Republicans have secured a majority in the US House of Representatives, extending their hold on the lower chamber and delivering a governing trifecta in Washington that could give Donald Trump sweeping power to enact his legislative agenda.

The Associated Press determined on Wednesday evening that Republicans had won at least 218 seats in the 435-member House after a victory in Arizona, a call that came more than a week after polls closed across the US and as Trump made cabinet announcements that sent shockwaves through Washington.

The call ensures Republicans will continue to have a large say in key matters such as government funding, debt ceiling negotiations and foreign aid, and it spells an end to Democrats’ hopes that the lower chamber could serve as a blockade against Trump’s agenda.

Republicans had already won the White House and regained a majority in the Senate, so their victory in the House provides them with the last component of their governing trifecta. Although they will have a slim majority, Republicans have indicated they will use their trifecta to maximum effect when the new Congress is seated in January.

“We have to deliver for the people, and we will,” the Republican House speaker, Mike Johnson, told Fox News last week. “President Trump wants to be aggressive. He wants to go big and we’re excited about that. We’re going to get to play offense.”

Trump’s selection of at least three House Republicans to join his administration further complicates the math for Johnson. Trump had already tapped the New York representative Elise Stefanik to serve as ambassador to the United Nations and Mike Waltz, the Florida representative, to fill the role of national security adviser. On Wednesday, Trump announced he would also nominate Matt Gaetz, the Republican congressman of Florida, as his attorney general.

A rightwing firebrand, Gaetz was a thorn in the side of former House speaker Kevin McCarthy, eventually leading the successful charge to oust McCarthy from his role. Reaction to Gaetz’s nomination ranged from puzzled to outraged, even from members of the president-elect’s own party.

Despite the increasingly narrow majority, Johnson brushed off concerns about how Trump’s picks might affect House Republicans’ ability to legislate.

“We have an embarrassment of riches,” Johnson said on Tuesday. “We have a really talented Republican conference. We’ve got really competent, capable people here. Many of them could serve in really important positions in the new administration, but President Trump fully understands and appreciates the math here, and it’s just a numbers game.”

Democrats unsuccessfully campaigned on a need to curtail the current “dysfunction” in Congress, after Republicans’ narrow majority repeatedly brought the House to a standstill.

When Republicans took control of the House in January 2023, it took 15 rounds of voting to elect Kevin McCarthy as speaker, as roughly 20 hard-right members withheld support from their conference’s nominee. Nine months later, McCarthy was ousted after eight of his Republican colleagues voted with House Democrats to remove him as speaker.

After McCarthy’s departure, Johnson, then a relatively unknown Republican member from Louisiana, ascended to the speakership following a tumultuous election.

Over the past year, Johnson stretched himself thin to appease members of his ideologically diverse conference. His efforts fell short for some, including Marjorie Taylor Greene, a hard-right member from Georgia. Greene attempted to oust Johnson as speaker in May, but that resolution was easily quashed by a chamber seemingly exhausted by the turmoil that defined this session of Congress.

Despite those hurdles, Republicans were able to keep their hold on the House and on Wednesday, Johnson won the Republican nomination to stay in the job as speaker and is on track to keep the gavel after a full House vote in the new year.

Trump gave Johnson a welcome boost during a meeting with House Republicans in Washington, when he endorsed the speaker’s bid to extend his tenure and indicated that Johnson has his full support. Johnson returned the praise by celebrating Trump as a “singular figure in American history”.

“They used to call Bill Clinton the comeback kid,” Johnson said. “[Trump] is the comeback king.”

Although Democrats fell short in their campaign to flip the House, they touted the party’s ability to mitigate its losses in a difficult national environment. Hakeem Jeffries, the House Democratic leader, pointed to the party’s gains in his home state of New York as evidence of their effort.

“Donald Trump did better than almost any other Republican presidential candidate in modern political history here in New York state and even won several of the districts that we either held or flipped. And notwithstanding that, we were able to defeat three Republican incumbents,” Jeffries told Spectrum News’ NY1 last week. “And so, I think that there are lessons to be learned from this election in all directions, and we will certainly do an after-action analysis at the appropriate time.”

That postmortem may help Democrats win back a majority in the 2026 midterm elections, but for now, they must face the reality of a fully Republican Congress ready and willing to do Trump’s bidding.

Donald Trump’s decision to nominate the far-right Republican congressman Matt Gaetz as attorney general has sent shockwaves through Washington, including the president-elect’s own party.

Trump on Wednesday announced Gaetz as his pick to be the nation’s chief law enforcement officer in the justice department, a role that directs the government’s legal positions on critical issues, including abortion, civil rights, and first amendment cases.

Republicans were puzzled over this nomination, expressing this move was not on their “bingo card”.

“I don’t think it’s a serious nomination for the attorney general,” Republican senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, told NBC News. “We need to have a serious attorney general. And I’m looking forward to the opportunity to consider somebody that is serious. This one was not on my bingo card.”

A rightwing firebrand, Gaetz was a thorn in the side of his fellow Republican and former House speaker Kevin McCarthy, eventually leading the successful charge to oust McCarthy from his role.

He was investigated by the justice department in a sex-trafficking case, though the department ultimately declined to bring charges. And was under investigation by the House ethics committee amid allegations of sexual misconduct, illicit drug use and other alleged ethical breaches.

Gaetz has fiercely denied wrongdoing.

Amid consternation even within his own party, it’s unclear if Gaetz can win Senate approval.

Republican congressman Max Miller of Ohio told Axios that “Gaetz has a better shot at having dinner with Queen Elizabeth II than being confirmed by the Senate”.

Miller also told Politico that Gaetz is “a reckless pick” with “a zero percent shot”.

John Bolton, a former national security adviser, said Gaetz “must be the worst nomination for a cabinet position in American history”.

“Gaetz is not only totally incompetent for this job, he doesn’t have the character. He is a person of moral turpitude,” Bolton said in an interview with NBC News.

One anonymous House GOP member told Axios: “We wanted him out of the House … this isn’t what we were thinking.” Another remarked they were “stunned and disgusted”.

Democrats, too, were left astonished by the announcement. Vice-President Kamala Harris’s team said in a statement that Trump and Gaetz “will weaponize the DoJ to protect themselves and their allies”.

Congressman Ro Khanna of California argued that voters were not necessarily voting for these cabinet picks when they decided to elect Trump.

“People voted for Trump to have lower prices and a secure border. I don’t think they voted for the appointments that they’re getting,” Khanna told CBS News. “He is not moving to the center. He’s going to his Maga base, and we’ll see if he’s overreaching on the mandate he had from the American people.”

Kate Maeder, a California-based political strategist, said the announcement should not come as a surprise, but wondered whether Trump trusts Gaetz will make it through the confirmation process. “It’s not a surprise that Trump is rewarding his political loyalists,” Maeder told the Guardian. “It’s a shock to many that he’s considering Matt Gaetz for attorney general. But is this a serious pick? I don’t think so.”

“In this political climate, it’s definitely possible for Matt Gaetz to be confirmed,” she said. “But I think it’ll be difficult. Some of the more moderate Republican senators are already on record questioning this choice.”

Donald Trump said he will nominate Florida congressman Matt Gaetz to be the US attorney general on Wednesday, tapping a far-right loyalist to one of the most powerful positions in US government.

Late on Wednesday evening, Gaetz resigned from Congress, ending the ethics inquiry by the House ethics committee over allegations including sexual misconduct.

Gaetz’s nomination is one of the most significant to date. As attorney general, he would be the country’s chief law enforcement officer and oversee the legal positions that the government takes on key issues, including abortion, civil rights laws, and first amendment issues. The president-elect has pledged to use the justice department to prosecute his political enemies and there is little doubt that Gaetz will help him fulfill that pledge.

First elected to Congress in 2016, Gaetz represents a ruby-red district in the Florida panhandle and has become known as one of Congress’s most showboating members. He reportedly sought a pardon from Trump over his efforts to overturn the election, and has embraced conspiracy theories about the attack on the US Capitol. Last year, he led a successful effort to oust fellow Republican Kevin McCarthy from the speakership, throwing his caucus into chaos.

Gaetz’s nomination comes a little over a year after the justice department decided not to charge him as part of a sex-trafficking investigation that involved allegations he had sex with a 17-year-old girl. Joel Greenberg, a former friend and ally, pleaded guilty to sex trafficking and was sentenced to 11 years in prison. Gaetz has denied the allegations.

Gaetz has vehemently denied wrongdoing in the House ethics committee investigation over allegations that he “engaged in sexual misconduct and illicit drug use, accepted improper gifts, dispensed special privileges and favors to individuals with whom he had a personal relationship, and sought to obstruct government investigations of his conduct”.

Meanwhile, Trump heaped praise on Gaetz.

“Matt is a deeply gifted and tenacious attorney, trained at the William & Mary College of Law, who has distinguished himself in Congress through his focus on achieving desperately needed reform at the Department of Justice,” Trump said in a statement posted to his Truth Social media account.

He added: “Few issues in America are more important than ending the partisan Weaponization of our Justice System. Matt will end Weaponized Government, protect our Borders, dismantle Criminal Organizations and restore Americans’ badly-shattered Faith and Confidence in the Justice Department.”

The nomination was immediately met with widespread criticism.

“This guy has been on the run from the law for quite some time now, so he’ll think he’s above it. He’ll be corrupt as hell,” said Olivia Troye, a former official in the Department of Homeland Security during the Trump administration who has become an outspoken critic of the former president.

Robert Weissman, the co-president of the watchdog group Public Citizen said it was “hard to imagine a worse and more unqualified candidate” than Gaetz.

“As a member of Congress, Gaetz has demonstrated contempt for the rule of law, truth and decency. He is singularly unqualified to lead an agency that enforces civil rights laws and environmental protection statutes. Under Gaetz, we’d have every reason to expect an America where corporate criminals walk free but immigrants and people of color are harassed or rounded up with minimal pretext,” he said in a statement.

In January, Republicans will take control of the US Senate, which will vote on Gaetz’s confirmation. They appear headed towards holding at least 53 seats, which would give them enough votes to confirm the Florida congressman, even if a few Republican senators vote against him.

Gaetz also has a history of making derogatory and offensive remarks towards women. “Why is it that the women with the least likelihood of getting pregnant are the ones most worried about having abortions? Nobody wants to impregnate you if you look like a thumb,” he said in 2022.

As a Florida lawmaker before he was in Congress, he opposed a revenge porn law, reportedly telling the bill’s sponsor that ex-lovers could do what they pleased with images their partners had shared with them.

“Are you not entertained?” said CNN political analyst and Trump ally Scott Jennings in the wake of the news.

Andrew Gumbel contributed reporting

House speaker Mike Johnson won the House Republican nomination on Wednesday to stay on the job, on track to keep the gavel after a morning endorsement from Donald Trump in advance of a full House vote in the new year.

While Johnson has no serious challenger, he faces dissent within his ranks, particularly from hard-right conservatives and the Freedom Caucus withholding their votes as leverage to extract promises ahead.

Trump told House Republicans, during the president-elect’s first trip back to Washington since the party swept the 2024 election, that he’s with the speaker all the way, according to a person familiar with the remarks but unauthorized to discuss the private meeting near the Capitol.

Johnson heaped praise on Trump, calling him the “comeback king”.

It’s been a remarkable political journey for Johnson, the accidental speaker who rose as a last, best choice to replace ousted former speaker Kevin McCarthy more than a year ago and quickly set a course by positioning himself alongside Trump and leading Republicans during this year’s elections.

Johnson said Trump tipped him off early Wednesday that he would be tapping another House Republican for his administration – Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida, as attorney general – reducing Johnson’s slim numbers in the new year. Gaetz submitted his resignation from Congress, effective immediately, launching an eight-week clock to fill his seat, Johnson said, possibly in time to seat his replacement with the start of the new Congress on 3 January 2025.

Gaetz is the third House Republican lawmaker tapped for the Trump administration, and Johnson said Gaetz wanted to help prevent the narrow numbers. The quick departure also ends a long-running House ethics probe into the Florida congressman.

As Johnson tells it, Trump is the “coach” and he is the “quarterback” as they prepare for a unified Republican government in the new year.

Johnson has embraced Trump’s priorities on mass deportations, tax cuts, cutting the federal workforce and a more muscular US image abroad. Together they have been working on what the speaker calls an ambitious 100-days agenda hoping to avoid what he called the mistakes of Trump’s first term when Congress was unprepared and wasted “precious time”.

Wednesday’s internal GOP vote was by voice rather than roll call or ballots, with no objections to Johnson, according to the same person in the room. The rest of the top GOP leaders were also elected.

But the outcome belies a more difficult road ahead for the speaker.

While Johnson expects to lead the House in unified government, with Trump in the White House and Republicans having seized the Senate majority, the House is expected to remain narrowly split, even as House control remains undecided with final races particularly in California still too early to call.

The problems that come with a slim House majority and plagued Johnson’s first year as speaker when his own ranks routinely revolted over his plans are likely to spill into the new year, with a potential fresh round of chaotic governing.

Johnson needed just a simple majority in Wednesday’s closed-door voting to win the GOP nomination to become speaker. But he will need majority support of the full House, 218 votes, to actually take hold of the gavel on 3 January, when the new Congress convenes and conducts the election for its speaker. It took McCarthy about 15 rounds of voting in a weeklong election to win the gavel in 2023.

Trump has made Johnson’s problems more complicated by tapping House Republicans for his administration, reducing the numbers further. Just before voting, Trump announced Gaetz as his nominee for attorney general, sending shockwaves through the room over the far-right pick.

“Everybody was saying, oh my God,” said representative Mike Simpson of Idaho.

Still, with Trump in the White House, the speaker may enjoy a period of goodwill from his own ranks as Republicans are eager to disrupt the norms of governing and institutionalize Trump’s second-term agenda.

“His challenge is what it’s always been,” representative Ralph Norman of South Carolina, a member of the Freedom Caucus, said of Johnson.

But he said: “With Trump in charge, it’ll be easier for him to deliver.”

Conservatives have been discussing whether to field their own candidate as a signal to Johnson as they push their own priorities, using the same tactic they did with McCarthy to force the speaker into concessions, particularly on steeper budget cuts.

Instead, they pulled Johnson aside for a lengthy private conversation, as other lawmakers watched and waited. The afternoon dragged on.

“It’s nonsense, is what it is,” Simpson said. “Sometimes you can’t do everything our exotic members want to do.”

Johnson said afterward a deal was struck between the conservative Freedom Caucus and the more mainstream conservative Republicans on new rules for the new Congress.

Democrats, who lent Johnson a hand at governing multiple times in Congress – supplying the votes needed to keep the federal government funded and turning back the effort by Greene to bounce him from office – are unlikely to help him in the new year as they try to put a check on Trump’s agenda.

“House Democrats are ready to work with the new administration and will extend a hand of bipartisanship whenever possible,” said representative Pete Aguilar of California, the chair of the Democratic Caucus.

But he said Democrats “will be ready to push against efforts” to throw millions of Americans off healthcare and other GOP priorities.

The number of people with diabetes has doubled over the past 30 years to more than 800 million worldwide, according to a groundbreaking international study.

Global analysis published in the Lancet found that rates of diabetes in adults doubled from about 7% to about 14% between 1990 to 2022, with the largest increase in low and middle-income countries.

The study is the first global analysis of diabetes rates and treatment in all countries. Scientists at NCD-RisC in collaboration with the World Health Organization used data from more than 140 million people aged 18 or older from more than 1,000 studies in different countries. They applied statistical tools to enable accurate comparisons of prevalence and treatment between countries and regions.

The study highlighted growing health inequalities. More than half of global diabetes cases were concentrated in four countries. Of those with diabetes in 2022, more than a quarter (212 million) lived in India, 148 million were in China, 42 million were in the US and 36 million in Pakistan. Indonesia and Brazil accounted for a further 25 million and 22 million cases, respectively.

In some countries in the Pacific islands, Caribbean, Middle East and north Africa, more than 25% of the female and male population have diabetes, the study found, while the US (12.5%) and the UK (8.8%) had the highest diabetes rates among high-income western countries.

In contrast, diabetes rates in 2022 were as low as 2-4% for women in France, Denmark, Spain, Switzerland and Sweden, and 3-5% for men in Denmark, France, Uganda, Kenya, Malawi, Spain and Rwanda.

Increases in obesity, alongside an ageing global population means growing numbers of people are at greater risk of developing diabetes.

Dr Ranjit Mohan Anjana, the joint first author and president of the Madras Diabetes Research Foundation in India, said: “Given the disabling and potentially fatal consequences of diabetes, preventing diabetes through healthy diet and exercise is essential for better health throughout the world.

“Our findings highlight the need to see more ambitious policies, especially in lower-income regions of the world, that restrict unhealthy foods, make healthy foods affordable and improve opportunities to exercise, through measures such as subsidies for healthy foods and free healthy school meals as well as promoting safe places for walking and exercising including free entrance to public parks and fitness centres.”

Despite the availability of effective, off-patent glucose-lowering medications, lack of treatment is also fuelling inequalities, the study found. Whereas many, often higher-income countries have seen vast improvements in treatment rates, with more than 55% of adult diabetics receiving treatment in 2022, for many low and middle-income countries the proportion receiving treatment has not improved.

As a result more than half of adults with diabetes – 445 million (59%) – aged 30 and over did not receive treatment in 2022.

A senior author of the study, Prof Majid Ezzati, of Imperial College London, said: “Our study highlights widening global inequalities in diabetes, with treatment rates stagnating in many low and middle-income countries where numbers of adults with diabetes are drastically increasing. This is especially concerning as people with diabetes tend to be younger in low-income countries and, in the absence of effective treatment, are at risk of life-long complications – including amputation, heart disease, kidney damage or vision loss – or in some cases, premature death.”

Responding to the findings, the WHO director general, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said: “We have seen an alarming rise in diabetes over the past three decades, which reflects the increase in obesity, compounded by the impacts of the marketing of unhealthy food, a lack of physical activity, and economic hardship.

“To bring the global diabetes epidemic under control, countries must urgently take action. This starts with enacting policies that support healthy diets and physical activity and, most importantly, health systems that provide prevention, early detection, and treatment.”

Chantal Mathieu, the president of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes, said: “[Diabetes] has reached pandemic proportions, posing a profound threat to public health and economies alike.”

Policymakers must “adopt preventive strategies, expand access to screening, and support initiatives for better long-term management”, she added.

Diabetes rates worldwide have more than doubled over the past three decades, with more than half of cases untreated, a global study has found.

The Paris prosecutor on has requested a five-year prison sentence and a five-year ban from public office for far-right leader Marine Le Pen, at a trial in which she and 24 others are accused of embezzling European Union funds.

The trial, which comes almost a decade after initial investigations started, threatens to undermine her National Rally (RN) party’s efforts to polish its image ahead of the 2027 presidential election which many believe she could win.

On Wednesday, the Paris prosecutor requested a 300,000 euro (£249,439) fine, five years in prison and an ineligibility sentence against Marine Le Pen, with provisional execution. If the court finds her guilty of the charges with this provisional execution, Le Pen will not be able to run in elections even if she appeals against the judgment.

Le Pen, the RN party itself, and 24 others – party officials, employees, former lawmakers and parliamentary assistants – are all accused of using European parliament money to pay staff in France who were working for their party, which at the time was called the National Front.

The RN, like other far-right parties around Europe, is riding high following a strong performance in European elections in June.

“The law applies to all,” prosecutor Nicolas Barret told the court, as Le Pen sat in the front row of the defendants’ benches, adding that the ban would “prohibit the defendants from running in future local or national elections”.

He demanded a five-year jail sentence for Le Pen, calling for at least two years of that to be a “convertible“ custodial sentence, meaning there would be a possibility of partial release.

“I think the prosecutors’ wish is to deprive the French people of the ability to vote for who they want,” Le Pen later said.

The alleged fake jobs system, which was first flagged in 2015, covers parliamentary assistant contracts between 2004 and 2016. Prosecutors say the assistants worked exclusively for the party outside parliament.

Addressing the trial last month, Le Pen said she was innocent.

“I have absolutely no sense of having committed the slightest irregularity, or the slightest illegal act,” she told the court.

Questioned last month about how exactly she selected her presumed parliamentary aides, and what their tasks were, Le Pen gave general answers, or said she could not remember.

If convicted, Le Pen would be able to lodge an appeal.

European parliament authorities said the legislature had lost 3m euros (£2.49m) through the jobs scheme. The RN has paid back one million euros, which it insists is not an admission of guilt.

Reuters and Agence France-Presse contributed to this report

New Zealand scientists have named a tiny snowflake-like crustacean after a Wellington brewery, in an attempt to boost the public’s interest in local marine life.

The roughly 1.5mm marine isopod was found in the silty depths off New Zealand’s southern east coast. It helps decompose organic material that drifts to the seabed.

Its new scientific name – Pentaceration forkandbrewer – was awarded as a prize to the brewery Fork and Brewer, after it won the best beer competition during the 10th International Crustacean Congress, held in Wellington in 2024. It is believed to be the first time a scientific name has been inspired by a brewery.

The winning brew was a “savoury, complex” beer inspired by the low country boil-up from the south-eastern states of the US and included potatoes, flaked corn, creole seasoning and crustaceans in its recipe.

“At the end of the boil, a small number of prawns were added to infuse a subtle briny foundation to the beer, reminiscent of an oyster stout,” said head brewer Brayden Rawlinson.

The beer competition was the brainchild of Rachael Peart and Kareen Schnabel, two marine biologists at the National Institute of Water and Atmospherics (Niwa) who co-chaired the congress.

“We wanted a unique way to showcase and celebrate our marine world,” Peart said, adding that the congress also hoped to highlight Wellington’s fondness for locally made beer.

“People love beer, so we thought – why not immortalise a local brewery by giving them the chance to be forever included in scientific literature.”

The roughly 200 conference attendees voted on their favourite beer, which seven local breweries had attempted to make as “crusty” as possible, Peart told the Guardian.

The primary aim of the competition was to try to encourage the public to engage with extraordinary diversity of crustaceans in New Zealand waters before they disappear from the effects of climate change and human activity, Peart said.

“We are desperately trying to document what is here and how it interacts with our environment before that all changes, and before they go extinct” she said.

“If this just brings a little bit of awareness to the huge diversity out there, it has to help.”

A man killed himself with a bomb outside Brazil’s supreme court after trying to enter the building on Wednesday, officials have said, stirring security concerns before the country hosts global leaders from the Group of 20 major economies.

The blasts come five days before the G20 heads of state meet in Rio de Janeiro, followed by a state visit to the capital Brasília by Chinese President Xi Jinping.

The first of two explosions went off on Wednesday evening in a parking lot near the court building and a second blast came seconds later in front of the court, where the man’s body was found.

Federal District vice-governor Celina Leao said preliminary information suggested the man had killed himself with explosives after trying to enter the supreme court. She said he owned a nearby car in which another explosion blew open the trunk.

Leao said she hoped it was the crime of a “lone wolf,” but she could not be sure.

“We are considering it as a suicide because there was only one victim. But investigations will show if that was indeed the case.”

Police said they had not made a final identification of the dead man as they were confronting the risk of additional explosives on the body.

The explosions took place around the Plaza of the Three Powers, an iconic square in Brasília connecting the principal buildings of Brazil’s three branches of federal government.

It was the scene of riots on 8 January last year when supporters of former President Jair Bolsonaro ransacked the buildings to protest his electoral defeat.

Police deployed a bomb squad with an explosive disposal robot to the square in the heart of Brazilian capital to investigate the blasts. The supreme court justices had just ended a plenary session when the blasts happened and were quickly evacuated safely, the court said in a statement.

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva had left the executive palace on Wednesday night shortly before the explosions.

• In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, you can call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline on 988, chat on 988lifeline.org, or text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis counsellor. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org

A man killed himself with a bomb outside Brazil’s supreme court after trying to enter the building on Wednesday, officials have said, stirring security concerns before the country hosts global leaders from the Group of 20 major economies.

The blasts come five days before the G20 heads of state meet in Rio de Janeiro, followed by a state visit to the capital Brasília by Chinese President Xi Jinping.

The first of two explosions went off on Wednesday evening in a parking lot near the court building and a second blast came seconds later in front of the court, where the man’s body was found.

Federal District vice-governor Celina Leao said preliminary information suggested the man had killed himself with explosives after trying to enter the supreme court. She said he owned a nearby car in which another explosion blew open the trunk.

Leao said she hoped it was the crime of a “lone wolf,” but she could not be sure.

“We are considering it as a suicide because there was only one victim. But investigations will show if that was indeed the case.”

Police said they had not made a final identification of the dead man as they were confronting the risk of additional explosives on the body.

The explosions took place around the Plaza of the Three Powers, an iconic square in Brasília connecting the principal buildings of Brazil’s three branches of federal government.

It was the scene of riots on 8 January last year when supporters of former President Jair Bolsonaro ransacked the buildings to protest his electoral defeat.

Police deployed a bomb squad with an explosive disposal robot to the square in the heart of Brazilian capital to investigate the blasts. The supreme court justices had just ended a plenary session when the blasts happened and were quickly evacuated safely, the court said in a statement.

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva had left the executive palace on Wednesday night shortly before the explosions.

• In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, you can call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline on 988, chat on 988lifeline.org, or text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis counsellor. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org

In newly released audio, Charles Manson, the cult leader behind a string of killings during the late 1960s in California, admitted his involvement in additional killings that occurred prior to his assembly of the notorious Manson Family.

An audio recording in a teaser clip from Peacock’s latest docuseries Making Manson features Manson saying: “There’s a whole part of my life that nobody knows about.”

The cult leader, speaking on a phone call from prison, goes on to add: “I lived in Mexico for a while. I went to Acapulco, stole some cars. I just got involved in stuff over my head, man. Got involved in a couple of killings. I left my .357 Magnum in Mexico City, and I left some dead people on the beach.”

According to Peacock, the new three-part docuseries investigates 20 years’ worth of never-before-aired conversations in which Manson talks about his crimes, his upbringing and Family, a commune and cult led by Manson from the late 1960s to early 1970s. The cult leader did not commit the murders himself, preferring to persuade his followers to do it. The group murdered at least seven people in the late 1960s.

Manson and his followers were arrested in 1969. At his trial in 1970, Manson presented himself as a demonic force, showing up with a Nazi swastika he had carved into his forehead.

At a 2012 parole hearing, which was denied, Manson was quoted as having said to one of his prison psychologists: “I’m special. I’m not like the average inmate. I have spent my life in prison. I have put five people in the grave. I am a very dangerous man.”

Manson, who died from natural causes in November 2017, served more than 40 years in a prison in Corcoran, California, for first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder over the deaths of seven people, including the actor Sharon Tate, the pregnant wife of film director Roman Polanski.

According to the Los Angeles Times, Manson committed hundreds of rules violations while at the Corcoran state prison, including assault, repeated possession of a weapon and threatening staff. Officials said he has spat in guards’ faces, started fights, tried to cause a flood and set his mattress ablaze.

Describing the new docuseries which is scheduled to premiere next Tuesday, Peacock said: “Former ‘Family’ members listen to the exclusive conversations and are taken back to the time when they ‘would do anything for Charlie’.”

“Manson recounts the early crimes that led to the murder spree in the summer of 69, laying out an explanation of loyalty and brotherhood that pushes against the accepted motive: his desire to incite Helter Skelter,” Peacock added, referring to an apocalyptic vision embraced by Manson and his cult members.

Palau’s incumbent president Surangel Whipps Jr has been returned for a second term after a national election held last week, according to a final tally by the Palau Election Commission.

The results showed Whipps Jr won 5,626 votes, defeating his brother-in-law Tommy Remengesau who received 4,103 votes.

Palau, which is important to the US military amid tensions with China and is among a dozen diplomatic allies of Taiwan, held a national election for president and its senate on 5 November.

“Looking ahead, I know the challenges we face are significant, but so are the opportunities,” Whipps said in a statement claiming victory on Wednesday.

His government would seek to diversify Palau’s economy while protecting its ocean and forests, he added.

Ahead of the election, voters said they were mostly concerned about the economy and a cost of living crisis. But outside Palau, the election has symbolised a growing geopolitical tussle for influence between Washington and Beijing that is playing out across the Pacific.

In the four years since coming to power, Whipps has overseen the swift expansion of US military interests across the Palauan archipelago.

Palau this year renewed a Compact of Free Association with Washington, in a deal that will see it receive $890m in economic assistance over 20 years in return for allowing continued US military access to its maritime zone, airspace and land.

Palau’s population of 18,000 is spread across an archipelago that sits between the Philippines and the US military base on Guam.

Australia’s prime minister Anthony Albanese congratulated Whipps Jr in a message on social media platform X on Wednesday.

“We look forward to continuing to work as friends and partners to ensure a peaceful, stable and prosperous Pacific,” Albanese wrote.

Taiwan president Lai Ching-te had earlier congratulated Whipps Jr in a message on social media, saying there would be greater collaboration in tourism and infrastructure.

The Melanesian microstate is one of the few remaining countries in the world that diplomatically recognises Taiwan instead of China.

With Reuters and Agence France-Presse

• The headline of this story was amended on 14 November, 2024

A mysterious diamond-laden necklace with possible links to a scandal that contributed to the downfall of Marie Antoinette has sold for $4.8m (£3.8m) at an auction in Geneva.

The 18th-century item of jewellery containing approximately 300 carats of diamonds had been estimated to sell at the Sotheby’s Royal and Noble Jewels sale for $1.8-2.8m.

But after energetic bidding, the hammer price ticked in at 3.55m Swiss francs ($4m), and Sotheby’s listed the final price after taxes and commissions at 4.26m francs ($4.81m).

The unidentified buyer, who placed her bid over the phone, was “ecstatic”, Andres White Correal, chair of the Sotheby’s jewellery department, told AFP.

“She was ready to fight and she did,” he said, adding that it had been “an electric night”.

“There is obviously a niche in the market for historical jewels with fabulous provenance … People are not only buying the object, but they’re buying all the history that is attached to it,” he said.

Some of the diamonds in the piece are believed to stem from the jewel at the centre of the Affair of the Diamond Necklace – a scandal in the 1780s that further tarnished the reputation of France’s last queen, Marie Antoinette, and boosted support for the coming French Revolution.

The auction house said the necklace, comprised of three rows of diamonds finished with a diamond tassel at each end, had emerged “miraculously intact” from an Asian private collection to make its first public appearance in 50 years.

“This spectacular antique jewel is an incredible survivor of history,” it said in a statement prior to the sale.

Describing the Georgian-era piece as “rare and highly important”, Sotheby’s said it had probably been created in the decade preceding the French Revolution.

“The jewel has passed from families to families. We can start at the early 20th century when it was part of the collection of the Marquesses of Anglesey,” White Correal said.

Members of this aristocratic family are believed to have worn the necklace twice in public: once at the 1937 coronation of King George VI and once at his daughter Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation in 1953.

Beyond that, little is known of the necklace, including who designed it and for whom it was commissioned, although the auction house believes that such an impressive antique jewel could only have been created for a royal family.

Sotheby’s said it was likely that some of the diamonds featured in the piece came from the famous necklace involved in the scandal that engulfed Marie Antoinette just a few years before she was guillotined.

That scandal involved a hard-up noblewoman named Jeanne de la Motte who pretended to be a confidante of the queen, and managed to acquire a lavish diamond-studded necklace in her name, against a promise of a later payment.

While the queen was later found to be blameless in the affair, the scandal still deepened the perception of her careless extravagance, contributing to the anger that would unleash the revolution.

Sotheby’s said the diamonds in the necklace sold on Wednesday were probably sourced from “the legendary Golconda mines in India”, considered to produce the purest and most dazzling diamonds.

“The fortunate buyer has walked away with a spectacular piece of history,” Tobias Kormind, head of Europe’s largest online diamond jeweller, 77 Diamonds, said in a statement.

“With exceptional quality diamonds from the legendary, now extinct Indian Golconda mines, the history of a possible link to Marie Antoinette, along with the fact that it was worn to two coronations, all make this 18th-century necklace truly special.”

The FBI raided the home of the chief executive of the predictive betting site Polymarket and seized his phone late on Wednesday.

Shayne Coplan, the 26-year-old CEO of the company, woke early on Wednesday morning in Manhattan to federal agents in his home, the New York Post first reported. Coplan himself was not arrested, the company said.

On X, formerly Twitter, Coplan wrote on Wednesday evening: “New phone, who dis?”

Polymarket claimed the raid was retaliation for its users betting overwhelmingly that Donald Trump would win the election. The site displayed a large chance of Trump winning before the election, giving Kamala Harris a minimal one, out of line with most mainstream polls.

“It’s discouraging that the current administration would seek a last-ditch effort to go after companies they deem to be associated with political opponents,” Coplan wrote. “We are deeply committed to being non-partisan, and today is no different, but the incumbents should do some self-reflecting and recognize that taking a more pro-business, pro-startup approach may be what would have changed their fate this election.”

The Department of Justice is investigating Polymarket for allegedly allowing US-based users to bet on the site, Bloomberg News reported on Wednesday evening.

Polymarket users can place bets on the outcome of yes-or-no questions that range widely in subject. Fortune reported the week before the election that the site was rife with wash-trading, an illegal type of market manipulation.

“This is obvious political retribution by the outgoing administration against Polymarket for providing a market that correctly called the 2024 presidential election,” Polymarket told media outlets, including the Wall Street Journal.

“Polymarket is a fully transparent prediction market that helps everyday people better understand the events that matter most to them, including elections.”

Making bets and predictions on Polymarket is not allowed in the US, though users can and do circumvent the prohibition via virtual private networks (VPNs). A week ago, the company announced it would resume operations in the US. The company had paid a $1.4m fine to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in 2022 for failing to register with the agency as required and was forced to pause trading at the same time.

The FBI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

When no reason for the raid was given publicly, powerful figures in the technology industry came to Coplan’s defense. The CEO of Coinbase, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the US, decried the raid. Brian Armstrong wrote on X: “This will backfire – they just made Polymarket even more powerful.”

Elon Musk, the richest man in the world and one of the president-elect’s closest advisors, wrote, “This seems messed up” in response to the news.

Coplan himself has been photographed with Donald Trump Jr, and claimed last week to have fielded calls from ​the president-elect’s Mar-a-Lago​ resort as votes were counted.​

The Guardian has announced it will no longer post content on Elon Musk’s social media platform, X, from its official accounts.

In an announcement to readers, the news organisation said it considered the benefits of being on the platform formerly called Twitter were now outweighed by the negatives, citing the “often disturbing content” found on it.

“We wanted to let readers know that we will no longer post on any official Guardian editorial accounts on the social media site X,” the Guardian said.

The Guardian has more than 80 accounts on X with approximately 27 million followers.

The Guardian said content on the platform about which it had longstanding concerns included far-right conspiracy theories and racism. It added that the site’s coverage of the US presidential election had crystallised its decision.

“This is something we have been considering for a while given the often disturbing content promoted or found on the platform, including far-right conspiracy theories and racism,” it said.

“The US presidential election campaign served only to underline what we have considered for a long time: that X is a toxic media platform and that its owner, Elon Musk, has been able to use its influence to shape political discourse.”

Anti-hate speech campaign groups and the EU have criticised Musk, the world’s richest person, over content standards on the platform since he bought it for $44bn in 2022. A self-declared “free speech absolutist”, the Tesla chief executive has reinstated banned accounts including those of the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, the misogynist influencer Andrew Tate and the British far-right activist Tommy Robinson.

The Guardian said X users would still be able to share its articles across the platform and that posts on X would occasionally be embedded in its work as part of its live news reporting. Reporters would also be able to continue using the platform for newsgathering purposes, the Guardian said.

Although the Guardian’s official accounts are withdrawing from X, there will be no restrictions on individual reporters using the site beyond the organisation’s existing social media guidelines.

“Social media can be an important tool for news organisations and help us to reach new audiences but at this point X now plays a diminished role in promoting our work. Our journalism is available and open to all on our website and we would prefer people to come to theguardian.com and support our work there,” the Guardian said.

Responding to the announcement, Musk posted on X that the Guardian was “irrelevant” and a “laboriously vile propaganda machine”.

Last year National Public Radio (NPR), the non-profit US media organisation, stopped posting on X after the social media platform labelled it as “state-affiliated media”. PBS, a US public TV broadcaster, suspended its posts for the same reason.

This month the Berlin film festival said it was quitting X, without citing an official reason, and last month the North Wales police force said it had stopped using X because it was “no longer consistent with our values”.

In August the Royal National orthopaedic hospital said it was leaving X, citing an “increased volume of hate speech and abusive commentary” on the platform.