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.

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.

Police were stationed inside the building from which gunman Thomas Matthew Crooks fired shots at Donald Trump, the director of the US Secret Service Kimberly Cheatle says.

Ms Cheatle told ABC News that local police were inside the building while Crooks was on the roof, and that local police – not the Secret Service – had been “responsible” for securing the building and its outer perimeter.

Questions have swirled about how police officers and agents tasked with securing Trump’s Pennsylvania rally allowed Crooks to get as close as he did.

He was able to access the roof of a building near the outdoor event at Butler County fairgrounds, Pennsylvania, from where he shot at Trump 130m (430ft) away.

The local police deployment inside the building comprised three snipers, who are alleged to have seen Crooks trying to get on the roof, according to sources quoted by CBS News, the BBC’s US partner.

One audience member was killed and two others critically injured in the shooting. Trump was wounded in the ear.

Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said that his agency was responsible for securing inside the perimeter of the fairgrounds, while local police secured the area outside, which included the private building used by the gunman.

The local sheriff’s department referred BBC questions to the state police, which said it was not responsible for the area containing the building.

A spokesman told the BBC that it provided “all resources” requested by the Secret Service, including between 30 to 40 troopers inside perimeter.

Many observers have questioned how security plans broke down to allow the gunman unobstructed access to Trump.

Crowd members said they had spotted the suspect on the roof minutes before the shooting started, while Butler County Sheriff Michael Slupe said a local security officer had also spotted him but could not stop him.

The sheriff admitted there had been “a failure” in securing the premises, but said he believed that there was no single party to blame.

It is common for the US Secret Service to rely on local police for help when securing rallies, said Jason Russell, founder of Secure Environments Consultants who worked as an agent from 2002 to 2010, including during election campaigns.

“The Secret Service doesn’t have unlimited resources in terms of agents that they can post everywhere,” he told the BBC.

He said that agents usually scope out a campaign event’s venue days in advance to develop a security plan that is then shared with local police agencies.

During an event, he said communications were shared with every agency involved. However, he added that in “the 10 seconds that it takes” for information to flow through, that could be just enough time for a gunman to fire a few shots.

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

Mr Russell said it was probable that Secret Service agents identified that building as a threat, and had requested local authorities to station officers nearby to prevent access.

“For whatever reason, that didn’t happen,” he said.

One witness, Thomas Gleason, who served 21 years with the US Army as paratrooper and ranger, said “there should have been greater security for a long-range threat”.

“Looking at the distance and vantage point, if someone is going to try to assassinate [Trump] that would have been the most logical shooting point,” he said.

The FBI has since taken over the role of lead investigator into the incident, and the shooting is now the subject of several other investigations by both the House and the Senate.

Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas called it a “failure” of security, telling CNN that “an incident like this cannot happen again”.

Ms Cheatle said on Monday that her agency is working with federal and local police to “understand what happened, how it happened, and how we can prevent an incident like this from taking place again”.

She added that she will cooperate with any congressional investigations into the shooting.

“The buck stops with me,” she said in the ABC interview, adding that she would not step down in the face of mounting calls from some lawmakers.

Ms Cheatle will face the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability on 22 July.

Republicans on the committee have also called on the Secret Service to produce evidence including internal communications, audio and video recordings, messages to local law enforcement, maps, diagrams and pre-event assessments.

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.

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.

Donald Trump’s former rival Nikki Haley is set to speak on the second day of the Republican National Convention, after previously saying she would not attend the event in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

The former South Carolina governor’s team told multiple outlets on Sunday that she would appear at the gathering, just a day after a gunman attempted to assassinate Trump.

Ms Haley unsuccessfully challenged Trump for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination and spent months sparring with the former president.

But last week, she instructed her 97 delegates to vote for Trump at the convention as she called for unity in the party.

The BBC has contacted Ms Haley’s spokesperson for comment.

The former United Nations ambassador has a fraught history with Trump. Having previously served in the Trump administration, she spent months attacking him during her campaign for president, calling him “unhinged”.

Trump hit back with a host of insults, mocking Ms Haley with nicknames like “bird brain”.

After dropping out of the race in March due to a poor performance in the primaries, Ms Haley initially declined to endorse Trump. Two months later, she said she planned to vote for him.

Trump has said Ms Haley will be in his next administration “in some form”.

After a gunman opened fire at a Trump rally in Pennsylvania last Saturday, Ms Haley posted on social media that she was “lifting up Donald Trump” in prayer.

The second day of the Republican National Convention comes after Trump on Monday announced his pick for vice president, Ohio Senator JD Vance.

Though the convention has not released a full list of speakers for Tuesday, a host of politicians will likely take the stage for the second day, with a theme of “Make America Safe Once Again”.

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.

She added: “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.”

At least six people all of Vietnamese origin have been found dead in a luxury hotel suite in Thailand’s capital, Bangkok, police say.

Some of the dead were Vietnamese-American, according to the government.

Local media initially suggested there had been a shooting at the five-star Grand Hyatt Erawan Bangkok, but police dismissed these reports and said there was no evidence of gunfire.

Local media are now reporting that police believe the victims may have been poisoned, however this has not been confirmed and the deaths remain unexplained.

Thailand’s Prime Minister, Srettha Thavisin – who visited the scene – has ordered an investigation into the deaths, saying he does not want the case to affect the country’s image or have an impact on tourism.

He said police suspected the deceased had been dead for 24 hours and post mortem examinations would be carried out to determine if it was something they had eaten.

Police suspected there may be a seventh Vietnamese but that individual has not been found, he added.

Earlier, the Thai Public Broadcasting Service quoted police saying that three women and three men had died.

Police Major General Thiradech Thamsuthee told the broadcaster that an initial investigation suggested the victims had been poisoned.

“There were no signs of struggle. Tea and coffee cups were found to have been used,” PBS reported.

Police were called to the hotel at around 17:30 local time after receiving a phone call from hotel staff.

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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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.”

While many in the crowd can be heard laughing in the video, 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, nor the motive. But Pakistan’s prime minister said four Pakistanis were among those killed in a “terrorist attack” on the Imam Ali Mosque.

Video showed a crowd running for cover inside the mosque’s courtyard as two dozen gunshots are 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.

Earlier on Tuesday, 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.

The National, a newspaper based in Abu Dhabi, cited Mr Ali as saying that at least 50 Pakistani expatriate workers were injured in the attack, with 20 being treated for bullet wounds.

A number of worshippers at the mosque, including women and children were also taken hostage by gunmen and later released by armed police, according to the report.

“It was a horror story for them. They went to pray for Muharram and are shocked this happened,” Mr Ali said. “The attack was premeditated on innocent mosque-goers and that is all we know for now.”

“We thank god that the tragedy is much less than what it could have been.”

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%.

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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The judge who has been overseeing the long-running racketeering trial against Young Thug has been removed.

The Atlanta rapper’s charges were put on hold earlier this month after lawyers for him and co-defendant Deamonte Kendrick asked for the judge to be recused over misconduct allegations.

Their lawyers accused Fulton County Superior Court Judge Ural Glanville of holding an “improper” meeting on 10 June when he met privately with prosecutors and a key witness.

Glanville maintained that the meeting was proper and argued that no one gained a tactical advantage as a result but while Judge Rachel Krause did not fault him for holding the meeting, she ordered the clerk of court to assign the case to a different judge.

It will now be overseen by Judge Shukura Ingram, according to Rolling Stone.

Krause said she had “no doubt that Judge Glanville can and would continue presiding fairly over this matter”.

But the motion was granted out of the “necessity of preserving the public’s confidence in the judicial system”, AP reported.

Krause acknowledged that the meeting “could have – and perhaps should have – taken place in open court”.

Brian Steel, a lawyer for Young Thug, said in an emailed statement to AP that his client is innocent and sought to clear his name through a fair trial.

The news has caused more delays in the trial for the rapper, whose real name is Jeffery Lamar Williams.

His case has only inched forward since his arrest in May 2022. Jury selection for the trial – which has included testimony from dozens of witnesses – took nearly 10 months.

Prosecutors have accused the Atlanta rapper of co-founding a violent street gang in his hometown, hitting him with racketeering charges.

Georgia prosecutors used the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (Rico) Act – famously used in mafia prosecutions – to charge the rapper and 27 associates who were allegedly involved in the criminal enterprise.

Mr Williams, 32, is also charged with gang, drug and gun crimes and is standing trial with five of the others indicted with him.

Mr Kendrick’s lawyer told Rolling Stone that they are considering requesting a mistrial following the recusal.

French President Emmanuel Macron is expected to accept the resignation of his prime minister Gabriel Attal by Tuesday evening following their centrist party’s defeat in parliamentary elections, French media report.

However, Mr Attal is set to remain in place as head of a caretaker government for the Paris Olympics which start in 10 days’ time.

A left-wing alliance that won the 7 July election has so far been unable to agree on a potential candidate to replace him.

Mr Attal made no comment to journalists as he left his government’s final cabinet meeting at the Élysée Palace, but President Macron is understood to have said the caretaker government could remain in place for “some weeks”.

Mr Attal told President Macron he would stay on out of a sense duty “until the very last minute”, “as long as you deem necessary, on the eve of major events for our country”, according to remarks quoted by French news agency AFP.

The French prime minister had already handed in his resignation the day after his Ensemble alliance came second in the snap parliamentary vote called by President Macron.

National Rally (RN) won European elections in early June but then came third in the 7 July parliamentary vote.

As no party won an outright majority, Mr Macron asked Mr Attal to stay on for the time being and then called on mainstream parties to form a coalition with a “solid” majority, avoiding both RN and the radical France Unbowed, which is the biggest party in the left-wing New Popular Front.

Since its election victory, the left-wing alliance has been marred by infighting. Its two biggest parties, France Unbowed (LFI) and the Socialists, have both rejected each other’s candidates for prime minister.

On Monday, three of the NFP’s main parties – the Socialists, the Greens and the Communists – said they had agreed on former diplomat Laurence Tubiana as a nominee.

Ms Tubiana, 73, is head of the European Climate Foundation and led the 2015 Paris Accords on climate targets. She is also a former adviser to former Socialist President François Hollande and last week she signed an open letter from 70 intellectuals urging the NFP to work immediately with others to form a broad-based “republican programme and government”.

Olivier Faure of the Socialists said that she “corresponds completely with what we’re looking for” and said she had agreed to have her name put forward.

But LFI’s Manuel Bompard said he did not consider Ms Tubiana to be a “serious” proposition.

Citing the open letter in Le Monde, Mr Bompard said that having her as prime minister would be like “letting Macron in by the backdoor”.

Many had foreseen the NFP’s difficulties in agreeing on a prime ministerial candidate.

The alliance, which was hastily cobbled together after Mr Macron called snap parliamentary elections in June, brought together parties with very different views and with varying degrees of reluctance to work with Mr Macron’s centrists.

LFI in particular has a longstanding and open distrust with the Ensemble alliance, which condemns the party as extremist.

But the NFP does not have enough seats to form a credible government by itself.

Some members of Mr Macron’s alliance, such as ministers Gérald Darmanin and Aurore Bergé, have advocated working with the conservative Republican Right, who have been renamed since some of their colleagues in the old Republicans party formed an alliance with National Rally.

Mr Macron’s decision to call a snap election off the back of RN’s European victory in June angered many of his allies as well as his opponents.

The French president has made no public comment since his party’s defeat in the parliamentary vote.

Last week, he wrote a letter to the country in which he called on all political parties to “rise to the occasion and work together” to build a coalition.

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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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.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Like, Follow, Trafficked: Insta’s Fake Guru

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ana says she was never paid.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Reluctantly, Desirrê agreed to work as a stripper.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I hope my story serves as a warning.”

You can get in touch by following this link

Scientists have for the first time discovered a cave on the Moon.

At least 100m deep, it could be an ideal place for humans to build a permanent base, they say.

It is just one in probably hundreds of caves hidden in an “underground, undiscovered world”, according to the researchers.

Countries are racing to establish a permanent human presence on the Moon, but they will need to protect astronauts from radiation, extreme temperatures, and space weather.

Helen Sharman, the first British astronaut to travel to space, told BBC News that the newly-discovered cave looked like a good place for a base, and suggested humans could potentially be living in lunar pits in 20-30 years.

But, she said, this cave is so deep that astronauts might need to abseil in and use “jet packs or a lift” to get out.

Lorenzo Bruzzone and Leonardo Carrer at the University of Trento in Italy found the cave by using radar to penetrate the opening of a pit on a rocky plain called the Mare Tranquillitatis.

It is visible to the naked eye from Earth, and is also where Apollo 11 landed in 1969.

The cave has a skylight on the Moon’s surface, leading down to vertical and overhanging walls, and a sloping floor that might extend further underground.

It was made millions or billions of years ago when lava flowed on the Moon, creating a tunnel through the rock.

The closest equivalent on Earth would be the volcanic caves in Lanzarote, Spain, Prof Carrer explains, adding that the researchers visited those caves as part of their work.

“It’s really exciting. When you make these discoveries and you look at these images, you realise you’re the first person in the history of humanity to see it,” Prof Carrer said.

Once Prof Bruzzone and Prof Carrer understood how big the cave was, they realised it could be a good spot for a lunar base.

“After all, life on Earth began in caves, so it makes sense that humans could live inside them on the Moon,” says Prof Carrer.

The cave has yet to be fully explored, but the researchers hope that ground-penetrating radar, cameras or even robots could be used to map it.

Scientists first realised there were probably caves on the Moon around 50 years ago. Then in 2010 a camera on a mission called the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter took pictures of pits that scientists thought could be cave entrances.

But researchers did not know how deep the caves might be, or if they would have collapsed.

Prof Bruzzone and Prof Carrer’s work has now answered that question, although there is much more to be done to understand the full scale of the cave.

“We have very good images of the surface – up to 25cm of resolution – we can see the Apollo landing sites – but we know nothing about what lies below the surface. There are huge opportunities for discovery,” Francesco Sauro, Coordinator of the Topical Team Planetary Caves of the European Space Agency, told BBC News.

The research may also help us explore caves on Mars in the future, he says.

That could open the door to finding evidence of life on Mars, because if it did exist, it would almost certainly have been inside caves protected from the elements on the planet’s surface.

The Moon cave might be useful to humans, but the scientists also stress that it could help answer fundamental questions about the history of the Moon, and even our solar system.

The rocks inside the cave will not be as damaged or eroded by space weather, so they can provide an extensive geological record going back billions of years.

The research is published in the scientific journal Nature Astronomy.

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.

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.

Perched on a remote mountain top and surrounded by lowlands, Mabu is what’s known as a “sky island” and is the largest rainforest in southern Africa. BBC environment correspondent Jonah Fisher went to Mabu with a team of scientists who have discovered dozens of new species there, helping to convince Mozambique to protect it.

“Let me get my magic spoon,” Dr Gimo Daniel says with a smile.

It’s hard to imagine anyone taking more delight in their work than the 36-year-old Mozambican beetle expert.

We’re crouched around a small hole in the dirt not far from our camp in the centre of Mabu forest. Dr Daniel’s mission, like that of almost everyone on our expedition, is to find things that science has not seen before.

Dung beetles are Dr Daniel’s speciality and he chuckles as he pulls out a big plastic tub of bait – his own faeces.

The smell is as you’d expect. Pungent and impossible to ignore.

Dr Daniel tells me that he has already discovered what he believes are 15 new species of dung beetles.

“They can smell it up to 50 metres from here, so they come as fast as they can,” he says. “It’s brunch.”

Twenty years ago, Mabu was a secret to all but the locals.

It was ‘discovered’ for the outside world by Prof Julian Bayliss in 2004. An explorer and ecologist who now lives in north Wales, he was surveying satellite images of northern Mozambique when he came across a previously unknown dark green patch.

A first expedition the following year confirmed that although locals had been hunting in the forest it was in incredibly good condition and its size at 75 square kilometres made Mabu the largest single block of rainforest in southern Africa.

“I was like – oh my God – this is phenomenal,” Prof Bayliss recalls.

In early expeditions to Mabu, one of which I joined in 2009 while working as a BBC correspondent in southern Africa, Prof Bayliss was at the forefront of a ‘gold rush’ of discoveries, quickly finding several new species of chameleon, snake and butterfly. 

In all Prof Bayliss says they’ve found at least 25 new species, and that’s not even counting the dung beetles, many of which still need to be officially recognised.

What makes Mabu so special is its geography. A medium altitude rainforest, it protrudes above Mozambique’s lowlands, makes it effectively a ‘sky island’.

That means most of the animals and insects that live there have no way of meeting and breeding with other populations, increasing the chances of them evolving in isolation into something unique and new to science.

The expedition the BBC joined this year at Prof Bayliss’ invitation was the first time a team of scientists had based themselves right in the centre of the forest.

Mabu was in part protected by Mozambique’s long history of civil war, the longest of which ended in 1992. It was also helped by the fact that it’s just so hard to get there.

After driving five hours along dirt roads all of the camping gear, food and equipment is loaded on to the backs and heads of more than sixty porters.

While we, and the scientists, adjusted our walking boots and dropped hydration salts in our water bottles, the porters, many of them wearing just flipflops, marched up Mount Mabu’s steep slopes.

One of the first to find something new is Erica Tovela, a freshwater fish expert from Mozambique’s Natural History Museum. In the stream that runs through camp she catches a type of small catfish she’s not seen before.

“I hope that we have a new species for this area,” she says with a smile as she holds up a see-through bag of dead fish. (They will be preserved in formaldehyde for further analysis and comparison with other similar species.) “Amazing. It will be the first new species for me.”

The process of definitively identifying a new species can take years. It involves writing a peer-reviewed paper in a journal in which the differences between the new discovery and its closest relatives are outlined and accepted by other scientists.

The next step for Ms Tovela is to get the DNA of her fish analysed and detailed descriptions and images circulated. And what might be the name?

“It should be something ,” she says. “It’s a nice way of saying we have one specific species that’s from Mabu.”

Mabu’s forest is in good condition but that’s not to say that some things haven’t changed.

The large mammals that once inhabited it like lions, rhinos and buffalos have all been hunted out, most likely for food during the war. Deforestation has also taken a toll, though not as badly as other forests in southern Africa.

“It’s very visible that forests (in southern Africa) that I’ve been to just 15 to 20 years ago have now disappeared, cut down for many different reasons,” says Prof Ara Monadjem, an expert in small mammals from the University of Eswatini, who was on the trip.

At Mabu the deforestation has so far been limited but locals are certainly hunting. Camera traps show hunters carrying animals they’ve caught and we see physical traps made from car springs set just off the tracks through the forest.

But at the same time species of smaller mammals are also being discovered. They included a horseshoe bat called  and a dwarf musk shrew which scientists are still in the process of naming and describing.

Not everyone on the expedition is looking for new species. Bird experts Claire Spottiswoode and Callan Cohen have a very specific mission. To find evidence that one of Africa’s rarest birds is still alive.

The only lives at altitude and there are fears that a combination of the destruction of forest elsewhere and warming temperatures are pushing the small yellow and black bird towards extinction.

“Climate change often has these effects that are hard to predict,” Callan Cohen explains pointing out that sometimes warmer temperatures encourage snake activity, which means more nests and chicks come under attack.

Trying to find the rare bird involves playing it a recording of a through a Bluetooth speaker and then waiting to see if any respond.

There’s no sign or sound on the day that we join the search, but several days later the bird experts return to camp late at night bringing with them good news.

They managed to record sound of the on one of the higher ridges.

“It’s still a little concerning, to be honest,” Dr Cohen says of the huge effort it had taken.

So what happens next? For Mabu, at least the signs appear positive.

Pejul Calenga, the director general of Mozambique’s conservation areas, tells me in an interview that Mabu is to be turned into a community protected area.

That will mean no logging or mining is allowed but that the locals who depend on the forest for their livelihoods will manage and be able to use it.

Of the role played by the scientists’ work in getting the area protected, he says: “It’s much easier to stand up for those areas in which we have unique resources present.”

Mr Calenga said Mabu now forms part of Mozambique’s commitment to a global biodiversity pledge to protect 30 percent of its land by 2030.

Having led so many expeditions into Mabu forest Prof Bayliss is cautiously optimistic that if the management plan is done well Mabu will turn into a conservation success story.

He is already looking elsewhere in Africa for other sites that need protection.

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.

The head of the Colombian Football Federation, Ramón Jesurún, and his son have been arrested, following a brawl at Sunday’s Copa América final in Miami.

Mr Jesurún, 71, and Ramón Jamil Jesurún, 43, were held on charges of battery involving an official or an employee, said the Miami-Dade Police Department.

The charges relate to the brawl at the stadium after Colombia lost to Argentina 0-1 in extra time.

Neither Mr Jesurún nor his son have publicly commented on the issue.

In a statement sent to the BBC, the Miami-Dade Police Department said the incident had happened just after the football match ended at the Hard Rock Stadium in the south-eastern US state.

Mr Jesurún and his son were “walking towards the entrance of the field”, it said, but they became “irate and began shouting” at one of the security officers, who was instructed by his management to temporarily delay people from going further.

The police said the officer had “placed an open palm” on the chest of Mr Jesurún’s son to guide him back.

Mr Jesurún then pushed the officer, they said, while his son grabbed the officer’s neck and pulled him to the ground, punching him and kicking him in the head.

Mr Jesurún’s son also grabbed and pushed a female official who tried to assist, the police said.

It added that the two men had also punched a security manager.

Mr Jesurún, his son and other family members are believed to have been trying to go on the pitch to take part in the awards ceremony.

On Tuesday the Colombian Football Federation released a statement saying the incident began when stadium security “prevented timely and direct access to the field to most members of the Colombian delegation”.

“As the governing body of Colombian football, we regret this event and offer our apologies to the organizers of the tournament, the host country and the people who were affected,” the statement read.

“Ramon Jesurun, driven by his paternal instinct rushed to complain about what happened but ended up overwhelmed by the situation, as he was in the corridor with his wife, sons, daughters and young grandchildren,”

“For his part, president Jesurun deeply regrets these events, which should never have happened.”

The start of the final of the Americas’ most prestigious football tournament was delayed by 80 minutes after ticketless fans forced their way into Miami’s Hard Rock Stadium.

Several arrests were made after clashes with police and security personnel, while several supporters needed treatment from paramedics.

A Florida judge has dismissed the US justice department’s classified documents case against Donald Trump in a huge victory for the former president just days after a gunman attempted to assassinate him.

Judge Aileen Cannon granted Mr Trump’s motion to dismiss the federal case on the basis that the justice department’s appointment of special prosecutor Jack Smith violates the Appointments Clause of the US Constitution.

He pleaded not guilty to several charges in the case over his handling of classified documents, including wilful retention of national defence information.

A spokesman for Mr Smith said that the justice department has authorised an appeal.

Dozens of classified files were found in Mr Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, including in a shower and storage room, after he left the White House in 2021.

“The Court is convinced that Special Counsel’s Smith’s prosecution of this action breaches two structural cornerstones of our constitutional scheme—the role of Congress in the appointment of constitutional officers, and the role of Congress in authorizing expenditures by law,” Judge Cannon concluded in her 93-page order.

The former president faced multiple felony counts over his alleged mishandling of classified documents.

The 37-count indictment accused Mr Trump of keeping files at his Florida estate and lying to investigators. It alleged he then tried to obstruct the investigation into the handling of the documents.

He was charged alongside aide Walt Nauta and former employee Carlos de Oliveira, who had also pleaded not guilty.

Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Mr Smith in 2022 to oversee two federal investigations into the former president.

Judge Cannon said in her ruling that this decision applies to this case and not a second one overseen by Mr Smith over alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

The former president’s lawyers did not make a similar request to dismiss that case.

The Trump-appointed Florida judge had recently indefinitely postponed the federal classified documents trial, saying there were significant questions over trial evidence.

Legal experts have debated the strengths and weakness of the two federal criminal cases brought by Mr Smith.

On Monday, Judge Cannon stepped in and said those details did not matter.

She held that the mere existence of special counsels – how they are appointed and how they are funded – violates the US Constitution.

Judge Cannon’s ruling cuts against the ruling of judges in other US courts that have dealt with these specially appointed prosecutors.

It draws from theories advanced by some conservative legal scholars and, most notably, by Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas in the top court’s recently decided presidential immunity case.

In that case, the Supreme Court said former presidents, including Mr Trump, are immune from criminal prosecution for “official acts”.

Judge Cannon cited three times in her decision a concurring opinion by Justice Thomas in the Supreme Court ruling in which he questioned whether there was a legal basis for naming special counsel.

Former federal prosecutor Neama Rahmani told the BBC on Monday that Judge Cannon’s ruling was “stunning, to say the least”.

While Judge Cannon said her ruling was limited to this case, Mr Rahmani said it casts doubt on the appointment of special counsels in other cases.

That includes the case of Hunter Biden – President Joe Biden’s son – who was investigated by a special counsel and convicted on gun charges last month.

But a key difference is that the special counsel in that case, David Weiss, is a US attorney for Delaware who, unlike Mr Smith, was nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate.

As well has having the right to an appeal, Mr Smith can also ask for a new judge to be assigned to the case.

Mr Smith’s spokesman said: “The dismissal of the case deviates from the uniform conclusion of all previous courts to have considered the issue that the Attorney General is statutorily authorized to appoint a Special Counsel.

“The Justice Department has authorized the Special Counsel to appeal the court’s order.”

Legal experts say Judge Cannon’s ruling is likely to be overturned but that the further delay to the case could prove beneficial to Mr Trump’s campaign.

“Her ruling has no chance of being sustained on appeal as it conflicts with decisions of the Supreme Court and other lower courts, but it will have the effect of preventing any more embarrassing revelations before the election,” said David Super, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center.

Judge Cannon’s decision also comes as Republicans gather in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, for the Republican National Convention, where Mr Trump will accept the party’s nomination for president.

The US election is on 5 November.

On Monday, Mr Trump said on his social media site that the dismissal of the case “should be just the first step, followed quickly by the dismissal of ALL the Witch Hunts”.

“Let us come together to END all Weaponization of our Justice System, and Make America Great Again!”

While many Republican lawmakers cheered the decision, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat, described the dismissal as a “breathtakingly misguided ruling”.

In May, Mr Trump was found guilty of falsifying business records in a New York hush-money case. He is due to be sentenced in September.

He has also been charged with four criminal counts, including conspiracy to defraud the US and conspiracy against the rights of citizens, in the 2020 election case.

Mr Trump and some 18 other defendants are also accused of criminally conspiring to overturn his very narrow defeat in the state of Georgia in the 2020 election in a separate case.

He has denied any wrongdoing.

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.

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, nor the motive. But Pakistan’s prime minister said four Pakistanis were among those killed in a “terrorist attack” on the Imam Ali Mosque.

Video showed a crowd running for cover inside the mosque’s courtyard as two dozen gunshots are 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.

Earlier on Tuesday, 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.

The National, a newspaper based in Abu Dhabi, cited Mr Ali as saying that at least 50 Pakistani expatriate workers were injured in the attack, with 20 being treated for bullet wounds.

A number of worshippers at the mosque, including women and children were also taken hostage by gunmen and later released by armed police, according to the report.

“It was a horror story for them. They went to pray for Muharram and are shocked this happened,” Mr Ali said. “The attack was premeditated on innocent mosque-goers and that is all we know for now.”

“We thank god that the tragedy is much less than what it could have been.”

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%.

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.

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.

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.

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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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.

She added: “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.”

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.