With a bandage strapped over one ear, Donald Trump made a triumphant return to the public eye on Monday evening at the Republican National Convention, receiving a rapturous welcome from thousands of supporters two days after an attempt on his life.

The former president entered the convention arena in Milwaukee with a fist raised and to the strains of a live performance of “God Bless the USA”.

He then slowly walked through cheering crowds of delegates – some with tears in their eyes – before greeting key political allies and members of his family, including three of his children, but not his wife Melania.

At moments, the audience pumped their fists and called out “Fight! Fight! Fight!” – echoing Trump’s cry after a bullet grazed his ear at a rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday.

The Republican nominee for November’s presidential contest is riding a wave of political momentum. The Democratic Party has been questioning 81-year-old Joe Biden’s candidacy following a poor debate performance last month, while Trump’s team has celebrated recent legal victories.

At the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee, the former president listened to about an hour of speeches while sitting next to his running mate and vice-presidential candidate Ohio Senator JD Vance, whose place on the ticket for November’s election was announced only hours before.

Trump did not make a speech but at times appeared moved by the crowd of thousands. He bowed his head in prayer, and mouthed several times: “Thank you, everybody”.

Supporters and Republican delegates had been waiting for hours for the former president’s appearance, which was not officially listed on the schedule for the opening day of the convention, but was widely expected.

Among Monday’s range of other speakers were the head of the Teamsters labour union Sean O’Brien, who said he was not endorsing any specific party but praised Trump as being “tough” and willing to hear critical voices.

The conference also heard from an ex-Trump critic, the model and rapper Amber Rose, who described her political journey towards the ex-president. She added: “Trump supporters don’t care if you’re black, white, gay or straight – it’s all love.”

Donald Trump’s appearance was the highlight of an eventful first day of the Republican gathering in Wisconsin, one of six battleground states that will decide the election.

Before the convention officially opened, news broke that a federal judge had dismissed criminal charges against Trump for stashing more than 300 classified documents at his Florida resort after his first term in office.

Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, ruled that special prosecutor Jack Smith was unlawfully appointed to his role and did not have the authority to bring a 37-count indictment against the former president.

It was another victory for the Republican candidate, who now faces no prospect of another criminal trial before Americans go to the polls on 5 November.

Soon after the convention opened, nearly 2,500 Republican delegates formally nominated Trump as their presidential candidate during a roll call vote.

In a break with recent tradition, Trump waited until the convention to announce Mr Vance as his vice-presidential pick, and revealed his choice on his Truth Social network on Monday afternoon.

The Ohio senator and author of best-selling memoir Hillbilly Elegy reportedly heard he was selected just minutes before the announcement.

He smiled and looked slightly in awe as he walked into the crowd along with his wife Usha, and chatted with the throngs of delegates who surrounded him.

“Of the three [contenders] on the shortlist, I don’t think you could have done better,” said Greg Simpson, a Republican delegate who lives not far from Vance’s childhood home in Middletown, Ohio.

But Democrats indicated they would make an issue of Mr Vance’s anti-abortion views and connections to big tech during his career as a venture capitalist.

Democratic President Joe Biden said in a message posted on X that Mr Vance “talks a big game about working people” but would raise taxes on ordinary Americans while cutting taxes on the rich.

Speaking to reporters he called Mr Vance “a clone of Trump”.

The president also sat for an interview with NBC News, saying it was a mistake to have said it’s “time to put Trump in the bullseye” during a call with donors days before his political rival was nearly killed.

But he blamed his opponent for ratcheting up political rhetoric for his denials of the 2020 election result, promises to pardon the rioters who attacked the Capitol on 6 January 2021 and for joking about a serious assault on the husband of Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi.

As Trump remains in Milwaukee and prepares to deliver his closing night convention speech on Thursday night, Mr Biden has resumed his election campaign, flying to Las Vegas for events after a brief pause in rallies following the attack.

The first day of the convention was filled with speeches from Republican officials and ordinary supporters selected to bolster the day’s theme, the economy.

Bobby Bartels, a union leader from New York, told the crowd: “Out of control inflation is squeezing budgets and both violent crime and drug epidemics are pushing people out of our cities, all while Democrats do nothing.”

“That’s why this union Democrat will be voting Trump,” he said.

But the assassination attempt was still fresh in the minds of delegates who had assembled from across the US and its territories.

“Saturday scared me,” said Florida delegate Joe Mullins said. “We’d be in a whole different world if not for half an inch. I had tears in my eyes, and I haven’t cried like that since I lost my mother.”

South Carolina Senator Tim Scott, who was one of the names on Trump’s vice-presidential shortlist, told the crowd: “If you didn’t believe in miracles before Saturday, you better be believing right now.”

“On Saturday, the devil came to Pennsylvania with a rifle, but an American lion got back up on his feet and he roared,” he said.

The deputy prime minister has dismissed comments by Donald Trump’s running mate for US vice president that UK under Labour might be the first “truly Islamist” country with nuclear weapons.

JD Vance, the Ohio senator chosen as Mr Trump’s vice presidential candidate on Monday night, made the comments while at the National Conservatism conference in Washington DC last week.

The 39-year-old said he was “beating up” on the UK, and had discussed with a friend “what is the first truly Islamist country to get a nuclear weapon”, then joked “maybe it’s Iran, maybe Pakistan kind of counts, and then we sort of decided maybe it’s actually the UK since Labour just took over”.

The suggestion that Islamists are gaining in power in some European countries with Muslim minorities is common in some right-wing US political circles.

Angela Rayner told ITV that Mr Vance had said “quite a lot of fruity things in the past” but said does not “recognise” his characterisation of the UK.

She added that she “looked forward” to meeting him and Mr Trump if they won the US election in November.

His comments on the UK becoming an “Islamist country” were a direct criticism of Labour’s approach to immigration, and he also said that the Tories “have got to get a handle on this”.

Right-wing US political figures have often linked immigration to a rise in Islamism in a country and have regularly focused on the UK.

During his speech to the National Conservatism conference Mr Vance made several further comments attacking immigration.

He declared: “The real threat to American democracy is that American voters keep on voting for less immigration and our politicians keep on rewarding us with more.”

In the speech Mr Vance also said “I was in London last year, and it’s not doing so good” referring to both high house prices and high immigration, making a link between those.

Speaking on ITV, Ms Rayner said: “I’m very proud of the election success that Labour had recently.

“We won votes across all different communities, across the whole of the country, and we’re interested in governing on behalf of Britain and also working with our international allies.”

Mr Vance’s comments were also criticised by Exchequer Secretary James Murray.

Mr Murray told Sky News: “I don’t know what he was driving at in that comment, to be honest. I mean, in Britain, we’re very proud of our diversity.

“I’m very proud that we have a new government, I’m very proud that our Labour government is committed to national security and economic growth. I’m very clear where we are.

“I don’t really know how that comment fits in.”

Foreign Secretary David Lammy has spent recent months consciously seeking to forge strong relations with Donald Trump’s allies, among them Mr Vance.

Mr Lammy met Mr Vance alongside several Trump allies during a goodwill mission to the US in May, describing him as his “friend”.

In a speech at the right-leaning Hudson Institute in Washington in May, Mr Lammy said Mr Vance was “right to say we in Europe have a problem that we need to fix with higher defence expenditure”.

He also said Mr Trump has been “often misunderstood” when it comes to Nato, that he “gets the agenda that drives America First”, and that he would find “common cause” with a Trump administration.

But Mr Vance’s selection could pose a challenge for the new Labour government if Mr Trump returns to the White House.

Former president Mr Trump has opted for one of the most isolationist members of the Republican Party.

The former Trump-critic, now Trump-evangelist, opposes aiding Ukraine – while Sir Keir Starmer has committed to spending £3bn on aid for Ukraine for “as long as it takes”.

Mr Vance has also criticised Europe’s overdependence on the US in foreign policy – potentially straining US-UK relations.

Regardless of Mr Vance’s recent intervention, Labour believes their diplomacy with Mr Trump’s team is beginning to bear fruit.

Labour sources point to Sir Keir’s conversation with the ex-president on Sunday in the aftermath of the assassination attempt – the first time the pair had spoken.

Andrew Bowie, the shadow veterans minister, said he “absolutely” disagreed with the claim that Labour was creating an “Islamist country”.

He told Times Radio: “I disagree with the Labour Party fundamentally on many issues, but I do not agree with that view, quite frankly.

“I think it’s actually quite offensive, frankly, to my colleagues in the Labour Party.”

As JD Vance walked on to the RNC convention floor to accept the party’s vice-presidential nomination on Monday, speakers lined up to lavish praise on his impeccable credentials.

But the Ohio senator and running mate of Republican White House candidate Donald Trump has previously said he feels “humbled” by the stellar CV of his wife, Usha Vance.

While she does not seek out the political spotlight, Mrs Vance, 38, wields considerable influence over her husband’s career, he has said.

In an interview on Fox News last month, she said: “I believe in JD, and I really love him, and so we’ll just sort of see what happens with our life.”

The two met as students at Yale Law School in 2013, when they joined a discussion group on “social decline in white America”, according to the New York Times.

The content influenced Mr Vance’s best-selling 2016 memoir Hillbilly Elegy, about his childhood in the white working-class Rust Belt, which became a 2020 movie directed by Ron Howard.

Mr Vance, 39, has said he considered her his “Yale spirit guide” when they were classmates at the elite university.

Mrs Vance previously graduated with a BA in history from Yale University and was also a Gates Scholar at Cambridge University, where she came away with an MPhil in early modern history, according to her LinkedIn profile.

The couple wed in 2014 and have three children: two sons, Ewan and Vivek, and a daughter, Mirabel.

• Why Trump picked JD Vance
• Once ‘never Trump’, now he’s his running mate

Mrs Vance – née Chilukuri, the child of Indian immigrants – was born and raised in the suburbs of San Diego, California.

Her husband regularly rails about “woke” ideas he says are pushed by Democrats, but his wife was formerly a registered Democrat and is now a corporate litigator at a San Francisco law firm which proudly touts its reputation for being “radically progressive”.

Mrs Vance once clerked for Brett Kavanaugh, now a Supreme Court justice, on the District of Columbia court of appeals. Then she clerked for Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts. Both men are part of the highest court’s conservative majority.

“Usha definitely brings me back to Earth a little bit,” Mr Vance told the Megyn Kelly Show podcast in 2020. “And if I maybe get a little bit too cocky or a little too proud I just remind myself that she is way more accomplished than I am.”

“People don’t realise just how brilliant she is,” he added, saying she is able to digest a 1,000-page book in only a few hours.

She is the “powerful female voice on his left shoulder”, giving him guidance, he said.

As Mr Vance gears up for what is certain to be a gruelling campaign for the White House, he may need her counsel more than ever before.

US President Joe Biden has said it was a mistake for him to say “time to put Trump in a bullseye”, days before Saturday’s assassination attempt on his election rival.

Mr Biden’s remarks came in his first interview since the incident, in which he defended his rhetoric against Donald Trump and cited why it was important.

The president told NBC’s Lester Holt his campaign had a duty to clearly communicate the threat of a second Trump term, adding that his words were not the ones that needed to be tempered.

After a brief pause following Saturday’s attack, presidential campaign events now appear to be back under way.

Mr Biden is set to speak at the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) convention in Las Vegas on Tuesday.

Trump made his first appearance at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee on Monday, to a rapturous welcome.

• Trump to speak Thursday – what to expect at Republican convention
• A shocking act that will reshape the presidential race

During his NBC interview, Mr Biden described a phone call with Trump following the attempted assassination as “very cordial”.

“I told him he was literally in the prayers of Jill and me, and his whole family was weathering this,” he said.

When pressed on his “bullseye” comments, Mr Biden said: “It was a mistake to use the word. I didn’t say crosshairs. I meant bullseye, I meant focus on him. Focus on what he’s doing.”

He said he meant Democrats needed to look at Trump, his policies and the false statements he made during the presidential debate late last month.

According to Politico, Mr Biden had said on a private donor call: “I have one job, and that’s to beat Donald Trump. I’m absolutely certain I’m the best person to be able to do that. So, we’re done talking about the debate. It’s time to put Trump in a bullseye.”

Throughout the interview, Mr Biden made it clear he would not be stepping aside in the presidential race – despite calls from members of his own party after his poor debate performance.

“I’m old,” he lamented, while also noting he’s only three years older than Trump. He said his mental acuity was fine and listed his accomplishments as president – but acknowledged he was working to reaffirm to Americans that he was up to the job.

“I understand why people say, ‘God, he’s 81 years old. Whoa. What’s he going to be when he’s 83 years old, 84 years?’ It’s a legitimate question to ask,” he said.

He said he put his faith in the voters who overwhelmingly backed him in the Democratic primary. “I listen to them.”

The president has repeatedly called for Americans to “lower the temperature” since the shooting on Saturday, where Trump’s ear was grazed by a bullet.

One crowd member was killed and two others were critically injured in the attack.

About a dozen Republicans have blamed Mr Biden and other Democrats for inciting the attempt on Trump’s life. Many have specifically cited the “bullseye” comment.

JD Vance, who was announced as Trump’s presidential running mate on Monday, said in the wake of the shooting that Democratic rhetoric about the Republican candidate “led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination”.

President Biden, in an Oval Office address on Sunday, denounced the attack and called for Americans to “take a step back”, warning that “political rhetoric in this country has gotten very heated”.

When asked in the NBC interview if he had also taken a step back to examine his past remarks for anything “that could incite people who are not balanced”, Mr Biden said the inflammatory rhetoric had not come from him.

“I’ve not engaged in that rhetoric,” Mr Biden said. “Now, my opponent is engaged in that rhetoric.

“How do you talk about the threat to democracy, which is real, when a president says things like he says? Do you just not say anything, because it may incite somebody?

“I am not the guy that said I want to be a dictator on day one, I am not the guy that refused to accept the outcome of the election.”

The FBI has identified the gunman who targeted Trump as Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, a kitchen worker from Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, who is a registered Republican.

A Secret Service sniper shot Crooks dead after he fired at the former president.

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.

In 2016, when Donald Trump picked Indiana Governor Mike Pence as his running mate, it was widely viewed as an effort to court evangelical Christian voters who may have been wary of supporting Trump, a thrice-married former Democrat.

This time around, he opted for JD Vance. And like his previous choice, the Ohio senator’s selection offers some insight into the former president’s campaign strategy – and, possibly, how he would govern if he returns to the White House.

The pick suggests Trump knows this election will be won and lost in a handful of industrial Midwest battleground states.

A native of Ohio, Mr Vance gained popular attention after the release of his bestselling memoir Hillbilly Elegy, which tells of his blue-collar upbringing and how it affected his politics and worldview.

With his background, Vance could be well positioned to connect with and energise the kind of white, working class voters who narrowly delivered those states to Trump in 2016.

The former president said as much, in the social media post announcing his decision, writing that his running mate “will be strongly focused on the people he fought so brilliantly for, the American workers and farmers in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Minnesota and far beyond”.

Trump went on to laud his pick’s military service and his Ivy League law school pedigree.

At only 39, Vance will provide a youthful counterpoint to the candidates at the top of both presidential tickets. Trump’s choice positions the Ohioan to be at the forefront of a new generation of Maga Republicans. And if the former president returns to the Oval Office next year, Vance will instantly join the conversation for the party’s 2028 presidential nomination.

Vance did, however, criticise Trump in the run-up to the election in 2016 – something Democrats were quick to point out – but he has since become an outspoken defender of the former president, particularly on television news networks.

His recent loyalty, and effectiveness, no doubt factored into Trump’s decision.

When asked whether he believed Trump’s 2020 election defeat was fairly decided, he has said no. He has also said that, unlike Mr Pence, he would have tried to block the certification of the election results in Congress on 6 January 2021, the day of the Capitol riot.

• Once ‘never Trump’, now he’s his running mate
• Who is Usha Vance, lawyer and JD’s wife?

Mr Vance also aligns closely with the former president’s political ideology. They have similar views on trade, immigration and foreign policy. Mr Vance has been particularly critical of continued US support for Ukraine.

In areas where the two men differed, Mr Vance has moved toward his new running mate. He has, for example, backed away from an earlier stand against allowing women who are the victims of rape or incest from having access to abortions.

Trump over the course of his campaign has laid out some of his plans for governing in a second term – with across-the-board tariffs, a pledge to deport tens of millions of undocumented migrants and an aggressive realignment of the federal bureaucratic workforce. The Vance pick is further evidence that Trump has doubled-down on Trumpism.

That, too, is something his Democratic opponents are sure to point out. On Monday, Mr Biden told reporters he didn’t see any difference between Mr Vance and the former president.

“He’s a clone of Trump on the issues,” he added.

That, of course, may be exactly what Trump wants.

European politicians and diplomats had already prepared for changes to their relationship with the US in the event of a second Donald Trump presidency.

Now that the Republican candidate has chosen Ohio Senator JD Vance as his running mate, those differences appear even more stark on prospects for the war in Ukraine, security and trade.

A vocal critic of US aid to Ukraine, Mr Vance told this year’s Munich Security Conference that Europe should wake up to the US having to “pivot” its focus to East Asia.

“The American security blanket has allowed European security to atrophy,” he said.

Nils Schmid, a senior MP in German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s party, told the BBC that he was confident a Republican presidency would continue to stay within Nato, even if JD Vance came across as “more isolationist” and Donald Trump remained “unpredictable”.

However, he warned of a new round of “trade wars” with the US under a second Trump presidency.

An EU diplomat said that after four years of Donald Trump no-one was naïve: “We understand what it means if Trump comes back as a second-term president, regardless of his running mate.”

Portraying the EU as a sailing boat preparing for a storm the diplomat, who preferred not to be named, added that whatever they might be able to tie down, it was always going to be rough.

The US is Ukraine’s biggest ally, and President Volodymyr Zelensky said this week: “I’m not afraid about him becoming president, we will work together.”

He also said that he believed most of the Republican party supported Ukraine and its people.

Mr Zelensky and Mr Trump also have a common friend in Boris Johnson, the former UK prime minister, who has consistently championed continued aid for Ukraine and recently met the former president at the Republican National Convention.

Following the meeting, Mr Johnson posted on X that he had “no doubt that [Mr Trump] will be strong and decisive in supporting that country and defending democracy”.

But even if that sentiment is true, it might not apply to Mr Vance, who, days before the full-scale invasion, told a podcast he “doesn’t really care what happens in Ukraine, one way or the other”. He also played a key role in delaying a $60bn military aid package from Washington.

“We need to try and convince him otherwise,” says Yevhen Mahda, the Executive Director of the Institute of World Policy think tank in Kyiv.

“A fact we can use is that he fought in Iraq, therefore he should be invited to Ukraine so he can see with his own eyes what is happening and how American money is spent.”

The question for Kyiv will be to what extent he can influence the decisions of his new boss.

Yevhen Mahda agrees that Trump’s unpredictability could be a problem for Kyiv in the run-up to the US presidential election.

The biggest supporter of the Trump-Vance ticket in the European Union is Hungary’s Viktor Orban who returned recently from a visit to see the Republican candidate, after visiting Mr Zelensky and President Putin, with whom he maintains close ties.

In a letter to EU leaders, Mr Orban said a victorious Donald Trump would not even wait to be inaugurated as president before quickly demanding peace talks between Russia and Ukraine.

“He has detailed and well-founded plans for this,” the letter states.

Mr Zelensky has himself said this week that Russia should attend a peace summit possibly next November, and he has promised a “fully ready plan”. But he made clear he had not come under Western pressure to do so.

Viktor Orban’s recent “peace missions” to Moscow and Beijing have sparked accusations that he’s abusing his country’s six-month rotating presidency of the European Council. European Commission officials have been told not to attend meetings in Hungary because of Mr Orban’s actions.

During the Trump presidency, the US imposed tariffs on EU-produced steel and aluminium. Although they were paused under Joe Biden’s administration, Trump has since floated a 10% tariff on all overseas imports should he get back into the White House.

The prospect of renewed economic confrontation with the US will be seen as a bad, even a disastrous, outcome in most European capitals.

“The only thing we know for sure is there will be punitive tariffs levelled on the European Union so we have to prepare for another round of trade wars,” said Nils Schmid, the Social Democrats’ foreign policy lead in the Bundestag.

JD Vance singled out Berlin for criticism of its military preparedness earlier this year.

While he didn’t mean to “beat up” on Germany, he said the industrial base underpinning its arms production was insufficient.

This will all pile further pressure on Germany, Europe’s largest economy, to “step up” as a principle player in underwriting European security.

After his much-lauded “zeitenwende” (turning point) speech in response to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Olaf Scholz was often accused of hesitancy on supplying weapons to Kyiv.

But his allies are always keen to point out that Germany is second only to the US in terms of military aid to Kyiv while it has – for the first time since the end of the Cold War – met the 2% GDP defence spending target, albeit via short-term budgeting.

“I think we are on the right track,” said Mr Schmid. “We have to build back an army that was neglected for 15 to 20 years.”

But observers are far from convinced that behind-the-scenes European preparations are either serious or sufficient.

There are few leaders with the political clout or inclination to champion the future security architecture of an unwieldy European continent.

Chancellor Scholz has an understated style and clear resistance to taking a lead on bolder foreign policy positions – and faces a very real prospect of being voted out of office next year.

French President Emmanuel Macron has been left a severely weakened figure after calling parliamentary elections that have left his country in a state of political paralysis.

Polish President Andrzej Duda warned on Tuesday that if Ukraine loses its struggle against Russia “then Russia’s potential war with the West will be extremely imminent”.

“This voracious Russian monster will want to attack on and on.”

Thailand has expanded its visa-free entry scheme to 93 countries and territories as it seeks to revitalize its tourism industry.

Visitors can stay in the South-East Asian nation for up to 60 days under the new scheme that took effect on Monday,

Previously, passport holders from 57 countries were allowed to enter without a visa.

Tourism is a key pillar of the Thai economy, but it has not fully recovered from the pandemic.

Thailand recorded 17.5 million foreign tourists arrivals in the first six months of 2024, up 35% from the same period last year, according to official data. However, the numbers pale in comparison to pre-pandemic levels.

Most of the visitors were from China, Malaysia and India.

Tourism revenue during the same period came in at 858 billion baht ($23.6bn; £18.3bn), less than a quarter of the government’s target.

Millions of tourists flock to Thailand every year for its golden temples, white sand beaches, picturesque mountains and vibrant night life.

The revised visa-free rules are part of a broader plan to boost tourism.

Also on Monday, Thailand introduced a new five-year visa for remote workers, that allows holders to stay for up to 180 days each year.

The country will also allow visiting students, who earn a bachelor’s degree or higher in Thailand, to stay for one year after graduation to find a job or travel.

In June, authorities announced an extension of a waiver on hoteliers’ operating fees for two more years. They also scrapped a proposed tourism fee for visitors flying into the country.

However some stakeholders are concerned that the country’s infrastructure may not be able to keep up with travellers’ demands.

“If more people are coming, it means the country as a whole… has to prepare our resources to welcome them,” said Kantapong Thananuangroj, president of the Thai Tourism Promotion Association.

“If not, [the tourists] may not be impressed with the experience they have in Thailand and we may not get a second chance,” he said.

Chamnan Srisawat, president of the Tourism Council of Thailand, said he foresees a “bottleneck in air traffic as the incoming flights may not increase in time to catch up with the demands of the travellers”.

Some people have also raised safety concerns after rumours that tourists have been kidnapped and sent across the border to work in scam centres in Myanmar or Cambodia.

A fatal shooting in Bangkok’s most famous shopping mall last year has also caused concern among visitors.

Chinese e-commerce platforms have taken down t-shirts featuring an image of Donald Trump pumping his fist into the air moments after he was shot at.

The T-shirts, which went on sale within hours of the shooting, were available on popular e-commerce sites like Taobao and JD.com.

It is unclear why the listings were taken down, but the Chinese internet is heavily controlled, with content considered “sensitive” routinely taken down.

The assassination attempt at a Pennsylvania rally last Saturday sparked widespread discussion online, with related hashtags trending high on X-like platform Weibo.

Enterprising Chinese retailers leapt into action, with the first batch of T-shirts printed and put up for sale online less than three hours after the shooting.

A cached image on Taobao, one of China’s largest e-commerce sites, shows the T-shirt priced at 39 yuan ($9; £7).

A 25-year-old Taobao retailer told South China Morning Post that she received more than 2,000 orders for the T-shirts a mere three hours after she put it up for sale. Most were from China and the US.

Trump has been the source of online attention in China for years – for both positive and negative reasons.

The trade war he waged with Beijing during his presidency enraged the government and many Chinese people, but saw some support as well – among them a group of Chinese immigrants in the US who have been translating all of Trump’s tweets via the X account @Trump_Chinese. The account, started in September 2018, has amassed more than 344,000 followers over the years.

There is also a popular online joke that plays on the Chinese translation of Trump -which is Chuan. He is often referred to as Chuan Jianguo which translates to “Trump – our nation builder” as a means of mocking what they see as his role in helping set China on the path to becoming a superpower.

Chinese entrepreneurs have been cashing in on the interest in him for years now.

Although the listings of T-shirts featuring Trump after the shooting have been pulled in China, online retailers there are still peddling a wide range of Trump merchandise including socks and mugs with his caricature, and red caps bearing his campaign slogan “Make America Great Again”.

Retailers around the world have also capitalised on the assassination attempt.

Similar T-shirts have been seen available for sale on Lazada and Shopee, e-commerce platforms popular in South East Asia.

Lazada is owned by the Chinese technology giant Alibaba Group, which also owns Taobao.

Photographs online also show similar T-shirts for sale in the US. Some had captions added to them – one read “Leaders Never Die”, while another said “Bullet Proof”.

Jack Black has said he’s cancelled the rest of the Tenacious D world tour after his bandmate Kyle Gass sparked an outcry with a comment about the assassination attempt on Donald Trump.

The comedy rock group were on stage in Sydney, Australia, on Sunday when Gass was asked to make a wish after being presented with a cake for his 64th birthday.

He appeared to reply: “Don’t miss Trump next time.”

In a statement on Instagram, Black said he was “blindsided” by the comment.

“I would never condone hate speech or encourage political violence in any form,” the comedian and actor wrote.

He said he didn’t feel it was “appropriate to continue the Tenacious D tour”, and that the rest of the group’s “creative plans are on hold”.

Black added that he is “grateful to the fans for their support and understanding”.

The controversy had already led to Tuesday’s gig in Newcastle, New South Wales, being postponed.

Gass apologised for the comment on Instagram, saying it was a “severe lack of judgement”.

He wrote: “The line I improvised onstage Sunday night in Sydney was highly inappropriate, dangerous and a terrible mistake.

“I don’t condone violence of any kind, in any form, against anyone. What happened was a tragedy, and I’m incredibly sorry for my severe lack of judgement. I profoundly apologise to those I’ve let down and truly regret any pain I’ve caused.”

Gass also split with his agent following the incident.

“Due to what occurred, we have parted ways,” Michael Greene of Greene Talent told BBC News.

While many in the Sydney crowd can be heard laughing in video from the concert, the comment launched an angry reaction on social media – with X owner Elon Musk calling it “evil”.

United Australia senator Ralph Babet asked for the band to be deported.

In a statement, he said the duo should “be immediately removed from the country after wishing for the assassination of Donald Trump at their Sydney concert”.

Trump was shot in the ear when a gunman opened fire at a Pennsylvania rally on Saturday.

The FBI has identified the gunman who targeted Trump as Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, a kitchen worker from Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, who is a registered Republican.

A Secret Service sniper shot Crooks dead after he fired at the former president. One spectator was killed and two others were seriously injured.

Six people, including a policeman, have been killed and 28 others injured in a rare shooting attack near a Shia mosque in Oman’s capital, Muscat, police say.

The three attackers were also killed by security forces during the incident in the al-Wadi al-Kabir area on Monday night, according to a statement.

It did not provide details about the identities of the victims and gunmen, or the motive. But Pakistan said four Pakistanis were among those killed in a “terrorist attack” on the Imam Ali Mosque. India also said one of its citizen was killed.

Video showed a crowd running for cover inside the mosque’s courtyard as gunshots were heard. Worshippers had gathered there on the eve of the Shia holy day of Ashura.

The police statement expressed condolences to the victims’ families and said an investigation into the circumstances of the incident was under way.

It also emphasised “the necessity of obtaining information from official sources and disregarding unreliable information”.

Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said he was “deeply saddened” by the attack and that his “heart goes out to the families of the victims”.

“I have instructed the Pakistan embassy in Muscat to extend all possible assistance to the injured and visit the hospitals personally,” he wrote on X.

“Pakistan stands in solidarity with the Sultanate of Oman and offers full assistance in the investigation.”

Pakistan’s embassy in Muscat named the four Pakistanis who were killed as Ghulam Abbas, Hasan Abbas, Sayyed Qaisar Abbas and Sulaiman Nawaz. It also said 30 Pakistanis were receiving hospital treatment.

On Tuesday morning, Pakistani ambassador Imran Ali said in a video that he had visited some of those injured at three local hospitals and described their conditions as “relatively safe”.

He also advised Pakistani residents of Oman to avoid al-Wadi al-Kabir and to co-operate with local authorities.

Mr Ali later told AFP news agency that the attackers initially opened fire from a building next to the mosque, where hundreds of people had gathered for a prayer service.

The worshippers were held “hostage” by militants before “they were later freed by Omani forces”, he said.

He also said there was little information about the possible motive for the attack, adding: “Everyone is being tight-lipped about this.”

India’s embassy said it had been informed by the Omani foreign ministry that one Indian national was killed and other was injured, without identifying them.

The shooting happened on the night of the ninth day of the Islamic month of Muharram, when Shia Muslims attend rituals on the eve of Ashura. Ashura is a major commemoration of the martyrdom of Imam Hussein, a grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, in a battle in the seventh century.

Some of the worshippers in the courtyard can be heard shouting “O God”, “O Hussein” and “I am here, O Hussein” in the video filmed inside the Imam Ali Mosque as the attack unfolded.

There was no immediate claim from any group, but supporters of the Sunni jihadist group Islamic State (IS) celebrated the shooting on social media networks.

IS has repeatedly targeted Shia ceremonies, processions and worshippers in countries like Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. But it has never before claimed an attack in Oman.

The Gulf state that has long been seen as one of the most stable and secure countries in the Middle East. This has allowed it to play a leading role in mediation efforts to try to resolve conflicts and disputes in the region.

The sultanate has a population of about 4.6 million, of which more than 40% are foreign workers.

The government does not publish statistics about religious affiliation.

However, the US state department estimates that 95% of the population is Muslim, with 45% Sunni, 45% Ibadi and 5% Shia. Hindus, Buddhists and Christians make up the remaining 5%.

At least 50 Palestinians have been killed and dozens wounded in a series of Israeli air strikes in south and central parts of Gaza, the Hamas-run health ministry says.

One of the deadliest attacks occurred in the recently designated humanitarian zone of al-Mawasi, west of the southern city of Khan Younis.

Another strike hit a UN-run school housing displaced people in Nuseirat refugee camp, in central Gaza.

The Israeli military said both strikes had targeted members of Palestinian armed groups and that it was looking into reports of civilian casualties.

It also claimed that half of the leadership of Hamas’s military wing had been killed and approximately 14,000 “terrorists” killed or detained during nine months of Israeli air strikes and ground operations in Gaza.

Israel launched a military campaign to destroy Hamas in response to an unprecedented attack on southern Israel on 7 October, during which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage.

More than 38,710 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory’s health ministry. Its figures do not differentiate between civilians and combatants, but it had reportedly identified 14,680 children, women and elderly people among the dead by the end of April.

Palestinian sources say the strike in Mawasi hit a car carrying four people near the Jordanian field hospital on al-Attar street.

The area is densely populated, including a tented camp housing displaced families and a nearby market.

Videos on social media showed men lifting bodies onto a lorry, and wounded people being treated at the nearby Nasser hospital.

A statement from the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said an aircraft had “struck a company commander in [Palestinian] Islamic Jihad’s naval unit in western Khan Younis”.

“We are looking into the reports stating that several civilians were injured as a result of the strike,” it added. “The details are under review.”

The IDF has designated al-Mawasi as a humanitarian zone for people fleeing areas of active combat elsewhere in Gaza.

The reported attack comes three days after Israel targeted the head of Hamas’s military wing in the same area, killing dozens of people.

It is unclear whether Mohammed Deif survived, but Israel says it has confirmed that another senior commander was killed.

A separate Israeli air strike on Tuesday hit a school run by the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (Unrwa) in Nuseirat that was housing displaced people.

The Gaza health ministry said 23 people were killed, and photographs show extensive damage of the building.

The IDF statement said it had struck “terrorists” who were operating in the school and directing attacks on its troops in Gaza.

“Prior to the strike, numerous steps were taken in order to mitigate the risk of harming civilians, including the use of aerial surveillance, precise munitions, and additional intelligence,” it added.

The IDF accused Hamas of exploiting civilian buildings and using civilians as human shields, which the group has denied.

This is the sixth school across Gaza that Israel has hit in 10 days, attacks that UN officials have strongly condemned.

Two people were reportedly killed in another strike in Nuseirat on Tuesday afternoon, while strikes in the camp overnight left four people dead.

The IDF said on Tuesday morning that it had struck about 40 “terror targets” across Gaza over the previous day.

It also said that troops had killed fighters and dismantled tunnel shafts during a continuing ground operation in the southernmost city of Rafah.

Also on Tuesday, the military wing of Palestinian Islamic Jihad fired rockets into Israeli territory near Gaza for the first time in two weeks, hitting the town of Sderot. One person was reported lightly injured while running for shelter.

An ex-police officer who claims to save children from human traffickers has faked stories to raise money for his charity, the BBC has discovered.

Adam Whittington, founder of Project Rescue Children (PRC) says he has helped more than 700 children in countries including Uganda, Kenya and The Gambia.

But BBC File on 4 has found that some of these children have never been trafficked, and that funds raised – sometimes with the help of celebrity supporters – have not always reached children in need.

PRC has described our allegations that it does not support children as being “completely without merit, misleading and defamatory”.

Our investigation shows Mr Whittington, a British-Australian citizen, has misled donors in a variety of ways – including by raising funds for a baby supposedly rescued from people traffickers, who has actually been with her mother all along. The mother, who lives in poverty, says she and her daughter have never received any money from PRC.

Mr Whittington started working in child rescue two decades ago, after leaving the Metropolitan Police.

He set up a company retrieving children taken abroad by a parent following custody disputes, but later switched his attention to trafficked or abused children.

Both his and PRC’s social media pages have accumulated 1.5 million followers and attracted celebrity support, thanks to their shocking and sometimes disturbing content.

Sam Faiers from ITV’s The Only Way is Essex became a PRC ambassador, and last September was taken to Uganda to meet orphaned and destitute children.

While there, she appealed to her millions of fans to donate and ended up raising £137,000 ($175,000) to build a rescue centre and cover its initial running costs.

It was this fundraising drive that gave me the first real sense that something was amiss.

In the weeks after Sam Faiers’ total was announced, allegations against PRC began popping up on social media, with former ambassadors and directors alleging financial mismanagement and suggesting stories about children were being fabricated.

Less than half of the money – £58,000 ($74,000) – that donors believed would fund the construction and running costs of the proposed rescue centre, was sent to PRC’s Ugandan partner organisation, Make a Child Smile.

Its founder, Alexander Ssembatya, who has apologised to donors, told the BBC he believed the rest of the money had been “eaten by Adam Whittington and PRC”. Construction work was on hold because of a lack of funds, he added.

Sam Faiers told the BBC she was “deeply appalled” and “heartbroken” to learn that not all the funds raised had reached the children and urged Mr Whittington to “do the right thing and release the remainder of the funds immediately to where they are so desperately needed”.

PRC said the money provided was sufficient to complete construction of the rescue centre, and told the BBC it had now withdrawn from the project, accusing Mr Ssembatya of refusing to sign a contract and mismanaging funds.

It said the remaining money had been spent on other children in Uganda and the Philippines.

File on 4: The Child Rescue Con

Charity claims to save children from trafficking and abuse but File on 4 has found that unsuspecting children are being used as props and the rescue centres have no children.

Listen on BBC Sounds now, or on Radio 4 (Tuesday 16 July at 20:00 and Wednesday 17 July at 11:00)

Watch the story on BBC iPlayer, or on the BBC News channel (Saturday 20 July at 13:30)

Although efforts to establish a rescue centre in Uganda fell flat, PRC already claimed to have operations up and running in other African countries, including Kenya.

Since 2020, Mr Whittington has told detailed and distressing stories about the children he has allegedly supported at PRC’s Kenya rescue centre – including siblings who had watched their parents being butchered by traffickers.

Within weeks of launching a sponsorship programme, PRC announced that all 26 Kenyan children pictured on its website had been sponsored.

The rescue centre is in a remote location on the outskirts of the city of Kisumu, which made verifying its existence difficult.

So in April 2024, I travelled with a BBC team, escorted by a police officer, and found the property – supposedly run by a woman known as Mama Jane.

I discovered Mama Jane was an elderly lady called Jane Gori, who lived in the house with her husband. We didn’t find any children, rescued or otherwise.

But I did find out that her son, Kupa Gori, was PRC’s director in Kenya and he had brought Mr Whittington to visit her home.

Mr Whittington uses pictures of improvement work PRC has funded at Mrs Gori’s house to convince donors he is running a rescue centre. Mrs Gori said she had no idea that her name, her house and her photograph were being used by PRC.

Nearby, I met a farmer called Joseph, whose two sons and a granddaughter have featured on the PRC website, described as orphaned, homeless, or victims of trafficking or exploitation. But none of this is true.

Not long after the photographs were taken in 2020, Joseph’s son Eugene died. But his picture remained online until at least February this year. According to PRC’s website, people continued to sponsor him.

Joseph says he has never received any money from PRC, adding: “It pains my heart that someone is using the photos of my child for money we did not get personally.”

When we put our findings to PRC, it told us that it stands by its claim that Jane Gori’s home is a PRC rescue centre that cares for children. It said that all funds for work carried out there were submitted to the Australian Charity Commission – where it was registered.

It did not respond to our question about the misuse of photographs of Joseph’s family.

The next case of deception I uncovered started in 2022, when Mr Whittington claimed to have carried out a dramatic rescue mission – saving a newborn baby from the clutches of traffickers in a busy marketplace in The Gambia.

On the morning of 17 December, his team chased two men who dropped a basket as they ran, he said. Inside was a newborn baby, whom he named Mireya. Mr Whittington posted a picture of her wrapped in a gold-coloured blanket.

To give the story further credibility he told his followers he had adopted the baby and said she was being looked after at PRC’s rescue centre in The Gambia.

He told his UK director Alex Betts the same story and asked her to adopt the child with him.

Ms Betts, an online influencer, hoped to bring the baby back to the UK. An online fundraising campaign was launched, along with a sponsorship programme.

In March 2023, Ms Betts visited the girl she thought was Mireya and took photos and videos of herself playing with a beautiful baby girl. The footage went viral – seen by more than 40 million people.

After Ms Betts arrived back in the UK, Mr Whittington asked her to sign a non-disclosure agreement that would have prevented her saying anything publicly about PRC. She did not understand why and raised concerns.

Then PRC terminated her contract on the grounds, it said, that she was “exploiting children for social media gain”. Ms Betts stopped receiving photo and video updates about Mireya and Mr Whittington attacked her online, falsely branding her a drug addict and alleging, again falsely, that a warrant had been issued for her arrest in The Gambia.

Ms Betts says she was recruited to PRC to “bring social media attention to the organisation”. She rejects the claims against her and says she has always acted “with honest and pure intentions”.

When Ms Betts decided to google “Gambia newborn baby” she discovered the photograph of the baby in a gold blanket was of another child. It had been posted on a maternity unit’s social media page two years before Mireya’s “rescue”.

PRC told us a member of staff had misguidedly used this image because they didn’t want to reveal Mireya’s identity, and that the PRC board had subsequently apologised publicly for any confusion.

The BBC has found no evidence that the marketplace rescue ever happened. But Ms Betts had met a baby – so who was the child?

In May 2024, a year after Ms Betts had posted her viral video, we travelled to The Gambia. Our first stop was the location of PRC’s supposed rescue centre.

But, just as we had found in Kenya, it was not a rescue centre and no rescued children had ever lived there. The man who owned the property told us it was just a family home.

His name was David Bass, the father of Ebou Bass, who had been recruited as PRC’s director in The Gambia. He told us that PRC fixed his roof and installed a fresh water supply. Again, Mr Whittington posted images of this construction work on social media and the PRC website to support his claim to be running a rescue centre.

Mr Bass senior told us he did not know the work on his home had been funded with money raised for the renovation of a rescue centre.

We were told the baby known as Mireya lived in a nearby village. Our search took us to a small compound, where we saw a toddler we recognised immediately from Ms Betts’ videos.

The child’s arms were covered in sores caused by a bacterial skin infection, as her mother couldn’t afford the medication she needed.

She told us her baby had been born and raised in the village and that she had been approached by Ebou Bass when her daughter was three months old. He had told her there were people who wanted to sponsor her baby, she said, so she had allowed him to take the child to meet Ms Betts.

She was amazed to hear the stories being told about her daughter online. She said she had never received any money but had been given some groceries on a few occasions.

Ebou Bass, who is no longer PRC’s director in The Gambia, acknowledged that Mireya’s story was false and that the rescue centre was his family’s home. When challenged, he said it was Mr Whittington’s idea to say they had rescued a baby from traffickers but that he had gone along with it because the child they had used as a prop was very poor and he had hoped she would receive financial help.

Lamin Fatty, from a Gambian organisation called the Child Protection Alliance, is now working with the country’s authorities to investigate Mr Whittington and PRC. He says multiple laws may have been broken in this incident.

PRC insists Mireya’s story is true and told us she was rescued by PRC in collaboration with the Gambian authorities. It has invited the BBC to carry out a DNA test on the child we found. It maintains the Bass home is a PRC rescue centre and that Mireya wasn’t at the property because she was overseas visiting relatives.

Adam Whittington served in the Australian Army before joining the Metropolitan Police in 2001, where he worked for at least five years.

We have not been able to find out what has happened to all the money raised for PRC or where it is being spent – Mr Whittington has set up companies and charities in multiple countries, many of which have never filed any detailed accounts.

But we do know some donations haven’t reached their intended targets.

The BBC has found that, in 2022, the UK’s Charity Commission rejected an application to register PRC as it had not demonstrated it was exclusively charitable and had failed to respond to what the commission described as “significant issues” with its application.

Mr Whittington also has other charitable organisations registered in The Gambia, Kenya, Ukraine and the Philippines.

PRC was a registered charity in Australia until we told the Australian Charity Commission about our investigation. Its charitable status has now been revoked.

Adam Whittington is currently living in Russia. He didn’t respond to our request for an interview.

Since we started our investigation, some content has been removed from PRC’s website and Mr Whittington has been banned from Instagram. He instructed solicitors in Kenya to block our investigation from being broadcast, though they have not succeeded. He has launched an online campaign against the BBC, calling me a “rogue journalist”.

On his remaining social media I can see he is currently travelling back and forth to the Philippines – raising money for a rescue centre and claiming to rescue children. And he says he will soon be expanding PRC into South Africa.

New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez has been found guilty on 16 counts tied to a scheme where he accepted bribes, including gold bars and a Mercedes-Benz, in exchange for helping foreign governments.

A jury convicted Menendez of all charges after more than 12 hours of deliberation over three days. The trial lasted nine weeks.

Menendez – formerly the head of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee – now faces the prospect of decades in prison.

Democratic lawmakers have called on him to step down from Congress in light of his conviction.

“Senator Menendez must now do what is right for his constituents, the Senate, and our country, and resign,” said Democratic Senate Majority leader Chuck Schumer in a statement.

Speaking to reporters after his conviction, Menendez maintained that he is innocent.

“I never violated my public oath,” he said outside the New York City courthouse on Tuesday. “I have never been but a patriot of my country and for my country.”

His lawyer, Adam Fee, said that he was “surprised and disappointed” with the jury’s guilty verdict and has vowed to appeal “aggressively.”

Prosecutors said the case represented “shocking levels of corruption.”

“This wasn’t politics as usual, this was politics for profit,” said Damian Williams, an attorney for the Southern District of New York.

“Now that the jury has convicted Bob Menendez, his years of selling his office to the highest bidder have finally come to an end,” Mr Williams said.

Menendez pleaded not guilty in the trial. His lawyers argued that the gifts he accepted did not qualify as bribes, because prosecutors had failed to prove that he took any specific action as a result of receiving them.

His wife, Nadine Arslanian Menendez, also faces charges in the bribery case, but her trial was delayed so she could undergo breast cancer treatment. She has pleaded not guilty.

His lawyers had attempted to shift blame to Mrs Menendez, portraying her as a financially troubled individual who hoped to “get cash and assets any way she could”.

Meanwhile, prosecutors relied on expert testimony, emails and Menendez’s text messages to show that the senator accepted lavish rewards from foreign governments.

They said the gifts included gold bars worth over $100,000 (£79,000). Some of the bars were handed to jurors as evidence in the trial.

Jurors also heard that FBI agents had found more than $480,000 (£370,452) in cash inside of Menendez’s home, some of which was stuffed in envelopes and coats.

Two businessmen, Wael Hana and Fred Daibes, are also being tried on accusations that they sought out the senator to illegally aid the Egyptian government and secure millions of dollars from a Qatari investment fund.

A third businessman, Jose Uribe, pleaded guilty and testified against Mr Menendez in the trial.

In exchange the bribes, prosecutors said Menendez helped secure millions of dollars in US aid for Egypt, where Hana had ties to government officials.

He was also accused of trying to influence criminal probes involving Daibes and Uribe. Both businessmen were co-defendants in Menendez’s case and were also convicted on the counts they faced.

Menendez is currently running as an independent as he campaigns to keep his seat in November’s election. Most Democrats in the state walked away from him last year after the release of the indictment showing gold bars stashed in his home.

Andy Kim, a Democratic congressman from New Jersey, said the verdict marked “a sad and sombre day” for his state.

“I called on Senator Menendez to step down when these charges were first made public, and now that he has been found guilty, I believe the only course of action for him is to resign his seat immediately,” Mr Kim said in a statement.

“The people of New Jersey deserve better,” he said.

The senator has faced federal corruption charges before. He was tried in 2017, with the justice department alleging he did political favours for a wealthy Florida eye doctor in exchange for luxury holidays and other lavish gifts.

But that case ended in a mistrial after he was acquitted on some charges and jurors were unable to reach a unanimous verdict.

Disney has confirmed it is investigating an apparent leak of internal messages by a hacking group, which claims it is “protecting artists’ rights”.

The group, Nullbulge, said it had gained access to thousands of communications from Disney employees and had downloaded “every file possible”.

It is not clear how commercially sensitive the information is for the media and theme park giant, but it is reported to include messages about upcoming projects the firm is working on.

“Disney is investigating this matter,” a company spokesperson told the BBC in an email.

Nullbulge’s website says the group targets anyone it believes is harming the creative industry by using content generated by artificial intelligence (AI), which it describes as “theft”.

The BBC has made contact with the hackers who claim to be in Russia and say they got into Disney’s internal Slack messaging system through an insider.

But when asked for a sample of the stolen data to verify its authenticity, the hackers did not respond – meaning the BBC has not been able to independently assess if the huge data trove is genuine.

“Disney was our target due to how it handles artist contracts, its approach to AI, and its pretty blatant disregard for the consumer,” the hackers claimed.

They said they released the data because they didn’t expect Disney to meet their demands to stop using AI.

It is unusual for hackers to claim they are “Russian hacktivists” with an ethical agenda – most cyber criminals, including those in Russia, aim to make money by extorting their victims.

The leak was first reported in the gaming press and then picked up by the Wall Street Journal, which said some of the leaked material related to advertising campaigns and interview candidates, with some dating back as far as 2019.

There has been growing concern amongst performers, artists and other creatives that the rapid spread of generative AI will undermine their livelihoods and damage the creative environment.

Generative AI is trained on vast bodies of existing material – including texts, images, music and video. It is then able to produce new work of a standard that can be hard to distinguish from human-generated material.

Some artists and authors have claimed AI firms breached copyright by using their original work to train these AI tools.

Nullbulge describes itself as “a hacktivist group protecting artists’ rights and ensuring fair compensation for their work”.

“Our hacks are not those of malice, but to punish those caught stealing,” it says on its website.

“We will work tirelessly to develop and implement solutions that protect the rights and livelihoods of artists in the digital age.”

The Walt Disney company’s businesses range from film-making and streaming services Disney+ and Hulu, to video games and theme parks dotted across the globe. It owns the hugely successful Marvel and Star Wars franchises.

A high-profile North Korean diplomat stationed in Cuba has defected to the South, Seoul’s spy agency has confirmed to the BBC.

The political counselor is believed to be the highest-ranking North Korean diplomat to escape to South Korea since 2016.

The diplomat defected in November, the National Intelligence Service (NIS) said.

Details about defections of North Koreans often take months to come to light as the defectors must take courses on South Korean society before they are formally integrated.

South Korean media reports say that the defector was a counsellor responsible for political affairs at the North Korean embassy in Cuba. The NIS has not confirmed this to the BBC.

The Chosun Ilbo newspaper said it was able to interview the diplomat, whom it identified as 52-year-old Ri Il Kyu.

It added that he defected because of “disillusionment with the North Korean regime and a bleak future”.

His work reportedly involved stopping Havana from forging official diplomatic ties with Seoul. However, in February, the two governments did establish official relations, in what was seen as a setback for Pyongyang.

“Every North Korean thinks at least once about living in South Korea,” the newspaper quoted him as saying.

The last known high-profile defection to the South was that of Tae Yong-ho in 2016. He is North Korea’s former deputy ambassador to the United Kingdom.

On Sunday, South Korea marked its very first North Korean Defectors’ Day ceremony.

Addressing the ceremony, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol promised better financial support for North Korean defectors and tax incentives for companies hiring them.

Mr Yoon, a conservative, has taken a more hawkish approach towards North Korea and on foreign policy general, compared to his predecessor Moon Jae-In.

He supports sanctions against Kim Jong Un’s regime and has promised to develop technology to carry out a pre-emptive strike on North Korea if Pyongyang looks to attack Seoul.

The latest defection comes at a time of heightened tensions between the two Koreas.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has formally abandoned the goal of reunification with with the South and also recently branded Seoul as “Enemy number One” – a dramatic turnaround from just six years ago when he formally met then South Korean Leader Moon Jae In.

Since then, there has been an upping of rhetoric on both sides of the border.

The two countries floated propaganda balloons along their border towns, with those from the North containing trash and parasites.

And earlier in June, Pyongyang claimed to have test-fired an advanced nuclear warhead missile.

Anti-government protesters in Kenya have returned to the streets stepping up demands for President William Ruto to resign, despite his recent concessions.

One man has been shot dead during a confrontation between protesters and security forces on the outskirts of the capital, a BBC reporter on the ground says.

In central Nairobi, shops have been closed as police fire tear gas to disperse hundreds of demonstrators.

The protests began last month against an unpopular tax bill, which has since been withdrawn by the president.

But they have continued, morphing in to broader anger over bad governance, corruption and police accountability over the deaths of dozens of demonstrators at recent rallies.

Last week, President Ruto called for a “dialogue” as he fired his entire cabinet and the head of the police force resigned.

The protest movement is largely co-ordinated online by young Kenyans, many of whom have rejected talks and are calling for Mr Ruto “to go”.

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A crowd carried the body of the demonstrator killed on Tuesday in Kitengela, in southern Nairobi, to a nearby police station. The police force has not commented on the man’s death.

The protesters chanted “Ruto must go”, lit fires on the road and threw stones as they clashed with the police, a BBC reporter at the scene says.

Chaotic scenes were also witnessed in other parts of the country, including in Mombasa, Kisumu, Nakuru and Nyeri.

A reporter for Kenyan television station K24 has also been badly injured by a bullet whilst covering the protests in Nakuru. She was shot in the thigh and has been taken to hospital for treatment.

Kenya’s Daily Nation newspaper reports that there are protests in nearly half of the country’s 47 counties.

The tax bill was dropped after protesters broke into the parliament building complex on 25 June and set part of it ablaze.

Dozens of people have so far been killed since the demonstrations began, with the state-funded rights body putting the death toll at no less than 50 people and those injured at 413.

Earlier on Tuesday, the acting police chief said there was “credible intelligence” that “certain organised criminal groups” had planned “to infiltrate, disrupt and destabilise” the protests.

Douglas Kanja urged protesting Kenyans to be “peaceful and vigilant” and to “co-operate and co-ordinate with the police” to ensure their safety and “our collective security”.

On Monday, Mr Ruto accused the Ford Foundation of funding the protests.

In a statement, the US-based organisation denied the allegations, saying: “We do not fund or sponsor the recent protests against the finance bill.”

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There was always his family. When he was bullied at school, and beaten, they were there to embrace him when he came home. And when the war started and he was terrorised by the sound of bombs falling, someone always said things were going to be ok.

Muhammed was heavy and found movement difficult. He spent his days sitting in an armchair. If he needed anything, there was a niece or nephew to help.

Muhammed Bhar was 24 and had Down’s syndrome and autism. His mother, Nabila Bhar, 70, told the BBC: “He didn’t know how to eat, drink, or change his clothes. I’m the one who changed his nappies. I’m the one who fed him. He didn’t know how to do anything by himself.”

On 27 June the war came back to the Bhar family’s neighbourhood and Muhammed’s small world shrank further. Along with other residents of Shejaiya, east of Gaza City centre, the Bhars were given orders to evacuate by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).

The IDF was advancing into Shejaiya in pursuit of Hamas fighters fighting from tunnels and houses. But the Bhars were tired of moving.

In a weary tone, Nabila, who is a widow, reeled off the names of relatives’ homes where they’d sought shelter.

“We evacuated around 15 times. We would go to Jibreel’s place, but then there would be bombing at Jibreel’s place. We would go to Haydar Square, but then there would be bombing at Haydar Square. We would go to Rimal, but then there would be bombing at Rimal. We would go to Shawa Square, but there would be bombing at Shawa Square.”

The fighting intensified in the streets around them. They would hide in different parts of the house, often in the bathroom when shooting became especially intense.

“We were under siege for seven days. The tanks and soldiers were all around the house… Muhammed was staying on his sofa…and he didn’t like sitting anywhere except for there,” says Nabila.

For Muhammed war meant loud, violent sounds, the air vibrating with the concussion from shells exploding nearby. None of this could be explained to him.

“He would panic and say, ‘I’m scared, scared’,” Nabila remembers.

“He would say, ‘Hey, hey’, thinking that someone wanted to hit him. He was always scared, fearful. We would come around him, comfort him. He didn’t understand much. His autism made it very difficult.”

On 3 July, according to the family, the IDF raided their home on Nazaz Street. Nabila says there were several dozen soldiers with a combat dog – animals used to find Hamas fighters, and check for booby traps and explosives.

At first she heard them “breaking in and smashing everything” before the soldiers and dog arrived in the room.

Referring to Muhammed, she says: “I told them, ‘He’s disabled, disabled. Have mercy on him, he’s disabled. Keep the dog away from him.’”

Nabila saw the animal attack Muhammed.

“The dog attacked him, biting his chest and then his hand. Muhammed didn’t speak, only muttering ‘No, no, no.’ The dog bit his arm and the blood was shed. I wanted to get to him but I couldn’t. No-one could get to him, and he was patting the dog’s head saying, ‘enough my dear enough.’ In the end, he relaxed his hand, and the dog started tearing at him while he was bleeding.”

Around this point, says Nabila, the soldiers took the young man into another room, and away from the dog. They tried to treat his wounds.

A terrified Muhammed, who had always depended on his family for help, was now in the care of combat soldiers, who had come from streets where they’d been fighting close quarter battles with Hamas.

“They took him away, put him in a separate room, and locked the door. We wanted to see what happened to him. We wanted to see Muhammed, to see what had become of him,” says Nabila.

“They told us to be quiet and aimed their guns at us. They put us in a room by ourselves, and Muhammed was alone in another room. They said, ‘We will bring a military doctor to treat him.’” At one point, according to Nabila, a military doctor arrived and went into the room where Muhammed was lying.

Muhammed’s niece, Janna Bhar, 11, described how the family pleaded with soldiers to help him. “We told them Muhammed was not well, but they kept saying he was fine.”

After several hours, it is not clear how many, the family was ordered at gunpoint to leave, leaving Muhammed behind with the soldiers. There were pleas and cries. Two of his brothers were arrested by the army. They have still not been released. The rest of the family found shelter in a bombed out building.

They returned a week later to a sight that haunts Muhammed’s brother Jibreel. He produces his mobile phone and shows our cameraman a video of the scene.

Muhammed’s body is lying on the floor. There is blood around him, and a tourniquet on his arm. This was most probably used to stop heavy bleeding from his upper arm. Jibreel points to gauze used to bandage a wound, and remarks on the blood that clotted after the tourniquet was applied.

“They were trying to stop the bleeding. Then they left him without stitches or care. Just these basic first aid measures. Of course, as you can see, Muhammed was dead for a period of time already because he was abandoned. We thought he wasn’t at home. But it turned out he had been bleeding and left alone at home all this time. Of course, the army left him.”

It is not clear what exact injury caused Muhammed’s death. Nor what happened to him in the time his family last saw him, and when his brother returned and filmed the dead young man on the floor. He was buried shortly after the family found him, in an alley between houses because it was too dangerous to take the corpse to the mortuary, or a graveyard. There was no post-mortem and no certificate of death.

The family is demanding an investigation but with fighting still going on, and so many dead, it is hard to be hopeful that will happen any time soon. In response to queries from the BBC the IDF said they were checking on the report.

Nabila is left with an image of her dead child that refuses to go away. “This scene I will never forget… I constantly see the dog tearing at him and his hand, and the blood pouring from his hand… It is always in front of my eyes, never leaving me for a moment. We couldn’t save him, neither from them nor from the dog.”

While many people in Somalia squeezed into cafes and homes on Sunday night to watch the Euro football final, hundreds of Mogadishu’s most stylish residents gathered in the beachside Elite Hotel for another competition: Miss Somalia.

The fact that about a kilometre away a car bomb exploded outside the Top Coffee restaurant which was packed with football fans highlights the dramatic contrasts of life in Somalia.

While the beauty show contestants were parading in the hotel, at least five people were killed and about 20 injured in the nearby blast.

The militant Islamist group al-Shabab, which has controlled much of Somalia for more than 15 years, said it carried out the attack.

Hani Abdi Gas founded the Miss Somalia competition in 2021, a brave thing to do in a culturally conservative country with problems with Islamist militants. Somalia has regularly topped the list of the world’s worst places to be a woman.

Ms Gas grew up in Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya, along with hundreds of thousands of other Somalis who fled war and drought. She returned to her homeland in 2020.

Although the pageant is about beauty, Ms Gas said the inspiration behind the competition was to lift up women’s voices and take them out of isolation.

“It fosters unity and empowerment,” she said.

Ms Gas believes it is time for Somalia to join the rest of the world when it comes to beauty contests. “I want to celebrate the aspirations of women from diverse backgrounds, build their confidence and give them a chance to showcase Somali culture worldwide.”

This year’s competition certainly represented women from different walks of life. One of the contestants was a policewoman.

Many in Somalia find the idea of beauty pageants appalling.

Some see them as an affront to Islam and to Somali culture. Others say they are another form of gender abuse, reducing women to objects.

“I am disgusted with the idea of our young women competing in this dreadful contest,” said clan leader Ahmed Abdi Halane.

“Such things are against our culture and our religion. If a girl wears tight clothes and appears on stage, it will bring shame upon her family and her clan. Women are supposed to stay at home and wear modest clothes.”

Some women are also opposed to beauty contests.

“It is good to support the Somali youth but not in ways that conflict with our religion,” said student Sabrina, who did not want to reveal her surname.

“It is not appropriate for a woman to appear in public without covering her neck and that is what the Miss Somalia contestants did.”

Unlike the sombre-coloured robes and veils worn by many Somali women, the Miss Somalia contestants wore flamboyant, figure-hugging gowns.

Dressed in a long golden dress with sleeves flowing down to the floor, 24-year-old Aisha Ikow was crowned Miss Somalia and took home a $1,000 (£770) cash prize.

She is a university student and make-up artist, and represented South-West state. The other finalists were the regional beauty queens from Jubaland in the south and Galmudug in central Somalia.

“I will use this as an opportunity to fight against early marriage and to promote girls’ education,” said Ms Ikow.

“The competition celebrates Somali culture and beauty while shaping a brighter future for women.”

The six judges, five women and one man, found it hard to choose the winner.

The panel included the founder Ms Gas, a representative from the ministry of youth and Miss Somalia 2022. They judged the contestants according to their physical beauty, the way they walked the catwalk, the way they dressed and the way they spoke in public.

There was also an online vote open to the public.

It cost $1 to vote, with the money raised used to fund the event in Mogadishu and overseas trips to compete in the Miss Africa, Miss World and Miss Universe competitions.

The night-time pageant in a luxury seafront hotel was a far cry from the lives of most people in Somalia, especially women.

Four million Somalis, about a quarter of the population, are living elsewhere in the country after being forced from their homes.

The UN estimates between 70% and 80% of them are women.

In 2024, enough data was collected for Somalia to be included in the United Nations Human Development Index for the first time in three decades. It came last.

Somalia is fourth from bottom on the UN’s Gender Inequality Index. Aid groups say 52% of women in the country have experienced gender-based violence. About 98% undergo female genital mutilation.

Traditionally, when a man raped a woman, his “punishment” was that he had to marry the woman who he had sexually assaulted. Attitudes towards rape and other forms of abuse against women have not changed much over the years.

In 2013, a woman in Mogadishu was sentenced to jail for one year after reporting that she had been raped by members of the security forces.

In the self-declared republic of Somaliland, religious leaders quashed a 2018 sexual offences law almost as soon as it was signed. The revised version does not protect women from child marriage, forced marriage, rape or other forms of sexual abuse.

But the fact that a Miss Somalia competition can be held in Mogadishu, even a kilometre away from a suicide bombing, shows that the country is changing both in terms of attitudes and in terms of security.

A beauty pageant would have been unthinkable a few years ago, especially when al-Shabab controlled the capital.

The crowd at Elite Hotel did not leave until the early hours of the morning. They did not hear the sound of the nearby attack as it was drowned out by the noise of the Indian Ocean waves breaking on the beach.

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• Somalia’s men in sarongs taking on al-Shabab militants

An ex-police officer who claims to save children from human traffickers has faked stories to raise money for his charity, the BBC has discovered.

Adam Whittington, founder of Project Rescue Children (PRC) says he has helped more than 700 children in countries including Uganda, Kenya and The Gambia.

But BBC File on 4 has found that some of these children have never been trafficked, and that funds raised – sometimes with the help of celebrity supporters – have not always reached children in need.

PRC has described our allegations that it does not support children as being “completely without merit, misleading and defamatory”.

Our investigation shows Mr Whittington, a British-Australian citizen, has misled donors in a variety of ways – including by raising funds for a baby supposedly rescued from people traffickers, who has actually been with her mother all along. The mother, who lives in poverty, says she and her daughter have never received any money from PRC.

Mr Whittington started working in child rescue two decades ago, after leaving the Metropolitan Police.

He set up a company retrieving children taken abroad by a parent following custody disputes, but later switched his attention to trafficked or abused children.

Both his and PRC’s social media pages have accumulated 1.5 million followers and attracted celebrity support, thanks to their shocking and sometimes disturbing content.

Sam Faiers from ITV’s The Only Way is Essex became a PRC ambassador, and last September was taken to Uganda to meet orphaned and destitute children.

While there, she appealed to her millions of fans to donate and ended up raising £137,000 ($175,000) to build a rescue centre and cover its initial running costs.

It was this fundraising drive that gave me the first real sense that something was amiss.

In the weeks after Sam Faiers’ total was announced, allegations against PRC began popping up on social media, with former ambassadors and directors alleging financial mismanagement and suggesting stories about children were being fabricated.

Less than half of the money – £58,000 ($74,000) – that donors believed would fund the construction and running costs of the proposed rescue centre, was sent to PRC’s Ugandan partner organisation, Make a Child Smile.

Its founder, Alexander Ssembatya, who has apologised to donors, told the BBC he believed the rest of the money had been “eaten by Adam Whittington and PRC”. Construction work was on hold because of a lack of funds, he added.

Sam Faiers told the BBC she was “deeply appalled” and “heartbroken” to learn that not all the funds raised had reached the children and urged Mr Whittington to “do the right thing and release the remainder of the funds immediately to where they are so desperately needed”.

PRC said the money provided was sufficient to complete construction of the rescue centre, and told the BBC it had now withdrawn from the project, accusing Mr Ssembatya of refusing to sign a contract and mismanaging funds.

It said the remaining money had been spent on other children in Uganda and the Philippines.

File on 4: The Child Rescue Con

Charity claims to save children from trafficking and abuse but File on 4 has found that unsuspecting children are being used as props and the rescue centres have no children.

Listen on BBC Sounds now, or on Radio 4 (Tuesday 16 July at 20:00 and Wednesday 17 July at 11:00)

Watch the story on BBC iPlayer, or on the BBC News channel (Saturday 20 July at 13:30)

Although efforts to establish a rescue centre in Uganda fell flat, PRC already claimed to have operations up and running in other African countries, including Kenya.

Since 2020, Mr Whittington has told detailed and distressing stories about the children he has allegedly supported at PRC’s Kenya rescue centre – including siblings who had watched their parents being butchered by traffickers.

Within weeks of launching a sponsorship programme, PRC announced that all 26 Kenyan children pictured on its website had been sponsored.

The rescue centre is in a remote location on the outskirts of the city of Kisumu, which made verifying its existence difficult.

So in April 2024, I travelled with a BBC team, escorted by a police officer, and found the property – supposedly run by a woman known as Mama Jane.

I discovered Mama Jane was an elderly lady called Jane Gori, who lived in the house with her husband. We didn’t find any children, rescued or otherwise.

But I did find out that her son, Kupa Gori, was PRC’s director in Kenya and he had brought Mr Whittington to visit her home.

Mr Whittington uses pictures of improvement work PRC has funded at Mrs Gori’s house to convince donors he is running a rescue centre. Mrs Gori said she had no idea that her name, her house and her photograph were being used by PRC.

Nearby, I met a farmer called Joseph, whose two sons and a granddaughter have featured on the PRC website, described as orphaned, homeless, or victims of trafficking or exploitation. But none of this is true.

Not long after the photographs were taken in 2020, Joseph’s son Eugene died. But his picture remained online until at least February this year. According to PRC’s website, people continued to sponsor him.

Joseph says he has never received any money from PRC, adding: “It pains my heart that someone is using the photos of my child for money we did not get personally.”

When we put our findings to PRC, it told us that it stands by its claim that Jane Gori’s home is a PRC rescue centre that cares for children. It said that all funds for work carried out there were submitted to the Australian Charity Commission – where it was registered.

It did not respond to our question about the misuse of photographs of Joseph’s family.

The next case of deception I uncovered started in 2022, when Mr Whittington claimed to have carried out a dramatic rescue mission – saving a newborn baby from the clutches of traffickers in a busy marketplace in The Gambia.

On the morning of 17 December, his team chased two men who dropped a basket as they ran, he said. Inside was a newborn baby, whom he named Mireya. Mr Whittington posted a picture of her wrapped in a gold-coloured blanket.

To give the story further credibility he told his followers he had adopted the baby and said she was being looked after at PRC’s rescue centre in The Gambia.

He told his UK director Alex Betts the same story and asked her to adopt the child with him.

Ms Betts, an online influencer, hoped to bring the baby back to the UK. An online fundraising campaign was launched, along with a sponsorship programme.

In March 2023, Ms Betts visited the girl she thought was Mireya and took photos and videos of herself playing with a beautiful baby girl. The footage went viral – seen by more than 40 million people.

After Ms Betts arrived back in the UK, Mr Whittington asked her to sign a non-disclosure agreement that would have prevented her saying anything publicly about PRC. She did not understand why and raised concerns.

Then PRC terminated her contract on the grounds, it said, that she was “exploiting children for social media gain”. Ms Betts stopped receiving photo and video updates about Mireya and Mr Whittington attacked her online, falsely branding her a drug addict and alleging, again falsely, that a warrant had been issued for her arrest in The Gambia.

Ms Betts says she was recruited to PRC to “bring social media attention to the organisation”. She rejects the claims against her and says she has always acted “with honest and pure intentions”.

When Ms Betts decided to google “Gambia newborn baby” she discovered the photograph of the baby in a gold blanket was of another child. It had been posted on a maternity unit’s social media page two years before Mireya’s “rescue”.

PRC told us a member of staff had misguidedly used this image because they didn’t want to reveal Mireya’s identity, and that the PRC board had subsequently apologised publicly for any confusion.

The BBC has found no evidence that the marketplace rescue ever happened. But Ms Betts had met a baby – so who was the child?

In May 2024, a year after Ms Betts had posted her viral video, we travelled to The Gambia. Our first stop was the location of PRC’s supposed rescue centre.

But, just as we had found in Kenya, it was not a rescue centre and no rescued children had ever lived there. The man who owned the property told us it was just a family home.

His name was David Bass, the father of Ebou Bass, who had been recruited as PRC’s director in The Gambia. He told us that PRC fixed his roof and installed a fresh water supply. Again, Mr Whittington posted images of this construction work on social media and the PRC website to support his claim to be running a rescue centre.

Mr Bass senior told us he did not know the work on his home had been funded with money raised for the renovation of a rescue centre.

We were told the baby known as Mireya lived in a nearby village. Our search took us to a small compound, where we saw a toddler we recognised immediately from Ms Betts’ videos.

The child’s arms were covered in sores caused by a bacterial skin infection, as her mother couldn’t afford the medication she needed.

She told us her baby had been born and raised in the village and that she had been approached by Ebou Bass when her daughter was three months old. He had told her there were people who wanted to sponsor her baby, she said, so she had allowed him to take the child to meet Ms Betts.

She was amazed to hear the stories being told about her daughter online. She said she had never received any money but had been given some groceries on a few occasions.

Ebou Bass, who is no longer PRC’s director in The Gambia, acknowledged that Mireya’s story was false and that the rescue centre was his family’s home. When challenged, he said it was Mr Whittington’s idea to say they had rescued a baby from traffickers but that he had gone along with it because the child they had used as a prop was very poor and he had hoped she would receive financial help.

Lamin Fatty, from a Gambian organisation called the Child Protection Alliance, is now working with the country’s authorities to investigate Mr Whittington and PRC. He says multiple laws may have been broken in this incident.

PRC insists Mireya’s story is true and told us she was rescued by PRC in collaboration with the Gambian authorities. It has invited the BBC to carry out a DNA test on the child we found. It maintains the Bass home is a PRC rescue centre and that Mireya wasn’t at the property because she was overseas visiting relatives.

Adam Whittington served in the Australian Army before joining the Metropolitan Police in 2001, where he worked for at least five years.

We have not been able to find out what has happened to all the money raised for PRC or where it is being spent – Mr Whittington has set up companies and charities in multiple countries, many of which have never filed any detailed accounts.

But we do know some donations haven’t reached their intended targets.

The BBC has found that, in 2022, the UK’s Charity Commission rejected an application to register PRC as it had not demonstrated it was exclusively charitable and had failed to respond to what the commission described as “significant issues” with its application.

Mr Whittington also has other charitable organisations registered in The Gambia, Kenya, Ukraine and the Philippines.

PRC was a registered charity in Australia until we told the Australian Charity Commission about our investigation. Its charitable status has now been revoked.

Adam Whittington is currently living in Russia. He didn’t respond to our request for an interview.

Since we started our investigation, some content has been removed from PRC’s website and Mr Whittington has been banned from Instagram. He instructed solicitors in Kenya to block our investigation from being broadcast, though they have not succeeded. He has launched an online campaign against the BBC, calling me a “rogue journalist”.

On his remaining social media I can see he is currently travelling back and forth to the Philippines – raising money for a rescue centre and claiming to rescue children. And he says he will soon be expanding PRC into South Africa.

For more than 10 years, Abu Mohammad has been living in a tent with his family in northern Syria, displaced by the long-running civil war. Unable to earn enough to support them, he, like hundreds of others, has decided to travel via Turkey to Niger to work as a mercenary.

Abu Mohammad (not his real name), who is 33, and his wife have four young children – they have no running water or toilet and rely on a small solar panel to charge his phone. Their tent is sweltering in summer and freezing in winter, and leaks when it rains.

“Finding work has become extremely difficult,” he says. He is a member of Turkish-backed opposition forces that have been fighting President Bashar al-Assad for more than a decade.

The faction he works for pays him less than $50 (£40) a month, so when Turkish recruiters appeared offering $1,500 a month to work in Niger, he decided it was the best way to earn more money.

He says Syrian faction leaders help facilitate the process and after “faction taxes and agents” he would still be left with at least two-thirds of the money. “And if I die in battle [in Niger], my family will receive compensation of $50,000,” he adds.

Violence in West Africa’s Sahel region has worsened in recent years as a result of conflict with jihadist groups. Niger and its neighbours Mali and Burkina Faso have all been affected – and all three countries have experienced military coups in the past few years, partly as a result of the instability.

Abu Mohammad is not alone in wanting to go to Niger.

Ali (not his real name), who lives in a tent in rural Idlib, joined Syria’s opposition forces 10 years ago when he was 15. He says he is paid less than $50 a month too, which lasts him five days. He has had to borrow to support his family and sees Niger as the only way to pay off his debts. “I want to leave the military profession entirely and start my own business,” he says.

And for Raed (not his real name), another 22-year-old opposition fighter, going to Niger feels like the only way to build up enough money to “achieve my dream of marriage and starting a family”.

Since December 2023, more than 1,000 Syrian fighters have travelled to Niger via Turkey, according to the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), which monitors the conflict in Syria through a network of sources on the ground. They tend to sign up for six months, but some have now extended the contract to a year.

Before they go, the official line is that the men will be protecting Turkish projects and commercial interests in Niger.

Turkey has extended both its political influence and business operations in the region, selling equipment such as drones to Niger to help it combat militant jihadist groups. It is also involved in mining the country’s natural resources, which include gold, uranium and iron ore.

But the recruits know that despite what they are told, when they arrive in Niger, the reality can be very different.

The SOHR and friends of mercenaries who have already worked in Niger told the BBC that Syrians had ended up under Russian command fighting militant jihadist groups in the border triangle between Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso.

Niger’s democratically elected President Mohamed Bazoum was overthrown a year ago, and since then the junta has cut Western ties.

“Niger started looking for new allies and found a suitable alternative in Russia,” explains Nathaniel Powell, a researcher on the Sahel at Oxford Analytica. “Russian weapons are cheaper than Western ones. Russia also offers military resources and training and shows a willingness to adapt to local requirements without imposing strict conditions, unlike its Western counterparts.”

The prospect of fighting under Russian command poses a dilemma for Syrian fighters who are opposed to the Syrian regime because Russia has been a staunch supporter of President Assad.

“We are mercenaries here and mercenaries there,” says Abu Mohammad, “but I am on a Turkish mission, I will not accept orders from the Russians.”

But he may not have a choice, as Raed acknowledges. “I hate these forces but I have to go for economic reasons,” he says.

They are all still waiting to sign their contacts which they will do “just before or during travel”, says Raed. He explains that the process is secretive and he knows one man who was imprisoned by a Syrian opposition faction “for leaking some details of the operation in Africa and the registration mechanism”.

The recruits we spoke to said their faction leaders had told them that a Turkish company called SADAT would look after them once the contracts were signed and would be involved in arranging their travel and logistics.

About five years ago, Abu Mohamad went to Libya where he worked as a mercenary for six months and says that was also arranged by SADAT.

The SOHR also claims that, based on information from other mercenaries who have already been to Niger, SADAT is involved in the process.

We have not been able to independently verify these claims. We contacted SADAT, which vehemently denied recruiting or deploying Syrian fighters to Niger, saying the claims “had no connection with the truth… we do not carry out any activities in Niger”. It also said it had no activities in Libya apart from a “military sport” project more than a decade ago which it had had to withdraw from because of the crisis there.

The company added that it did “not provide services to non-state actors” but rather provided “consultancy, training and logistics services to armed forces and security forces in the field of defence and security according to the Turkish Commercial Code”.

But private companies are used by the government in Ankara to recruit and send Syrian mercenaries to Niger, according to the SOHR. The organisation’s director, Rami Abdul Rahman, accuses the Turkish state of exploiting Syrians with no money and dire economic prospects.

The BBC put these allegations to the Turkish ministry of foreign affairs, but we have not received a response.

This is not the first time the Turkish government has been accused of sending Syrian fighters abroad. Several reports, including one by the US Department of Defence, have documented Turkish-backed Syrian fighters in Libya – Turkey previously acknowledged that Syrian fighters were present there but did not admit recruiting them. It has also denied that it recruited and deployed Syrian mercenaries to the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region in the Caucasus.

Conditions in Niger mean that staying in touch with families in Syria can be very difficult. When the recruits arrive their phones are confiscated, according to Abdul Rahman of the SOHR. And Abu Mohammad says that his friends in Africa “can contact their families once every two weeks, sometimes less”.

He adds that they can’t speak to their wives or parents themselves, and communication has to go through their superiors in Niger “who reassure the fighters’ families that they are fine”.

Ali adds that some of his friends who travelled to Niger told him they spent most of their time “inside military bases, waiting for orders to fight”.

And not all of them make it home. According to the SOHR, nine have been killed in Niger since December 2023. The bodies of four of them have been returned to Idlib but have not yet been identified.

Raed and Ali say their families do not want them to go, so they may end up lying and pretending that they are going to Turkey to train for a few months.

Abu Mohammed’s family is not keen on the idea either. “If I had the means to live a decent life, I wouldn’t do this kind of job if you offered me a million dollars,” he says, but adds: “If my son asked me for a bike, I could never afford it – it’s these things that are pushing me to go.”

There’s an issue dividing K-pop fans right now – artificial intelligence.

Several of the genre’s biggest stars have now experimented with the technology to create music videos and produce songs, including boy band Seventeen.

Last year the South Korean group sold around 16 million albums, making them one of the most successful K-pop acts in history. But it’s their most recent album and single, Maestro, that’s got people talking.

The music video features an AI-generated scene, and at the launch of the album in Seoul, one of the band members, Woozi, told reporters he was “experimenting” with AI when making music.

“We practised making songs with AI, as we want to develop along with technology rather than complain about it,” he said.

“This is a technological development that we have to leverage, not just be dissatisfied with. I practised using AI and tried to look for the pros and cons.”

However, Woozi has since said on Instagram that all of Seventeen’s music is “written and composed by human creators”.

On K-pop discussion pages, fans were torn over the issue of using AI, with some saying more regulations need to be in place before the technology becomes normalised.

Others were more open to it, including super fan Ashley Peralta. “If AI can help an artist overcome creative blocks, then that’s OK with me,” says the 26-year-old.

Her worry though, is that a whole album of AI generated lyrics means fans will lose touch with their favourite musicians.

“I love it when music is a reflection of an artist and their emotions,” she says. “K-pop artists are much more respected when they’re hands on with choreographing, lyric writing and composing, because you get a piece of their thoughts and feelings.

“AI can take away that crucial component that connects fans to the artists.”

Ashley presents Spill the Soju, a K-pop fan podcast, with her best friend Chelsea Toledo. Chelsea admires Seventeen for being a self-producing group, which means they write their own songs and choreograph them too, but she’s worried about AI having an impact on that reputation.

“If they were to put out an album that’s full of lyrics they hadn’t personally written, I don’t know if it would feel like Seventeen any more and fans want music that is authentically them”.

For those working in K-Pop production, it’s no surprise that artists are embracing new technologies.

Chris Nairn is a producer, composer and songwriter working under the name Azodi. Over the past 12 years he’s written songs for K-pop artists including Kim Woojin and leading agency SM Entertainment.

Working with K-pop stars means Chris, who lives in Brighton, has spent a lot of time in South Korea, whose music industry he describes as progressive.

“What I’ve learned by hanging out in Seoul is that Koreans are big on innovation, and they’re very big on ‘what’s the next thing?’, and asking, ‘how can we be one step ahead?’ It really hit me when I was there,” he says.

“So, to me, it’s no surprise that they’re implementing AI in lyric writing, it’s about keeping up with technology.”

Is AI the future of K-pop? Chris isn’t so sure. As someone who experiments with AI lyric generators, he doesn’t feel the lyrics are strong enough for top artists.

“AI is putting out fairly good quality stuff, but when you’re at the top tier of the songwriting game, generally, people who do best have innovated and created something brand new. AI works by taking what’s already been uploaded and therefore can’t innovate by itself.”

If anything, Chris predicts AI in K-pop will increase the demand for more personal songs.

“There’s going to be pressure from fans to hear lyrics that are from the artist’s heart, and therefore sound different to any songs made using AI”.

Seventeen aren’t the only K-pop band experimenting with AI. Girl group Aespa, who have several AI members as well as human ones, also used the technology in their latest music video. Supernova features generated scenes where the faces of band members remain still as only their mouths move.

Podcaster and super-fan Chelsea says it “triggered” a lot of people.

“K-pop is known for amazing production and editing, so having whole scenes made of AI takes away the charm,” she adds.

Chelsea also worries about artists not getting the right credit. “With AI in videos it’s harder to know if someone’s original artwork has been stolen, it’s a really touchy subject”.

Arpita Adhya is a music journalist and self-titled K-pop superfan. She believes the use of AI in the industry is demonstrative of the pressure artists are under to create new content.

“Most recording artists will put out an album every two years, but K-pop groups are pushing out albums every six to eight months, because there’s so much hype around them.”

She also believes AI has been normalised in the industry, with the introduction of AI covers which have exploded on YouTube. The cover tracks are created by fans and use technology to mimic another artist’s voice.

It’s this kind of trend that Arpita would like to see regulated, something western artists are calling for too.

Just last month megastars including Billie Eilish and Nicki Minaj wrote an open letter calling for the “predatory” use of AI in the music industry to be stopped.

They called on tech firms to pledge not to develop AI music-generation tools “that undermine or replace the human artistry of songwriters and artists, or deny us fair compensation for our work”.

For Arpita, a lack of regulations means fans feel an obligation to regulate what is and isn’t OK.

“Whilst there are no clear guidelines on how much artists can and can’t use AI, we have the struggle of making boundaries ourselves, and always asking ‘what is right and wrong?’”

Thankfully she feels K-pop artists are aware of public opinion and hopes there will be change.

“The fans are the biggest part and they have a lot of influence over artists. Groups are always keen to learn and listen, and if Seventeen and Aespa realise they are hurting their fans, they will hopefully address that.”

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.”

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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, where staff members have said that he passed a background check and raised no concerns.

The Community College of Allegheny, or CCAC, has confirmed that Crooks attended the school between September 2021 and May 2024. He graduated with an associate degree in engineering science.

In a statement sent to the BBC, the college noted that he graduated “with high honours” and that a review of his records turned up no disciplinary, student conduct or security-related incidents.

The University of Pittsburgh also told the BBC that in February he was was accepted as a transfer student there for the fall 2024 semester. The following month, he elected not to attend.

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

He also donated $15 to liberal campaign group ActBlue in 2021, according to an election donation filing and news reports.

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

The vast 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.

The club’s owner, Bill Sellitto, told the BBC that the shooting was a “terrible, terrible thing”. Access to the club is tightly controlled, with only members allowed inside the sprawling facility.

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

Law enforcement officials believe the weapon used to shoot at Donald Trump, an AR-style rifle, was purchased by Crooks’ father, according to investigators.

It is unclear how the weapon came into his son’s hands, although there is no suggestion the father had any inkling of what was to take place.

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

Authorities say that Crooks purchased a box of ammunition containing 50 rounds on the day of the rally, reports CBS, the BBC’s US news partner.

Police sources have also told CBS that he purchased a ladder at Home Depot before the shooting, although it is unclear if he brought it with him.

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 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.

So far, they have been unable to identify one.

On 15 July, the FBI said its forensic experts have successfully accessed Crooks’ phone, and they are examining it and other digital evidence for clues.

The inquiry into what took place could last for months and investigators would work “tirelessly” to identify what Crooks’ motive was, Kevin Rojek, the FBI Pittsburgh special agent in charge, said on the day of the shooting.

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.

Citing three law enforcement sources, CBS has reported that his father called police after the shooting, although the nature of that call is still unclear.

In total, more than 100 interviews have so far been conducted.

Police sealed off the road to the house where Crooks lived with his parents. The search of the residence was completed on 15 July.

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 controlled, with a police vehicle blocking entry to the street in front of the house.

On Tuesday afternoon, yellow police tape could be seen strung up in front of the residence. The BBC had a clear view of the back of the residence, but could not see any movement inside.

Only residents have been allowed in or out of the street.

Law enforcement sources told CBS that they believe there was 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 Crooks 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.”

Another classmate, who similarly did not want to be identified, described him as “intelligent but a little weird.”

Staff at Angelo’s Pizza, a restaurant in Bethel Park, told the BBC they were familiar with Crooks.

The restaurant’s owner, Sara Petko, said that staff members – some of whom were his classmates – thought he was a “loner” but that they were having trouble understanding how an otherwise quiet man turned to violence.

“It’s just crazy, and too close for comfort,” she said. “To think that someone at basically the start of his life could do this.”

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 as 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”.

The two people injured in the attack have been identified as 57-year-old David Dutch and 74-year-old James Copenhaver.

Both men are Pennsylvania residents and are in stable condition.

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.

He travelled to Milwaukee, Wisconsin on Sunday, a day after the shooting, to attend the Republican National Convention.

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.

“There are police running around. We’re telling them there’s a guy on the roof with a rifle,” Greg Smith told the BBC. “Secret Service is looking at us through binoculars, and I’m pointing right at the roof.”

Multiple videos appear to confirm that chain, with some showing rallygoer shouting at police.

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

The assailant opened fire with “an AR-style rifle”, officials have said. His shooting position was approximately 443ft (135m) from Trump.

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.

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.

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.

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.

A man described as a “serial killer” by Kenya’s police was tortured into making a confession, his lawyer has told a court in capital, Nairobi.

Police said that Collins Jumaisi Khalusha, 33, confessed to having killed 42 women since 2022, including his own wife, after his arrest on Monday.

He was detained following the recent discovery of nine mutilated bodies at an abandoned quarry in Nairobi.

Prosecutors denied that he had been mistreated and the court said the suspect could be held for a month, pending further investigations.

John Maina Ndegwa, Mr Khalusha’s lawyer, said his client had been molested by officers and it was “laughable” to suggest that he had confessed.

After the hearing, at which Mr Khalusha appeared in handcuffs but did not speak, his lawyer said he hoped the confession would be expunged from the court records.

“He says he was strangled to confess. You could tell he was in distress, terrified and in anguish,” Mr Ndegwa told the BBC.

He added that he had asked that his client be taken to hospital for urgent treatment.

Mr Khalusha was arrested at a bar early on Monday morning as he was watching the Euro 2024 football final between Spain and England.

He then led officers to his house near the crime scene where 10 phones, a laptop, identity cards and personal female clothing were found, police said.

Since Friday, police have cordoned off the dumpsite, the Mukuru quarry, 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.

There has been shock and outrage in Kenya over the murders – and anger directed towards the police that such crimes could have gone unnoticed for so long.

Kenya’s police have been accused of widespread human rights abuses in the past – and the force is currently under investigation over deaths and abductions following recent anti-government protests.

• Kenya protesters traumatised by abductions – lawyer
• Mystery and heartbreak of the bodies found in a Kenyan river
• Kenya femicide: A woman’s murder exposes the country’s toxic online misogyny

The mother of British teenager Jay Slater says the family’s “hearts are broken” after a body found in Tenerife was confirmed as her son.

Debbie Duncan said in statement that her son’s death was the “worst news”, adding: “I just can’t believe this could happen to my beautiful boy.”

Officials say the 19-year-old’s death is a result of “trauma consistent with a fall in a rocky area”, adding that fingerprint tests showed the body found in Masca on Monday was Mr Slater.

Earlier, charity LBT Global had confirmed that Mr Slater’s possessions were also discovered near his last known location.

The teenager, from Oswaldtwistle, Lancashire, was last seen on 17 June, after visiting an Airbnb rented by two people he had been with at the NRG music festival on the island.

• ‘Vile’ Jay Slater trolling ‘devastating’ for family

Earlier, the High Court of Justice of the Canary Islands said: “We have a positive identification and more data: fingerprint tests show that the body is [that] of Jay Slater and that the death was caused by trauma consistent with a fall in a rocky area.”

LBT Global’s Matthew Searle was with Mr Slater’s mother when they heard the news that the body had been identified as her son and said the family were devastated.

He said: “The announcement does seem to confirm that Jay died of injuries consistent with an accidental fall from a considerable height.”

Mr Searle said the charity, which helps families in missing persons cases overseas, would be supporting the family “to make this horrific time as easy as possible”.

He added: “We are working with the family now to sort out the next steps of taking Jay home, recovery of his belongings and laying him to rest.”

An earlier court statement today said that documentation found with the body belonged to the apprentice bricklayer.

“It is confirmed that the documentation that was on the body found yesterday in the mountains of Masca belongs to Jay Slater,” it said.

It went on to add that “everything suggests that it was an accidental fall” but the results of the official investigation into the death would take more time.

Mr Slater’s body was discovered by members of a mountain rescue team from the Spanish Civil Guard, near the village of Masca, on Monday.

Just two weeks ago, the civil guard on the island said the search had been called off, though the investigation remained open.

It is now clear that, in fact, the force was continuing with searches during this time.

Hinting at a possible reason, police said they made efforts to “preserve the natural space to ensure it did not fill up with curious onlookers”.

That appeared to be a reference to the huge interest the case generated in the UK, particularly on social media, where bizarre conspiracy theories were circulating and which even led to some online sleuths travelling to Tenerife to join in the search.

In contrast to the UK, where officers will often give briefings during investigations, the Spanish police give very little information to the media while cases like this are open. They did, however, say that nothing had been ruled out.

It is possible that this approach allowed the information vacuum to be filled by “curious onlookers”. Announcing the halting of the search yet continuing it in a low-key, virtually secret, way allowed the online noise – and media attention – to subside.

Nonetheless, the police do appear keen to demonstrate how demanding the search has been and why it has taken so long.

Video released by the civil guard showed just how difficult it was to access the steep rocky area where the body was discovered.

Earlier, a friend of Jay Slater paid tribute to “the happiest and most smiley person in the room”.

Lucy Law, who was the last known person to speak to Mr Slater during a phone call on 17 June, paid tribute to him on her Instagram page.

She said: “Honestly lost for words. Always the happiest and most smiley person in the room, you was (sic) one of a kind Jay and you’ll be missed more than you know.”

Ms Law’s tribute continued: “I’m sure you’ll ‘have your dancing shoes polished and ready’ waiting for us all.

“We all love you buddy. Fly high.”

Accrington and Rossendale College, where Mr Slater was studying as an apprentice bricklayer, said it was “deeply saddened” to hear the news of his death.

It added, Mr Slater was a “hard-working apprentice” at the college “with a very bright future ahead of him”.

“Our thoughts and condolences go out to his family, friends, and all who knew and loved him.”

The head teachers of the primary and high school Mr Slater attended in Oswaldtwistle have issued a joint tribute to him.

Andrew Williams, head teacher of Rhyddings High School, and James McBride, head teacher of West End Primary School, said: “All members of our school communities, both past and present, share in our condolences and deepest sympathies for those who knew Jay.

“As a devoted mother, we know Debbie would have never given up looking for Jay, and she and the family are firmly in our thoughts and prayers at this difficult time.”

Hyndburn and Haslingden MP Sarah Smith said the news was “heartbreaking”.

She added: “This is the worst news a parent could ever receive.”

Drag queen Trixie Mattel will be taking a break from work after “struggling” for more than a year.

Trixie became a world renowned star after first appearing on Ru Paul’s Drag Race in 2015.

Since then, the queen returned for the All Stars version and as host of the spin-off show The Pit Stop, as well as running a YouTube channel and make-up business.

Trixie told fans in a video that all the work was “not sustainable” and there would be “a hiatus” for at least three months.

“I need a complete reboot,” says Trixie, who uses she/her pronouns in drag and he/him when not performing.

It was a rare video where Trixie, real name Brian Firkus, was out of drag.

“I feel uncomfortable about telling so much of myself,” Brian says, before opening up about a tough year.

“Things happened this year that I’m not ready to talk about, it just really beat it out of me and taught me new lows of the human experience.

“When you feel like you cannot stop crying and you’re so upset and then you have to put on a wig and make people laugh – it is chilling.”

Brian says he’d been working himself to “death” as Trixie and had become ill from stress.

It got to a point where he “struggled to enjoy” drag, which “I feel weird complaining about because all my wildest dreams came true”.

Brian grew up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and has previously shared his experience of growing up in poverty.

“Growing up poor is traumatising,” he says in the latest video, saying it’s affected his work ethic.

“You can’t take a day off because there’s a pay cheque waiting.

“All I was doing was this. It was all work and money making and then my social life, my family life, my personal life… twigs. Frail twigs.”

As well as Drag Race, Trixie is well known for working with drag queen Katya Zamolodchikova – the pair often perform together and also have a Netflix series and online show UNHhhh.

Since 2022 Trixie’s also had her own show on Discovery+, Trixie Motel, which follows the drag queen as she renovates a motel in California.

Brian told fans: “I love doing all my little jobs” as Trixie but has realised “it’s a good thing to have boundaries”.

“Being a hard worker is fierce, being a hard worker at the expense of your real life and health is not,” he says.

“When you have the fortune that I’ve had, you shouldn’t be stupid and abuse it like I have.”

Brian says he’ll be visiting friends and family and will also be taking a break from social media.

“This break is so overdue,” he says.

“I don’t know what I’m going to come back as, maybe not even as a drag queen, who knows?

“I’m very excited to feel really into drag again and really into performing.”

Listen to Newsbeat live at 12:45 and 17:45 weekdays – or listen back here.

Video of dangerous incidents at level crossings has been released as part of a summer safety campaign.

In June, a girl was filmed running across a crossing in Fishbourne, West Sussex, just a couples of metres in front of an advancing train.

Recent CCTV footage also showed people hanging from rising crossing barriers in Chertsey, Surrey; rushing cyclists colliding in Hounslow, London; and a car swerving to avoid closing barriers in Bramley, Hampshire.

Network Rail, which released the video, said July was a peak time for incidents.

Sam Pead, a regional level crossing manager, said: “It’s frustrating we continue to see people recklessly risking their lives when crossing the railway.

“Across the Southern region, trains can travel as fast as 140mph (225km/h) and are largely powered by the third rail which carries more than enough electricity to kill or seriously injure and is always on.”

Farnham in Surrey and Star Lane in Wokingham, Berkshire, were the most abused level crossings in the Wessex region last year, Network Rail said.

Addlestone and Ash in Surrey and Poole High Street in Dorset also recorded more than one incident per month.

In Chertsey, the CCTV film showed a truck tearing off a barrier in the driver’s effort to escape the tracks.

Incidents involving poorly trained or uncontrolled dogs were a post-Covid trend, Network Rail said.

Clappers Lane in Ferring, West Sussex, recorded near misses involving a dog walker and a cyclist.

Another dog walker ignored a stop sign at Ashtead Common, Surrey, and a dog was also filmed waiting alone on the track at the same location.

The firm reported 28 near misses in the Wessex region in the 2023-24 financial year, which was 13% fewer than the year before.

However, incidents of level crossing misuse in the region rose by 24% to 466.

Jack Black has said he’s cancelled the rest of the Tenacious D world tour after his bandmate Kyle Gass sparked an outcry with a comment about the assassination attempt on Donald Trump.

The comedy rock group were on stage in Sydney, Australia, on Sunday when Gass was asked to make a wish after being presented with a cake for his 64th birthday.

He appeared to reply: “Don’t miss Trump next time.”

In a statement on Instagram, Black said he was “blindsided” by the comment.

“I would never condone hate speech or encourage political violence in any form,” the comedian and actor wrote.

He said he didn’t feel it was “appropriate to continue the Tenacious D tour”, and that the rest of the group’s “creative plans are on hold”.

Black added that he is “grateful to the fans for their support and understanding”.

The controversy had already led to Tuesday’s gig in Newcastle, New South Wales, being postponed.

Gass apologised for the comment on Instagram, saying it was a “severe lack of judgement”.

He wrote: “The line I improvised onstage Sunday night in Sydney was highly inappropriate, dangerous and a terrible mistake.

“I don’t condone violence of any kind, in any form, against anyone. What happened was a tragedy, and I’m incredibly sorry for my severe lack of judgement. I profoundly apologise to those I’ve let down and truly regret any pain I’ve caused.”

Gass also split with his agent following the incident.

“Due to what occurred, we have parted ways,” Michael Greene of Greene Talent told BBC News.

While many in the Sydney crowd can be heard laughing in video from the concert, the comment launched an angry reaction on social media – with X owner Elon Musk calling it “evil”.

United Australia senator Ralph Babet asked for the band to be deported.

In a statement, he said the duo should “be immediately removed from the country after wishing for the assassination of Donald Trump at their Sydney concert”.

Trump was shot in the ear when a gunman opened fire at a Pennsylvania rally on Saturday.

The FBI has identified the gunman who targeted Trump as Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, a kitchen worker from Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, who is a registered Republican.

A Secret Service sniper shot Crooks dead after he fired at the former president. One spectator was killed and two others were seriously injured.

European politicians and diplomats had already prepared for changes to their relationship with the US in the event of a second Donald Trump presidency.

Now that the Republican candidate has chosen Ohio Senator JD Vance as his running mate, those differences appear even more stark on prospects for the war in Ukraine, security and trade.

A vocal critic of US aid to Ukraine, Mr Vance told this year’s Munich Security Conference that Europe should wake up to the US having to “pivot” its focus to East Asia.

“The American security blanket has allowed European security to atrophy,” he said.

Nils Schmid, a senior MP in German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s party, told the BBC that he was confident a Republican presidency would continue to stay within Nato, even if JD Vance came across as “more isolationist” and Donald Trump remained “unpredictable”.

However, he warned of a new round of “trade wars” with the US under a second Trump presidency.

An EU diplomat said that after four years of Donald Trump no-one was naïve: “We understand what it means if Trump comes back as a second-term president, regardless of his running mate.”

Portraying the EU as a sailing boat preparing for a storm the diplomat, who preferred not to be named, added that whatever they might be able to tie down, it was always going to be rough.

The US is Ukraine’s biggest ally, and President Volodymyr Zelensky said this week: “I’m not afraid about him becoming president, we will work together.”

He also said that he believed most of the Republican party supported Ukraine and its people.

Mr Zelensky and Mr Trump also have a common friend in Boris Johnson, the former UK prime minister, who has consistently championed continued aid for Ukraine and recently met the former president at the Republican National Convention.

Following the meeting, Mr Johnson posted on X that he had “no doubt that [Mr Trump] will be strong and decisive in supporting that country and defending democracy”.

But even if that sentiment is true, it might not apply to Mr Vance, who, days before the full-scale invasion, told a podcast he “doesn’t really care what happens in Ukraine, one way or the other”. He also played a key role in delaying a $60bn military aid package from Washington.

“We need to try and convince him otherwise,” says Yevhen Mahda, the Executive Director of the Institute of World Policy think tank in Kyiv.

“A fact we can use is that he fought in Iraq, therefore he should be invited to Ukraine so he can see with his own eyes what is happening and how American money is spent.”

The question for Kyiv will be to what extent he can influence the decisions of his new boss.

Yevhen Mahda agrees that Trump’s unpredictability could be a problem for Kyiv in the run-up to the US presidential election.

The biggest supporter of the Trump-Vance ticket in the European Union is Hungary’s Viktor Orban who returned recently from a visit to see the Republican candidate, after visiting Mr Zelensky and President Putin, with whom he maintains close ties.

In a letter to EU leaders, Mr Orban said a victorious Donald Trump would not even wait to be inaugurated as president before quickly demanding peace talks between Russia and Ukraine.

“He has detailed and well-founded plans for this,” the letter states.

Mr Zelensky has himself said this week that Russia should attend a peace summit possibly next November, and he has promised a “fully ready plan”. But he made clear he had not come under Western pressure to do so.

Viktor Orban’s recent “peace missions” to Moscow and Beijing have sparked accusations that he’s abusing his country’s six-month rotating presidency of the European Council. European Commission officials have been told not to attend meetings in Hungary because of Mr Orban’s actions.

During the Trump presidency, the US imposed tariffs on EU-produced steel and aluminium. Although they were paused under Joe Biden’s administration, Trump has since floated a 10% tariff on all overseas imports should he get back into the White House.

The prospect of renewed economic confrontation with the US will be seen as a bad, even a disastrous, outcome in most European capitals.

“The only thing we know for sure is there will be punitive tariffs levelled on the European Union so we have to prepare for another round of trade wars,” said Nils Schmid, the Social Democrats’ foreign policy lead in the Bundestag.

JD Vance singled out Berlin for criticism of its military preparedness earlier this year.

While he didn’t mean to “beat up” on Germany, he said the industrial base underpinning its arms production was insufficient.

This will all pile further pressure on Germany, Europe’s largest economy, to “step up” as a principle player in underwriting European security.

After his much-lauded “zeitenwende” (turning point) speech in response to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Olaf Scholz was often accused of hesitancy on supplying weapons to Kyiv.

But his allies are always keen to point out that Germany is second only to the US in terms of military aid to Kyiv while it has – for the first time since the end of the Cold War – met the 2% GDP defence spending target, albeit via short-term budgeting.

“I think we are on the right track,” said Mr Schmid. “We have to build back an army that was neglected for 15 to 20 years.”

But observers are far from convinced that behind-the-scenes European preparations are either serious or sufficient.

There are few leaders with the political clout or inclination to champion the future security architecture of an unwieldy European continent.

Chancellor Scholz has an understated style and clear resistance to taking a lead on bolder foreign policy positions – and faces a very real prospect of being voted out of office next year.

French President Emmanuel Macron has been left a severely weakened figure after calling parliamentary elections that have left his country in a state of political paralysis.

Polish President Andrzej Duda warned on Tuesday that if Ukraine loses its struggle against Russia “then Russia’s potential war with the West will be extremely imminent”.

“This voracious Russian monster will want to attack on and on.”

Six people have been found dead in a luxury hotel suite in Thailand’s capital, Bangkok.

Confusion and mystery has surrounded the grim discovery, with local media initially suggesting there had been a shooting at the five-star Grand Hyatt Erawan Bangkok, but police later dismissed these reports and said there was no evidence of gunfire.

Instead, authorities are investigating whether the victims died of poisoning.

The deceased – three men and three women – were all Vietnamese nationals, and some had dual American citizenship, Thailand’s prime minister said.

Srettha Thavisin, who visited the scene, added that investigators suspect the victims had been dead for 24 hours by the time they were found and that post mortem examinations would be carried out.

He added that police “needed to find out the motives”, and that the deaths were the result of a “killing”, not a suicide.

Seven people were booked to stay at the hotel, but only five checked in and one person is currently unaccounted for, Metropolitan police chief Lt Gen Thiti Saengswang said.

One of the victims found in the room did not match the hotel’s records.

He added that suspicious substances and the DNA of the victims were detected in drinks ordered to the suite just before 14:00 local time on Monday.

The food the victims ordered was not touched.

The guests had been scheduled to check out on Monday.

They went from the hotel’s seventh floor to the fifth, where their bodies were found by housekeepers in the suite’s living room and bedroom.

Investigators say there is no evidence of a fight or a robbery, and the only wound found on one of the bodies was likely caused by a collapse.

In the bathroom, tea, energy drinks and honey were found, all in open containers, the police chief said.

It also appears that two of the victims tried to get to the hotel suite’s door, which was locked from the inside, but did not manage to reach it in time.

The victims’ luggage will now be searched as part of the investigation.

A spokesperson for the US State Department said they were “closely monitoring the situation”, and expressed their condolences to the families of the victims.

Matthew Miller added that Washington was “ready to provide assistance” to them.

The Grand Hyatt Erawan Bangkok is in a popular tourist spot. Some of the victims were visiting Thailand for the first time, while others had been before, a police officer who wished to remain anonymous said.

The prime minister said that he did not want this incident to affect Thailand’s image or have an impact on tourism – which is a key pillar of the Thai economy, but which has not fully recovered from the coronavirus pandemic.

The country has just expanded its visa-free entry scheme to 93 countries and territories in an effort to entice tourists back.

A whale that was found dead on a beach in New Zealand earlier this month has been identified by scientists as a spade-toothed whale – a species so rare it has never been seen alive.

The five-metre long, beaked creature’s identity was determined from its colour patterns and the shape of its skull, beak and teeth.

Its remains have been placed in cold storage whilst DNA testing takes place, with experts saying it may take several weeks before a final identification is confirmed.

Because so few specimens have been found and there have been no live sightings, very little is known about the spade-toothed whale.

Researchers say the carcass discovery could help them acquire crucial new information about the species.

Local officials were notified that the whale had been washed ashore on 4 July at the mouth of the Taiari river, in Otago province on New Zealand’s South Island.

Department of Conservation (DOC) official Gabe Davies said in a statement that spade-toothed whales were one of the least known large mammalian species, with only six samples ever documented worldwide.

“From a scientific and conservation point of view, this is huge,” he added.

The department said that because the specimen had only recently died it could become the first whale of the species to be dissected.

New Zealand’s Māori people regard whales as a sacred treasure, and DOC said local Maori communities would take part in deciding the whale’s fate.

The species was first described in 1874 after a lower jaw and two teeth were collected from New Zealand’s Chatham Islands. Skeletal remains of two other specimens found off islands in New Zealand and Chile enabled scientists to confirm a new species.

Two more recent findings of stranded whales off New Zealand’s North Island in 2010 and 2017 added to the small collection.

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A high-profile North Korean diplomat stationed in Cuba has defected to the South, Seoul’s spy agency has confirmed to the BBC.

The political counselor is believed to be the highest-ranking North Korean diplomat to escape to South Korea since 2016.

The diplomat defected in November, the National Intelligence Service (NIS) said.

Details about defections of North Koreans often take months to come to light as the defectors must take courses on South Korean society before they are formally integrated.

South Korean media reports say that the defector was a counsellor responsible for political affairs at the North Korean embassy in Cuba. The NIS has not confirmed this to the BBC.

The Chosun Ilbo newspaper said it was able to interview the diplomat, whom it identified as 52-year-old Ri Il Kyu.

It added that he defected because of “disillusionment with the North Korean regime and a bleak future”.

His work reportedly involved stopping Havana from forging official diplomatic ties with Seoul. However, in February, the two governments did establish official relations, in what was seen as a setback for Pyongyang.

“Every North Korean thinks at least once about living in South Korea,” the newspaper quoted him as saying.

The last known high-profile defection to the South was that of Tae Yong-ho in 2016. He is North Korea’s former deputy ambassador to the United Kingdom.

On Sunday, South Korea marked its very first North Korean Defectors’ Day ceremony.

Addressing the ceremony, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol promised better financial support for North Korean defectors and tax incentives for companies hiring them.

Mr Yoon, a conservative, has taken a more hawkish approach towards North Korea and on foreign policy general, compared to his predecessor Moon Jae-In.

He supports sanctions against Kim Jong Un’s regime and has promised to develop technology to carry out a pre-emptive strike on North Korea if Pyongyang looks to attack Seoul.

The latest defection comes at a time of heightened tensions between the two Koreas.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has formally abandoned the goal of reunification with with the South and also recently branded Seoul as “Enemy number One” – a dramatic turnaround from just six years ago when he formally met then South Korean Leader Moon Jae In.

Since then, there has been an upping of rhetoric on both sides of the border.

The two countries floated propaganda balloons along their border towns, with those from the North containing trash and parasites.

And earlier in June, Pyongyang claimed to have test-fired an advanced nuclear warhead missile.

Six people, including a policeman, have been killed and 28 others injured in a rare shooting attack near a Shia mosque in Oman’s capital, Muscat, police say.

The three attackers were also killed by security forces during the incident in the al-Wadi al-Kabir area on Monday night, according to a statement.

It did not provide details about the identities of the victims and gunmen, or the motive. But Pakistan said four Pakistanis were among those killed in a “terrorist attack” on the Imam Ali Mosque. India also said one of its citizen was killed.

Video showed a crowd running for cover inside the mosque’s courtyard as gunshots were heard. Worshippers had gathered there on the eve of the Shia holy day of Ashura.

The police statement expressed condolences to the victims’ families and said an investigation into the circumstances of the incident was under way.

It also emphasised “the necessity of obtaining information from official sources and disregarding unreliable information”.

Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said he was “deeply saddened” by the attack and that his “heart goes out to the families of the victims”.

“I have instructed the Pakistan embassy in Muscat to extend all possible assistance to the injured and visit the hospitals personally,” he wrote on X.

“Pakistan stands in solidarity with the Sultanate of Oman and offers full assistance in the investigation.”

Pakistan’s embassy in Muscat named the four Pakistanis who were killed as Ghulam Abbas, Hasan Abbas, Sayyed Qaisar Abbas and Sulaiman Nawaz. It also said 30 Pakistanis were receiving hospital treatment.

On Tuesday morning, Pakistani ambassador Imran Ali said in a video that he had visited some of those injured at three local hospitals and described their conditions as “relatively safe”.

He also advised Pakistani residents of Oman to avoid al-Wadi al-Kabir and to co-operate with local authorities.

Mr Ali later told AFP news agency that the attackers initially opened fire from a building next to the mosque, where hundreds of people had gathered for a prayer service.

The worshippers were held “hostage” by militants before “they were later freed by Omani forces”, he said.

He also said there was little information about the possible motive for the attack, adding: “Everyone is being tight-lipped about this.”

India’s embassy said it had been informed by the Omani foreign ministry that one Indian national was killed and other was injured, without identifying them.

The shooting happened on the night of the ninth day of the Islamic month of Muharram, when Shia Muslims attend rituals on the eve of Ashura. Ashura is a major commemoration of the martyrdom of Imam Hussein, a grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, in a battle in the seventh century.

Some of the worshippers in the courtyard can be heard shouting “O God”, “O Hussein” and “I am here, O Hussein” in the video filmed inside the Imam Ali Mosque as the attack unfolded.

There was no immediate claim from any group, but supporters of the Sunni jihadist group Islamic State (IS) celebrated the shooting on social media networks.

IS has repeatedly targeted Shia ceremonies, processions and worshippers in countries like Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. But it has never before claimed an attack in Oman.

The Gulf state that has long been seen as one of the most stable and secure countries in the Middle East. This has allowed it to play a leading role in mediation efforts to try to resolve conflicts and disputes in the region.

The sultanate has a population of about 4.6 million, of which more than 40% are foreign workers.

The government does not publish statistics about religious affiliation.

However, the US state department estimates that 95% of the population is Muslim, with 45% Sunni, 45% Ibadi and 5% Shia. Hindus, Buddhists and Christians make up the remaining 5%.

Thailand has expanded its visa-free entry scheme to 93 countries and territories as it seeks to revitalize its tourism industry.

Visitors can stay in the South-East Asian nation for up to 60 days under the new scheme that took effect on Monday,

Previously, passport holders from 57 countries were allowed to enter without a visa.

Tourism is a key pillar of the Thai economy, but it has not fully recovered from the pandemic.

Thailand recorded 17.5 million foreign tourists arrivals in the first six months of 2024, up 35% from the same period last year, according to official data. However, the numbers pale in comparison to pre-pandemic levels.

Most of the visitors were from China, Malaysia and India.

Tourism revenue during the same period came in at 858 billion baht ($23.6bn; £18.3bn), less than a quarter of the government’s target.

Millions of tourists flock to Thailand every year for its golden temples, white sand beaches, picturesque mountains and vibrant night life.

The revised visa-free rules are part of a broader plan to boost tourism.

Also on Monday, Thailand introduced a new five-year visa for remote workers, that allows holders to stay for up to 180 days each year.

The country will also allow visiting students, who earn a bachelor’s degree or higher in Thailand, to stay for one year after graduation to find a job or travel.

In June, authorities announced an extension of a waiver on hoteliers’ operating fees for two more years. They also scrapped a proposed tourism fee for visitors flying into the country.

However some stakeholders are concerned that the country’s infrastructure may not be able to keep up with travellers’ demands.

“If more people are coming, it means the country as a whole… has to prepare our resources to welcome them,” said Kantapong Thananuangroj, president of the Thai Tourism Promotion Association.

“If not, [the tourists] may not be impressed with the experience they have in Thailand and we may not get a second chance,” he said.

Chamnan Srisawat, president of the Tourism Council of Thailand, said he foresees a “bottleneck in air traffic as the incoming flights may not increase in time to catch up with the demands of the travellers”.

Some people have also raised safety concerns after rumours that tourists have been kidnapped and sent across the border to work in scam centres in Myanmar or Cambodia.

A fatal shooting in Bangkok’s most famous shopping mall last year has also caused concern among visitors.

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, where staff members have said that he passed a background check and raised no concerns.

The Community College of Allegheny, or CCAC, has confirmed that Crooks attended the school between September 2021 and May 2024. He graduated with an associate degree in engineering science.

In a statement sent to the BBC, the college noted that he graduated “with high honours” and that a review of his records turned up no disciplinary, student conduct or security-related incidents.

The University of Pittsburgh also told the BBC that in February he was was accepted as a transfer student there for the fall 2024 semester. The following month, he elected not to attend.

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

He also donated $15 to liberal campaign group ActBlue in 2021, according to an election donation filing and news reports.

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

The vast 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.

The club’s owner, Bill Sellitto, told the BBC that the shooting was a “terrible, terrible thing”. Access to the club is tightly controlled, with only members allowed inside the sprawling facility.

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

Law enforcement officials believe the weapon used to shoot at Donald Trump, an AR-style rifle, was purchased by Crooks’ father, according to investigators.

It is unclear how the weapon came into his son’s hands, although there is no suggestion the father had any inkling of what was to take place.

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

Authorities say that Crooks purchased a box of ammunition containing 50 rounds on the day of the rally, reports CBS, the BBC’s US news partner.

Police sources have also told CBS that he purchased a ladder at Home Depot before the shooting, although it is unclear if he brought it with him.

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 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.

So far, they have been unable to identify one.

On 15 July, the FBI said its forensic experts have successfully accessed Crooks’ phone, and they are examining it and other digital evidence for clues.

The inquiry into what took place could last for months and investigators would work “tirelessly” to identify what Crooks’ motive was, Kevin Rojek, the FBI Pittsburgh special agent in charge, said on the day of the shooting.

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.

Citing three law enforcement sources, CBS has reported that his father called police after the shooting, although the nature of that call is still unclear.

In total, more than 100 interviews have so far been conducted.

Police sealed off the road to the house where Crooks lived with his parents. The search of the residence was completed on 15 July.

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 controlled, with a police vehicle blocking entry to the street in front of the house.

On Tuesday afternoon, yellow police tape could be seen strung up in front of the residence. The BBC had a clear view of the back of the residence, but could not see any movement inside.

Only residents have been allowed in or out of the street.

Law enforcement sources told CBS that they believe there was 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 Crooks 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.”

Another classmate, who similarly did not want to be identified, described him as “intelligent but a little weird.”

Staff at Angelo’s Pizza, a restaurant in Bethel Park, told the BBC they were familiar with Crooks.

The restaurant’s owner, Sara Petko, said that staff members – some of whom were his classmates – thought he was a “loner” but that they were having trouble understanding how an otherwise quiet man turned to violence.

“It’s just crazy, and too close for comfort,” she said. “To think that someone at basically the start of his life could do this.”

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 as 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”.

The two people injured in the attack have been identified as 57-year-old David Dutch and 74-year-old James Copenhaver.

Both men are Pennsylvania residents and are in stable condition.

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.

He travelled to Milwaukee, Wisconsin on Sunday, a day after the shooting, to attend the Republican National Convention.

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.

“There are police running around. We’re telling them there’s a guy on the roof with a rifle,” Greg Smith told the BBC. “Secret Service is looking at us through binoculars, and I’m pointing right at the roof.”

Multiple videos appear to confirm that chain, with some showing rallygoer shouting at police.

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

The assailant opened fire with “an AR-style rifle”, officials have said. His shooting position was approximately 443ft (135m) from Trump.

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.

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.