams said. “They’re disappointed that the guy came from here and disappointed it happened at all.”

Williams said he did not recall if Crooks had been bullied, as some direct contemporaries have said. Bullying at the school was often limited to “eye-rolling” and social exclusion, he recalled.

One former student at Crooks’s school, Jason Kohler, has said Crooks was bullied often. “He was quiet, but he was bullied. He was bullied so much,” Kohler said.

Williams said he believed his generation had been deeply affected by Covid lockdowns that had “made us really online” and the extreme political environment had made it possible to become “very right-leaning or very left-leaning … they’ll go down like a pipeline whether it’s left or right.”

As the investigation continues, Biden has called on Americans to reject politically motivated violence. Trump has said his speech to the Republican national convention will focus on “unity”.

“It’s 100% possible for someone to go down pretty far and be, like, ‘yeah, I’m gonna kill the president,’” Williams said.

Crooks’s neighbor Steve Riviere told KDKA that the community “is shocked and surprised, maybe not as surprised as we should be, but shocked that this kind of thing happened” and hoped “this will be the end of it and we’ll get to a position where people can have regular polite discourse about their issues rather than pulling out a gun and climbing on a roof”.

Within minutes of Donald Trump’s announcement that he had tapped Ohio senator JD Vance as his running mate in the 2024 elections, abortion rights groups vociferously condemned the pick.

“A Trump-Vance administration will be the most dangerous administration for abortion and reproductive freedom in this country’s history,” Mini Timmaraju, president and CEO of Reproductive Freedom for All, said in a statement.

“By naming Vance to his ticket, Trump made clear that his administration will sign a national abortion ban and put birth control and IVF at risk,” said Jessica Mackler, president of Emily’s List, an organization that supports Democratic women who support abortion rights running for office.

Vance, the venture capitalist turned Hillbilly Elegy author turned GOP standard-bearer, has long opposed abortion.

In 2021, while running for Ohio senate, Vance told an Ohio news outlet that he did not support rape and incest exceptions in abortion bans. “It’s not whether a woman should be forced to bring a child to term,” he said. “It’s whether a child should be allowed to live, even though the circumstances of that child’s birth are somehow inconvenient or a problem to the society.”

But voters’ outrage over the overturning of Roe v Wade has grown, leading abortion rights supporters to a string of victories at the ballot box, and harnessing that outrage is widely considered Democrats’ best hope for winning the November elections. As Trump and other Republicans have tried to project a moderated stance on the issue – despite the fact that Trump handpicked three of the supreme court justices who overturned Roe – Vance has also tempered his public position.

“We have to accept that people do not want blanket abortion bans. They just don’t,” Vance told CNN’s Jake Tapper last year. “I say this as a person who wants to protect as many unborn babies as possible. We have to provide exceptions for the life of the mother and rape and so forth.”

In 2022, Vance said he would support a national 15-week abortion ban with exceptions. He also told NBC News that he wants mifepristone, a common abortion pill that was at the heart of a major supreme court case this year, to remain accessible.

Even while supporting a national ban, Vance has said he would like abortion to be “primarily a state issue”.

“Ohio is going to want to have a different abortion policy from California, from New York, and I think that’s reasonable,” he said. “I want Ohio to be able to make its own decisions, and I want Ohio’s elected legislators to make those decisions.”

But, he added: “I think it’s fine to sort of set some minimum national standard.”

Much of Vance’s public persona, however, remains defined by his support of what he sees as the traditional nuclear family. He has backed policies that he says will increase birth rates, such as making childbirth free, and said that people who are childfree by choice “do not have any physical commitment to the future of this country”.

“I think the rejection of the American family is perhaps the most pernicious and the most evil thing that the left has done in this country,” said Vance, a father of three. He then went on to suggest that several Democratic politicians, like Kamala Harris and New Jersey senator Cory Booker, should not have political power because they do not have children.

“Why have we let the Democrat party become controlled by people who don’t have any children? And why is this just a normal fact of American life?” Vance asked. “That the leaders of our country should be people who don’t have a personal and direct stake in it via their own offspring, via their own children?” (The vice-president has two stepchildren.)

“Many of the most unhappy and most miserable and most angry people in our media are childless adults,” he continued.

Vance has also called people who fear having kids “cat ladies” who “must be stopped” and said that universal daycare is “class war against normal people”.

Two days after the US supreme court overturned Roe, Vance tweeted: “If your worldview tells you that it’s bad for women to become mothers but liberating for them to work 90 hours a week in a cubicle at the New York Times or Goldman Sachs, you’ve been had.”

Shortly after Trump announced he had chosen Vance as his running mate, Joe Biden’s campaign started to circulate a clip of comments Vance made in 2021 about violence in marriages.

“This is one of the great tricks that I think the sexual revolution pulled on the American populace, which is the idea that, like: ‘Well, OK, these marriages were fundamentally, you know, they were maybe even violent, but certainly they were unhappy. And so getting rid of them and making it easier for people to shift spouses like they change their underwear, that’s going to make people happier in the long term,’” Vance said in response to a question on fatherlessness.

Vance has said that he was not defending men who commit domestic abuse and that he himself is a victim of domestic abuse.

Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the powerful anti-abortion group SBA Pro-Life America, praised Vance on Monday.

“His ability to compellingly share these stories on a national stage will surely be an asset,” Dannenfelser said in a statement. “With approximately 750,000 babies in states like California and New York still lacking basic protections, we need champions whose boldness will not waver.”

The latest show on Tenacious D’s Australian tour has been postponed after senator Ralph Babet demanded the pair be deported following an apparent joke about the assassination attempt on Donald Trump.

American comedy rock duo Jack Black and Kyle Gass were due to perform in Newcastle on Tuesday evening, but the show – part of the band’s Spicy Meatball Tour – was cancelled without notice on Tuesday afternoon.

Concert promoter Frontier Touring said on social media that it regretted “to advise that Tenacious D’s concert tonight at Newcastle Entertainment Centre has been postponed”.

“Ticket holders are asked to hold onto their tickets until further information is available”, the company said in a social media post. It said no further comment would be made.

Local media reported that Black had been shopping in Newcastle on Monday.

Babet, a United Australia party senator, demanded the federal government deport the band after Gass appeared to joke about Donald Trump’s attempted assassination at a Sydney concert on Sunday.

Video from the event showed Gass being presented with a birthday cake and told to “make a wish” as he blew out the candles. Gass then appeared to say “don’t miss Trump next time” – just hours after the shooting at Trump’s rally in Pennsylvania that left the former president injured.

“I call on the prime minister Anthony Albanese to join me in denouncing Tenacious D, Jack Black and band member Kyle Gass, and I call on the immigration minister Andrew Giles to revoke their visas and deport them immediately,” Babet said on Tuesday.

“Anything less than a deportation is an endorsement of the shooting and the attempted assassination of Donald J Trump,” he said.

He added that allowing the band to remain in Australia was “unthinkable”.

While conservative and pro-Trump accounts online were heavily critical of Gass’s comment, Tenacious D did receive some support from others.

Numerous people posted in response to the videos circulating that the comment was a “joke”.

One X user wrote, “Classic Kyle. Long live the D,” in response to Babet’s statement; another supporter commented, “Are we really living in a world where a comedian can get deported for telling a joke? The Tenacious D / Kyle Gass situation is absolutely ridiculous. You don’t like their jokes, then don’t go to their shows. Simple.”

Black has publicly criticised Trump previously, and recently appeared at a celebrity fundraiser for Joe Biden.

Tenacious D was due to appear in Brisbane, Melbourne and Adelaide before travelling to New Zealand next week.

In 2029 an asteroid larger than the Eiffel Tower will skim past Earth in an event that until recently scientists had feared could foreshadow a catastrophic collision.

Now researchers hope to scrutinise 99942 Apophis as it makes its close encounter in an effort to bolster our defences against other space rocks.

The European Space Agency (Esa) has announced funding for preparatory work on the Rapid Apophis Mission for Security and Safety (Ramses) in which a spacecraft will be sent to the asteroid to glean information about its size, shape, mass and the way it spins as it hurtles through space.

The mission will also shed light on the composition and internal structure of Apophis, as well as its orbit, and explore how the asteroid changes as it passes within 20,000 miles (32,000km) of Earth – about one-tenth of the distance to the moon – on Friday 13 April 2029.

“The flyby it does with Earth is absolutely unique,” said Dr Holger Krag, the head of the Esa’s space safety programme office, adding that no asteroid is expected to come as close for a few thousand years. “If the sky is clear, you should be able to see it with your naked eye.”

Apophis will pass closer to the Earth than the geostationary satellites used for TV broadcasting, navigation and weather forecasting. At that distance, Krag said, the asteroid would start to interact with Earth.

“It’s the gravity field of the Earth that will basically slightly reshape the asteroid, causing it to change its form,” he said, adding the gravitational pull could also cause landslides on the asteroid’s surface.

Krag said the insights from Ramses would help scientists understand the asteroid, and the risk such space rocks pose. “Our goal in planetary defence is not to do science on asteroids, but it’s to characterise them in a way that one day we can deflect them when they become dangerous,” he said.

Prof Monica Grady of the Open University said while most asteroids were in fairly secure orbits and did not come near our planet, Earth-crossing asteroids such as Apophis were a different matter.

“They come near the Earth, and there’s potential that one day one of them will hit the Earth and cause a major disaster. We believe this happened 65m years ago, when the dinosaurs were all wiped out,” she said. “And if it’s a big asteroid and it hits us, it’ll be a catastrophe which will destroy humanity.”

After its discovery in 2004, Apophis kept scientists up at night with concerns it might collide with Earth as it orbits the Sun. While Nasa ruled out an impact as Apophis approaches Earth in 2029 and 2036, it was only in 2021 that experts said a smash would be off the cards for at least the next 100 years.

However, space agencies are not leaving the security of the planet to chance, instead investigating ways of tackling Earth-bound asteroids.

Among such projects is Nasa’s Dart mission, in which a spacecraft was smashed into the asteroid Dimorphos to test whether it was possible to deflect a space rock. The Esa’s Hera planetary defence mission, due to launch this year, will study the aftermath of that crash.

“What the Dart experiment has shown is it’s very important to understand everything about the target asteroid before you impact it,” Krag said. “Because the composition of it matters, the spin rate matters, the mass matters. So, in principle, before engaging with an asteroid, you need to be able to do a very, very fast inspection.”

Ramses offered scientists the chance to practise just such a rapid reconnaissance , he added. “You cannot just go and hit [a target asteroid] because then you cannot predict the outcome. And you could make it worse.”

Prof Alan Fitzsimmons of Queen’s University Belfast, who is on the science advisory team for Ramses, said the data collected by the Ramses mission could also help scientists extend the window for which they could predict potential collisions with Apophis for many hundreds of years. “Our descendants at the moment still have to worry about this thing,” he said.

Krag said the new financing of Ramses would allow the team to buy the first hardware for the mission – although the final decision on whether Ramses would go ahead would not be made until the end of next year.

As well as carrying an Asteroid Framing Camera, Krag said other potential instruments could include a seismometer to monitor activity as the asteroid experiences Earth’s gravitational pull.

Should Ramses be approved, the plan is to launch the spacecraft in early 2028. “So we have a little less than four years, which is very rapid for a spacecraft,” Krag said.

Ramses is not the only mission preparing to scrutinise Apophis: after Nasa’s successful Osiris-Rex mission last year, which recovered 4.6bn-year-old chunks of space rock from the asteroid Bennu, the same spacecraft will rendezvous with Apophis in 2029 under a new mission title, Osiris-Apex.

While Ramses will arrive at Apophis before its close encounter with Earth, Osiris-Apex is expected to arrive afterwards.

Dr Terik Daly of Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, who is involved with the Osiris-Apex mission, said: “What Ramses is going to be able to do is to document Apophis prior to the asteroid’s close encounter with the Earth. So then [Osiris-Apex] can really look and see what did this natural experiment do. How did it change Apophis?”

Daly said the fixed date of Apophis’s close encounter with Earth was important. “There’s nothing we can do about it in terms of changing that date – and that’s what would happen in a situation where an asteroid was coming to hit the Earth. We can’t negotiate with the asteroid. What we can do is prepare to respond in an effective way.”

Grady said while such missions were interesting to scientists, they also held a wider appeal. “It’s very exciting as a member of the public to realise that we actually can do something about averting the Earth from a catastrophic extinction,” she said.

Gareth Southgate has announced he has stepped down as England’s manager after eight years. The Football Association had hoped he would extend his contract after he led the team to the final of Euro 2024 but Southgate has decided to seek a new challenge.

“As a proud Englishman, it has been the honour of my life to play for England and to manage England,” Southgate said. “It has meant everything to me, and I have given it my all. But it’s time for change, and for a new chapter. Sunday’s final in Berlin against Spain was my final game as England manager.”

The 53-year-old is England’s most successful manager in terms of consistent major tournament performance. England also reached the European Championship final in 2021, losing to Italy, and a World Cup semi-final in 2018, when they were beaten by Croatia. In his other World Cup, the team were eliminated by France in the quarter-finals.

Newcastle’s Eddie Howe and three former Chelsea managers, Graham Potter, Thomas Tuchel and Mauricio Pochettino, are near the top of the FA’s shortlist to succeed Southgate. Howe, who has previously described the England post as “the ultimate” job, is thought to be open to discussions should the FA approach Newcastle. Howe loves the day-to-day coaching of club management but could view the job as too good to turn down. England’s next fixtures are against the Republic of Ireland and Finland in the Nations League in September.

“The squad we took to Germany is full of exciting young talent and they can win the trophy we all dream of,” Southgate said. “I am so proud of them, and I hope we get behind the players and the team at St. George’s Park and the FA who strive every day to improve English football, and understand the power football has to drive positive change.”

Southgate signed a contract to December because he and the FA wanted to create breathing space after Euro 2024 to make a decision. But Southgate made clear before the final defeat by Spain that he would not need long to make up his mind.

Southgate spent much of the Euros under huge pressure after poor England performances in the group stage and in the last 16 against Slovakia. He had empty beer cups thrown at him and boos directed at him after England drew 0-0 with Slovenia in their final group match.

After the Slovenia game Southgate said he understood “the narrative towards me” but that it was “creating an unusual ­environment to operate in”.

Southgate took charge of England, initially on a caretaker basis, in September 2016 after Sam Allardyce’s sudden departure. He had indicated he thought his time would be up if England did not win in Germany.

Southgate, who has worked at the FA since 2013, has admirers at Manchester United, who gave Erik ten Hag a new contract this summer. His only job in club football was with Middlesbrough from 2006-09.

Other candidates in the FA’s thinking are likely to include Lee Carsley, the England Under-21 mana­ger, and the former England internationals Frank Lampard and Steven Gerrard. The hiring process will be overseen by the FA’s technical ­director, John McDermott, and the chief executive, Mark Bullingham.

“Gareth has made the impossible job possible and laid strong foundations for future success,” Bullingham said. “He is held in the highest regard by the players, the backroom team, by everyone at the FA and across the world of football.

“We are very proud of everything Gareth and Steve achieved for England, and will be forever grateful to them. The process for appointing Gareth’s successor is now under way.”

It’s a venerable football equation: English defeat = Irish glee.

Mary Lou McDonald, the Sinn Féin leader, reflected this tradition when she posted “Olé, Olé, Olé” and celebrated Spain’s victory over England in the Euro 2024 final in Berlin on Sunday. “Felicidades! Comhghairdeas to the champions of Europe,” she added, using the Irish word for congratulations.

For many it was harmless banter and arguably restrained given Ireland’s tangled history with England – conquest and famine were mentioned.

Critics disagreed and called the Sinn Féin leader’s post obnoxious trolling that did not help bilateral relations. “This is pathetic. At a time when we need leaders to build bridges,” Pippa Hackett, a senator and junior minister in the coalition government, posted on X.

The spat prompted others to wade in on either side, some accusing McDonald of bad manners, others accusing Hackett of lacking a sense of humour.

The taoiseach, Simon Harris, who has welcomed the Labour government as a chance to reset relations between Dublin and London, steered a neutral course by congratulating Spain while commending England for a hard-fought match.

The Belfast hip-hop group Kneecap, in contrast, uploaded a video of weeping English players and shared an extract of the Pogues’ song Fiesta. “Come all you rambling boys of pleasure, and ladies of easy leisure, we must say adiós! Until we see Almeria once again.”

Lindsay Robinson, the wife of the Democratic Unionist party (DUP) leader Gavin Robinson, said her family received vile messages after she posted a picture of her husband and her 10-year-old son rooting for England. “I’m not a big fan of the sport but his love of it seems pretty normal to me. Some of the nasty, hate-filled responses to it are anything but normal. Sort yourselves out.”

What was meant to be an occasion for celebration for the Tupinambá de Olivença Indigenous people – the long-awaited reunion with a sacred cloak taken from Brazil more than three centuries ago – has turned into a moment of frustration.

Rio de Janeiro’s National Museum recently announced that it had received the artefact, which is more than 300 years old, from the Nationalmuseet, Denmark’s National Museum.

But Tupinambá de Olivença leaders have complained they were prevented from performing the necessary rituals to receive the relic, which is considered sacred.

“I’m happy because the cloak has returned to Brazil, but I’m sad because there was a lack of respect for the Tupinambá people and our ancestry,” said the leader of the Tupinambá de Olivença people, Cacique Jamopoty Tupinambá, 62.

“They’re treating the cloak as an object, but for us, it’s an elder, an ancestor,” said Jamopoty, the first woman in her community – which encompasses three cities of Bahia state – to become a cacique (chief).

The artefact, made with about 4,000 red feathers of the scarlet ibis bird (which resembles a small flamingo), was first inventoried by Denmark in 1689, but some believe it was taken from Brazil nearly 50 years before.

“My mother used to say that her grandfather and great-grandfather told her that when this sacred piece was taken, the village weakened,” said Cacique Jamopoty. “They believed it would one day return to strengthen the village.”

The relic’s journey back home began in 2000, when the Nationalmuseet lent it for an exhibition in São Paulo. Jamopoty’s mother, Nivalda Amaral de Jesus, known as Amotara, visited the exhibit and demanded its return to Brazil.

Amotara died in 2018. An article by the Brazilian magazine Piauí revived the issue in 2021, but it was only last year that the Danish museum finally announced it would donate the artefact to its Brazilian counterpart.

Cacique Jamopoty says Rio’s National Museum had committed to informing the Tupinambá de Olivença about all the steps regarding the relic’s repatriation. But the Indigenous community was only informed four days after the piece’s arrival.

“When you meet an elder, you ask for their blessing,” she said. “That’s what we wanted to do with our ancestor as soon as he set foot on Brazilian soil.

“We wanted to perform our rituals, with songs and incense using our herbs … It would have been a special moment for strengthening our identity,” said the chief.

After the Tupinambá de Olivença’s complaint became public, the National Museum’s director, Alexander Kellner, posted on X that “it would be an illusion to think that an issue like this would not spark controversy”.

He wrote that the piece had been “in a country with very different climatic conditions for at least 350 years”; therefore, “it needs an adaptation period for its safety”.

Cacique Jamopoty said that, after their complaint, the Museum invited them to visit the piece in the coming weeks. This Wednesday, leaders and elders of the Tupinambá de Olivença will meet and decide if and when they will come to Rio.

The National Museum is still under reconstruction after the massive fire that destroyed almost its entire collection in 2018. The reopening is scheduled for 2026, but the Tupinambá cloak will be shown next month in a 100m² room adjacent to the museum.

A report published in 2018 showed that 10 other Tupinambá cloaks are scattered across European museums – four of them are in the Nationalmuseet alone. There is no indication if or when they will return to Brazil.

What was meant to be an occasion for celebration for the Tupinambá de Olivença Indigenous people – the long-awaited reunion with a sacred cloak taken from Brazil more than three centuries ago – has turned into a moment of frustration.

Rio de Janeiro’s National Museum recently announced that it had received the artefact, which is more than 300 years old, from the Nationalmuseet, Denmark’s National Museum.

But Tupinambá de Olivença leaders have complained they were prevented from performing the necessary rituals to receive the relic, which is considered sacred.

“I’m happy because the cloak has returned to Brazil, but I’m sad because there was a lack of respect for the Tupinambá people and our ancestry,” said the leader of the Tupinambá de Olivença people, Cacique Jamopoty Tupinambá, 62.

“They’re treating the cloak as an object, but for us, it’s an elder, an ancestor,” said Jamopoty, the first woman in her community – which encompasses three cities of Bahia state – to become a cacique (chief).

The artefact, made with about 4,000 red feathers of the scarlet ibis bird (which resembles a small flamingo), was first inventoried by Denmark in 1689, but some believe it was taken from Brazil nearly 50 years before.

“My mother used to say that her grandfather and great-grandfather told her that when this sacred piece was taken, the village weakened,” said Cacique Jamopoty. “They believed it would one day return to strengthen the village.”

The relic’s journey back home began in 2000, when the Nationalmuseet lent it for an exhibition in São Paulo. Jamopoty’s mother, Nivalda Amaral de Jesus, known as Amotara, visited the exhibit and demanded its return to Brazil.

Amotara died in 2018. An article by the Brazilian magazine Piauí revived the issue in 2021, but it was only last year that the Danish museum finally announced it would donate the artefact to its Brazilian counterpart.

Cacique Jamopoty says Rio’s National Museum had committed to informing the Tupinambá de Olivença about all the steps regarding the relic’s repatriation. But the Indigenous community was only informed four days after the piece’s arrival.

“When you meet an elder, you ask for their blessing,” she said. “That’s what we wanted to do with our ancestor as soon as he set foot on Brazilian soil.

“We wanted to perform our rituals, with songs and incense using our herbs … It would have been a special moment for strengthening our identity,” said the chief.

After the Tupinambá de Olivença’s complaint became public, the National Museum’s director, Alexander Kellner, posted on X that “it would be an illusion to think that an issue like this would not spark controversy”.

He wrote that the piece had been “in a country with very different climatic conditions for at least 350 years”; therefore, “it needs an adaptation period for its safety”.

Cacique Jamopoty said that, after their complaint, the Museum invited them to visit the piece in the coming weeks. This Wednesday, leaders and elders of the Tupinambá de Olivença will meet and decide if and when they will come to Rio.

The National Museum is still under reconstruction after the massive fire that destroyed almost its entire collection in 2018. The reopening is scheduled for 2026, but the Tupinambá cloak will be shown next month in a 100m² room adjacent to the museum.

A report published in 2018 showed that 10 other Tupinambá cloaks are scattered across European museums – four of them are in the Nationalmuseet alone. There is no indication if or when they will return to Brazil.

Tired of waiting for the authorities to come to their aid, young men in the Mayo-Kebbi Ouest region of south-west Chad are banding into vigilante groups, using bows, arrows and spears to fight gunmen who have turned kidnapping into a professional pastime.

“We guide the gendarmes in the bush, but we are also the first to go after the criminals after a kidnapping,” said Amos Nangyo, head of one of the units in Pala, capital of the region, which borders Cameroon, told Agence France-Presse earlier this month.

In the last decade, the Sahelian tri-border area of Liptako-Gourma – where Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger meet – has become a hotspot for booming jihadist activity.

But another crisis is brewing in a nearby area that some have called “the triangle of death”: the area from Mayo-Kebbi Ouest and Logone Oriental in Chad to Cameroon’s North Region and Lim-Pendé in the Central African Republic.

Official data is hard to come by for this area and many people do not report incidents for fear of further attacks.

But Chadian authorities say ransoms paid in the area amounted to 43 million Central African Francs (CFA) in 2022 and increased to 52.4 million CFA the following year.

In February, a Polish doctor and her Mexican colleague were abducted from the Tandjilé region but was freed a week later, after a combined rescue mission by Chadian and French forces.

Approximately 86 million CFA was paid in ransom in six incidents between February and May 2023 in Cameroon’s Northern Region, according to a recent report by the Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime.

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The rise in abductions is happening alongside small arms trafficking, cattle rustling and drug trafficking. Economic interests, rather than ethnic or religious grudges, are driving kidnappings, according to experts.

In west and central Africa, porous borders are the norm, allowing terror groups such as Boko Haram, for example, to move along the diagonal from northern Nigeria to the Cameroon-Chad-CAR corridor to find possible victims as well as criminal allies to finance their jihadist ventures.

Other regional players include ethnic Fulani herders, who experts say can be both perpetrators and victims, given their nomadic lifestyle and the complex nature of criminal activity in the zone.

The Fulani, perceived as having a lot of money by virtue of having herds of cattle, have long been targets of kidnapping. But some herders, grieving the loss of their cattle and other belongings to rustling, or tired of being harassed by security personnel, have turned to kidnapping too.

There are also the zaraguinas, gangs of rampaging bandits and mercenary rebels who are active in the forests of northern CAR, some having migrated in from its neighbours such as Chad. With the presence of foreign counterparts like the Wagner group in CAR, some local mercenaries have moved to Chad.

Targets include traders, civil servants, aid workers and anyone who seems remotely important or likely to have relatives and friends capable of raising ransoms.

Insecurity escalated south of the Sahara in 2011 after the Nato-led ousting of Muammar Gaddafi opened a highway for the southward flow of small arms and light weapon, galvanising rebel activity from Mali to Nigeria.

This made Chad, a country with a history of long-running domestic conflicts and a reputation for breeding warriors in the hinterlands, even more fertile ground for armed non-state actors who export themselves to stoke conflicts or extinguish them elsewhere.

Remadji Hoinathy, a senior researcher at the Institute for Security Studies for Central Africa and Lake Chad Basin who is based in N’Djamena, said “the geography and even the demography and anthropology of that zone” was key to its emergence as a recruitment centre for armed groups and a nucleus of the kidnapping crisis.

“A lot of people in Chad [have] grown up with rebellions [and learned] that the only life they have is a link with weapons,” he said. “They are finding ways of living by the gun … either you are a rebel with the army, or you end up as a mercenary, kidnapper, in banditry or Boko Haram.”

The perpetrators have thrived partly because of weak state governance architecture but also because of spaces – and forests – that serve as criminal hideouts. Combined, the three countries in the corridor account for almost a tenth of the area of Africa but only 4% of its population. Their borders with Maghreb states, which have local conflicts waged by actors with transnational communal ties, stretch for thousands of kilometres. Worse still, the armies in the corridor are stretched by conflicts at their other borders.

“Chad is very concerned about security on the border with Sudan in the east, so they’ve moved their capacity to better monitor that border,” said Ulf Laessing, director of the Sahel programme at German thinktank the Konrad Adenauer Foundation. “That might be a reason that they are not able to effectively guard the border with Cameroon as before.”

The kidnappings have had an adverse impact on movements of goods, cattle and humans across the corridor. Farmers are also scared to work, leading to rotting harvests and depleting food volumes.

This in turn could “cause damaging economic ripples across the region”, according to a January 2024 report by Global Initiative. “Following the 2023 coup in Niger, and with instability continuing in Libya, Sudan and the Lake Chad basin, Cameroon has become the main trade artery for Chad and the CAR. The majority of imports and exports into these countries now pass through the tri-border region,” the report said.

Last October, service chiefs from Cameroon and Chad met in Yaoundé to discuss a bilateral cooperation to tackle cross-border crime.

But experts say more action must be taken to dismantle criminal networks, including a structured regional collaboration to increase security and patrol remote forest zones.

Until then, the local vigilantes in the corridor are staying alert to protect their families and communities. “It’s dangerous volunteer work and we ask the state for means to [help] us,” Nangyo told Agence France-Presse.

The case of Craig Wright, the Australian computer scientist who falsely claimed to be the creator of bitcoin, has been referred to the Crown Prosecution Service over a potential prosecution for perjury and forgery.

In March, Wright lost a legal battle with a coalition of cryptocurrency businesses who had pre-emptively sued to prevent him from enforcing his claim in the courts. In a sign of the extent of his defeat, the presiding judge, Mr Justice Mellor, took the unusual step of issuing an oral verdict within seconds of the case concluding.

“The evidence is overwhelming,” Mellor said at the time, “that Dr Wright is not the author of the bitcoin white paper.” In the written judgment that followed, Mellor said that Wright lied “extensively and repeatedly” in written and oral evidence. “Most of his lies related to the documents he had forged which purported to support his claim … Dr Wright’s attempts to prove he was/is Satoshi Nakamoto represent a most serious abuse of this court’s process.”

Wright’s written evidence was called out as a potential forgery before the trial even opened, and his own expert witnesses appeared to concur. In cross-examination, Wright dismissed the allegations, and claimed his expert witness was not suitably qualified. “If I had forged that document then it would be perfect,” he said at one point.

In a ruling on Tuesday, Mellor said he will refer “relevant” papers in the legal action to the CPS to consider whether criminal charges should be brought against Wright.

“In advancing his false claim to be Satoshi through multiple legal actions, Dr Wright committed ‘a most serious abuse’ of the process of the courts of the UK, Norway and the USA,” the ruling said.

“In these circumstances … I have no doubt that I should refer the relevant papers in this case to the CPS for consideration of whether a prosecution should be commenced against Dr Wright for his wholescale perjury and forgery of documents and/or whether a warrant for his arrest should be issued and/or whether his extradition should be sought from wherever he now is.

“All those matters are to be decided by the CPS.”

An earlier court case, brought by Wright against a bitcoin celebrity who had accused him of being “a liar” and “a fraud”, had ended in a shock victory for the Australian, after the respondent, Peter McCormack, dropped his defence on the grounds of truth. But Wright’s victory was a pyrrhic one: the judge, Mr Justic Chamberlain, ruled that he had “advanced a deliberately false case”, and awarded token damages of just £1.

About 3,000 children – including some as young as 12 – have been swept up in El Salvador’s mass detentions since President Nayib Bukele began his crackdown on gangs two years ago, according to a new report from Human Rights Watch (HRW).

The report, which draws on case files and almost 100 interviews with victims, police and officials, documents the arbitrary detention of children and ill-treatment that in some cases amounted to torture.

Since the state of emergency began in March 2022, security forces have raided neighbourhoods where gang control and violence was once a constant, arresting more than 80,000 people.

Two gangs – Barrio 18 and MS13 – had dominated life in El Salvador since the 1990s. By 2015, they counted on 60,000 members in a country of 6 million. Most businesses were extorted and the annual homicide rate was 103 per 100,000.

By locking up more than 1% of the population, Bukele has turned one of Latin America’s most violent countries into one of its safest: according to official data, in 2023 the homicide rate had fallen to 2.4 per 100,000.

But human rights organisations have documented arbitrary arrests, enforced disappearances, torture and massive violations of due process.

HRW’s investigation showed that many of the children arrested in the crackdown have no apparent connection to gangs or criminal activities.

In prison, the children face overcrowding, poor food and healthcare, and have been denied access to lawyers and family members.

In some cases children were held alongside adults during their first days after their arrest, before being moved to overcrowded juvenile facilities which the authors describe as “dangerous and dehumanising environments that fail to prioritise children’s well-being and reintegration”.

More than 1,000 of the arrested children have been convicted with sentences of between two to 12 years in prison, often on broad charges such as unlawful association and using uncorroborated police testimony.

In many cases children were coerced into giving confessions of gang affiliation through a combination of abusive plea deals and mistreatment.

The report calls on the government to begin a review of the cases of those detained during the state of emergency, prioritising children and other vulnerable detainees.

It also calls on foreign governments and international financial institutions to refrain from approving loans that would benefit the agencies directly involved in the abuses, such as the security forces, the prison system and the attorney general’s office.

“The government’s harsh targeting of children risks perpetuating the cycle of violence in El Salvador,” said Juanita Goebertus Estrada, Americas director at Human Rights Watch. “Foreign governments should urge the government to end its human rights violations and protect the lives and futures of children.”

Despite the well-documented human rights abuses committed during the crackdown, improvements in security have helped make Bukele one of the region’s most popular presidents.

Although El Salvador’s constitution bars presidents from a second consecutive term, Bukele appointed new judges to the constitutional court who ruled that he could run again.

Bukele won the election in February by such a margin that the country is now close to being a one-party state.

Britain is taking its first steps towards forging closer trading links with the EU in meetings between the new business secretary, Jonathan Reynolds, and international counterparts in Italy.

In his first overseas visit since Labour’s election landslide, Reynolds will tell a G7 meeting of trade ministers in the Italian city of Reggio Calabria that the new UK government wants to foster a “closer, more mature relationship with our friends in the EU”.

Aiming to reset relations after a volatile period under successive Conservative administrations since the 2016 Brexit vote, he is expected to tell international ministers that Britain is “back on the world stage and ‘open for business’”.

Reynolds will add: “We are seeking a closer, more mature, more level-headed relationship with our friends in the European Union – our nearest and largest trading partner, and we also intend to forge better trading relationships with countries around the world.”

The meetings come as Keir Starmer tries to build closer links with Brussels by hosting EU leaders at Blenheim Palace near Oxford on Thursday, as part of a one-day European Political Community summit.

The prime minister is attempting to walk a tightrope between strengthening EU relations while also telling voters that his government will not take Britain back into the single market or customs union. Starmer is instead relying on more modest reforms and a warmer tone with Brussels.

The prime minister insisted during the election campaign that the UK would not rejoin the EU within his lifetime. Instead, Labour committed in its manifesto to building stronger trade and investment links with the 27-nation bloc, including through a veterinary agreement, support for touring artists, and mutual recognition deals for professional qualifications.

The EU accounted for 41% of UK exports of goods and services and 52% of imports in 2023. Business leaders have urged Starmer to forge closer links with Brussels given the importance of the EU market to UK companies, while also calling for looser migration rules to give them more access to EU workers.

Under the terms of the Brexit deal finalised by Boris Johnson’s government in late December 2020, and in force since January 2021, the UK and the EU are committed to reviewing the implementation of the agreement every five years, with Starmer expected to oversee the first such process in 2026.

Some commentators have suggested the review could pose an opportunity for the deal to be renegotiated. However, EU officials have argued the process may only offer limited scope for change.

Reynolds is expected on Tuesday to hold his first in-person meetings with G7 counterparts since his appointment earlier this month, including with the vice-president of the EU Commission Valdis Dombrovskis and the German vice-chancellor, Robert Habeck.

The new government is hoping a “reset” of international relations will bolster Britain’s status among global businesses and investors, as part of efforts to secure the highest sustained rate of economic growth in the G7.

It also comes amid rising geopolitical tensions and political uncertainty elsewhere. The US president, Joe Biden, appeared last week to back Starmer’s ambitions for closer EU ties, telling the prime minister in talks at the White House that this would also strengthen the transatlantic alliance with Washington.

The climate crisis is causing the length of each day to get longer, analysis shows, as the mass melting of polar ice reshapes the planet.

The phenomenon is a striking demonstration of how humanity’s actions are transforming the Earth, scientists said, rivalling natural processes that have existed for billions of years.

The change in the length of the day is on the scale of milliseconds but this is enough to potentially disrupt internet traffic, financial transactions and GPS navigation, all of which rely on precise timekeeping.

The length of the Earth’s day has been steadily increasing over geological time due to the gravitational drag of the moon on the planet’s oceans and land. However, the melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets due to human-caused global heating has been redistributing water stored at high latitudes into the world’s oceans, leading to more water in the seas nearer the equator. This makes the Earth more oblate – or fatter – slowing the rotation of the planet and lengthening the day still further.

The planetary impact of humanity was also demonstrated recently by research that showed the redistribution of water had caused the Earth’s axis of rotation – the north and south poles – to move. Other work has revealed that humanity’s carbon emissions are shrinking the stratosphere.

“We can see our impact as humans on the whole Earth system, not just locally, like the rise in temperature, but really fundamentally, altering how it moves in space and rotates,” said Prof Benedikt Soja of ETH Zurich in Switzerland. “Due to our carbon emissions, we have done this in just 100 or 200 years. Whereas the governing processes previously had been going on for billions of years, and that is striking.”

Human timekeeping is based on atomic clocks, which are extremely precise. However, the exact time of a day – one rotation of the Earth – varies due to lunar tides, climate impacts and some other factors, such as the slow rebound of the Earth’s crust after the retreat of ice sheets formed in the last ice age.

These differences have to be accounted for, said Soja: “All the datacentres that run the internet, communications and financial transactions, they are based on precise timing. We also need a precise knowledge of time for navigation, and particularly for satellites and spacecraft.”

The research, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, used observations and computer reconstructions to assess the impact of melting ice on the length of the day. The rate of slowing varied between 0.3 and 1.0 millisecond per century (ms/cy) between 1900 and 2000. But since 2000, as melting accelerated, the rate of change also accelerated to 1.3ms/cy.

“This present-day rate is likely higher than at any time in the past few thousand years,” the researchers said. “It is projected to remain approximately at a level of 1.0 ms/cy for the next few decades, even if greenhouse gas emissions are severely curbed.” If emissions are not cut, the slowing rate will increase to 2.6 ms/cy by 2100, overtaking lunar tides as the single biggest contributor to long-term variations in the length of days, they said.

Dr Santiago Belda of the University of Alicante in Spain, who was not part of the research team, said: “This study is a great advance because it confirms that the worrying loss of ice that Greenland and Antarctica are suffering has a direct impact on day length, causing our days to lengthen. This variation in day length has critical implications not only for how we measure time, but also for GPS and other technologies that govern our modern lives.”