It was two months into their relationship when Dr Caroline Muirhead's new boyfriend confessed he had killed a man and left him in a shallow grave.

Alexander McKellar offered to take her to the spot where the body was buried – and her quick thinking was crucial in cracking a case which had baffled police for three years.

Caroline secretly dropped a can of Red Bull at the spot, in a remote estate in Argyll, then called police to tell them about the location.

The shallow grave contained the body of Tony Parsons, who had gone missing on a charity cycle ride three years earlier.

Tony's son Mike said that without Caroline's intervention, it was unlikely that his body would ever have been found – and expressed the family's gratitude for what she had done.

The case is the subject of a new two-part documentary which reveals the twists and turns of the police investigation and the Parsons family's long wait for justice.

Mike Parsons told BBC Scotland News that his dad was the kind of man who was always determined to complete any challenge he set himself.

Tony had previously been treated for prostate cancer and wanted to give something back.

So he planned a 104-mile charity cycle from Fort William to his home in Tillicoultry, setting off on Friday 29 September 2017 and cycling through the night.

Mike said his family started to become concerned when Tony had not contacted them by Saturday night.

"I actually texted him myself, with what is my dad and myself's sense of humour, a simple text: 'Are you still alive?'

"Looking back now, it's not nice to know that was the very last thing I texted to him, knowing at this point he would have been passed away."

Tony was subsequently reported missing, sparking a major search operation.

Police knew he passed through Glencoe Village at about 18:00 on Friday before going on to the Bridge of Orchy Hotel in Argyll.

The last known sighting of him was at the hotel at 23:30 that night, before he headed south on the A82 in the direction of Tyndrum.

As the days progressed, former police officer Mike and his family grew increasingly concerned about Tony.

"I knew the timescales that would be involved," he said.

"The longer the days went on, I knew in my head that the chances of him being found alive would be pretty slim.

"But I basically had to convince my mum there was still a chance, and lying to somebody like that is not easy."

Despite numerous public appeals including an appearance by Mike on Crimewatch, it seemed that Tony Parsons had vanished into thin air.

Then, in late 2020, police received a phone call that would change everything.

The female caller was distressed.

She said she had information about a crime that had been committed three years earlier at Bridge of Orchy.

It concerned a hit and run, the concealment of a body, and lying to police.

She said the victim's name was Tony Parsons.

The caller was Dr Caroline Muirhead, the girlfriend of Alexander McKellar. Known as Sandy, he worked on a nearby estate with his twin brother Robert.

Police had spoken to the brothers after an anonymous letter in August 2018 said they were in the Bridge of Orchy Hotel the night Tony Parsons had vanished, but no further action was taken.

In June 2020, they were again questioned about Tony and confirmed being in the hotel with a hunting party that night. However, they said they had not seen the cyclist.

In November 2020, Caroline Muirhead and Alexander McKellar had been together for two months.

She asked her boyfriend if there was anything in his past which may affect their future together.

He told her he had hit Tony as he drove home from the hotel with his brother, but did not seek medical assistance.

It was later revealed that Tony's injuries were so bad that he would only have survived for 20 or 30 minutes without help - but it was unlikely that he had died instantly.

The twins left the area and came back to the site in another car before taking Tony's body to the Auch Estate, where they buried him.

Mike Parsons said: "What they did was inhumane and you wouldn't do that to animals.

"They killed him by not seeking any medical treatment."

After confessing to his girlfriend, Alexander McKellar led her to the shallow grave where Tony's body had been buried.

Caroline secretly dropped a Red Bull can as a marker for the spot, before later calling police.

Mike Parsons said she had shown "remarkable foresight."

"Being brutally honest, I'm not so sure if I was in the same situation I would have done and thought the same way.

"From my perspective, I have nothing but massive amounts of gratitude for that, because had she not done that and put herself into these positions, then we would never have found my dad's body."

Tony's body was recovered from the grave in January 2021 after a two-day operation by specialist officers.

He was found to have suffered "catastrophic" rib, pelvic and spine fractures following the collision.

Tony's funeral was held at Stirling Crematorium in April 2021.

The brothers were arrested and questioned twice by police, but were initially uncooperative, giving "no comment" interviews.

With the evidence against the twins mounting, police eventually charged the pair with murder.

In July 2023, shortly before their trial was due to begin at the High Court in Glasgow, Sandy McKellar admitted the reduced charge of culpable homicide.

His brother had his not guilty plea to murder accepted, but the pair both admitted attempting to defeat the ends of justice by covering up the crime.

Sandy McKellar was sentenced to 12 years in jail, while his brother was jailed for five years and three months.

Mike Parsons said that no sentence would ever be enough.

"They have left my mum without a husband and us without a father."

Mike said he would like his dad was remembered for the good he did in his life, rather than the circumstances of his death.

"For me, he was a grumpy old dad who you had your run-ins with every now and then," he says, smiling.

"But, I'd like people to remember him as just the guy who wanted to help everybody."

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President Donald Trump has said he will deploy hundreds of National Guard troops to Washington DC and is taking control of its police department to fight crime.

At a press conference, he declared "Liberation Day" for the city and pledged to "rescue our nation's capital from crime, bloodshed, bedlam and squalor and worse".

However, Mayor Muriel Bowser has said the city has "seen a huge decrease in crime" and that it was "at a 30-year violent crime low".

BBC Verify looks at what the figures show about violent crime in the capital and how it compares to other cities in the US.

Is violent crime up in Washington DC?

Trump's executive order declaring "a crime emergency in the District of Columbia" mentions "rising violence in the capital". In his press conference he made repeated references to crime being "out of control".

But according to crime figures published by Washington DC's Metropolitan Police (MPDC), violent offences fell after peaking in 2023 and in 2024 hit their lowest level in 30 years.

They are continuing to fall, according to preliminary data for 2025.

Violent crime overall is down 26% this year compared to the same point in 2024, and robbery is down 28%, according to the MPDC.

Trump and the DC Police Union have questioned the veracity of the city police department's crime figures.

Violent crime is reported differently by the MPDC and the FBI - another major source of US crime statistics.

MPDC public data showed a 35% fall for 2024, while the FBI data showed a 9% drop.

So the figures agree that crime is falling in DC, but differ on the level of that decline.

The downward trend is "unmistakable and large", according to Adam Gelb, the CEO of the Council on Criminal Justice (CCJ), a legal think tank.

"The numbers shift depending on what time period and what types of crime you examine," said Mr Gelb.

"But overall there's an unmistakable and large drop in violence since the summer of 2023, when there were peaks in homicide, gun assaults, robbery, and carjacking."

What about murder rates?

Trump also claimed that "murders in 2023 reached the highest rate probably ever" in Washington DC - adding that numbers "just go back 25 years".

When we asked the White House the source for the figures, they said it was "numbers provided by the FBI".

The homicide rate did spike in 2023 to around 40 per 100,000 residents - the highest rate in 20 years, according to FBI data.

However, that was not the highest ever recorded - it was significantly higher in the 1990s and in the early 2000s.

The homicide rate dropped in 2024 and this year it is down 12% on the same point last year, according to the MPDC.

Studies have suggested that the capital's homicide rate is higher than average, when compared to other major US cities.

As of 11 August, there have been 99 homicides so far this year in Washington DC - including a 21-year-old congressional intern shot dead in crossfire, a case Trump referred to in his press conference.

What about carjackings?

The president also mentioned the case of a 19-year-old former employee of the Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) who was injured in an alleged attempted carjacking in the capital at the start of August.

Trump claimed "the number of carjackings has more than tripled" over the last five years.

So far this year, the MPDC has recorded 189 carjacking offences, down from 300 in the same period last year.

According to the CCJ, carjacking rose markedly from 2020 onward and spiked to a monthly peak of 140 reported incidents in June 2023.

Since July 2025, a citywide curfew has been in force for people under the age of 17 from 23:00 to 06:00.

It was introduced to combat juvenile crime - including carjacking - which often spikes in the summer months.

How does crime compare to other parts of the US?

"The level of violence in the District remains mostly higher than the average of three dozen cities in our sample," Mr Gelb from the CCJ told us.

"Although it is consistent with what we're seeing in other large cities across the country," he added.

The CCJ looks at crime rates across 30 large US cities.

Its analysis suggests that the homicide rate in DC fell 19% in the first half of this year (January-June 2025), compared with the same period last year.

This is a slightly larger fall than the 17% average decline across the cities in the CCJ's study sample.

However, if you take the first six months of 2025 and compare it to the same period in 2019 - before the Covid-19 pandemic - it shows only a 3% fall in homicides.

Across the 30 cities in the study, that decrease was 14% over the same timeframe.

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The US and China have extended their trade truce for 90 days just hours before a jump in tariffs had been set to kick in.

An executive order signed by US President Donald Trump on Monday keeps in place an agreement from May, when the two sides temporarily suspended some of the tariffs on each others' goods.

The US had warned higher tariffs could kick in on Tuesday unless that truce was extended.

Talks last month ended with both sides calling the discussions "constructive". China's top negotiator said at the time that both sides would push to preserve the truce, while US officials said they were waiting for final sign-off from Trump.

A return of higher duties would have risked further trade turmoil and uncertainty amid worries about the effect of tariffs on prices and the economy.

Trade tensions between the US and China reached fever pitch in April, after Trump unveiled sweeping new tariffs on goods from countries around the world, with China facing some of the highest levies.

Beijing retaliated with tariffs of its own, sparking a tit-for-tat fight that saw tariffs soar into the triple digits and nearly shut down trade between the two countries.

The two sides had agreed to set aside some of those measures in May.

That agreement left Chinese goods entering the US facing an additional 30% tariff compared with the start of the year, with US goods facing a new 10% tariff in China.

The two sides remain in discussions about issues including access to China's rare earths, its purchases of Russian oil, and US curbs on sales of advanced technology, including chips to China.

Trump recently relaxed some of those export restrictions, allowing firms such as AMD and Nvidia to resume sales of certain chips to firms in China in exchange for sharing 15% of their revenues with the government.

The US is also pushing for the spin-off of TikTok from its Chinese owner ByteDance, a move that has been opposed by Beijing.

Earlier on Monday in remarks to reporters, Trump did not commit to extending the truce but said dealings had been going "nicely". A day earlier he called on Beijing to increase its purchases of US soybeans.

Even with the truce, trade flows between the countries have been hit this year, with US government figures showing US imports of Chinese goods in June cut nearly in half compared with June 2024.

In the first six months of the year, the US imported $165bn (£130bn) worth of goods from China, down roughly 15% from the same time last year. American exports to China n roughly 20% year-on-year for the same period.

An explosion was reported at the US Steel Clairton plant outside Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on Monday, causing multiple injuries and trapping several people, officials say.

Allegheny County Emergency Services spokesperson Kasey Reigner confirmed there were "dozens" of injuries but could not confirm fatalities or a cause, CBS News reported.

Another spokesperson confirmed a rescue operation was underway for people trapped.

Governor Josh Shapiro posted on social media that the state's emergency management services and police had been deployed to the plant.

US Senator John Fetterman wrote on X that he was also at the scene and witnessed "an active search and rescue underway."

KDKA News, a local broadcaster, reported at least one person was unaccounted for.

This breaking news story is being updated and more details will be published shortly. Please refresh the page for the fullest version.

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The bones of a British man who died in a terrible accident in Antarctica in 1959 have been discovered in a melting glacier.

The remains were found in January by a Polish Antarctic expedition, alongside a wristwatch, a radio, and a pipe.

He has now been formally identified as Dennis "Tink" Bell, who fell into a crevasse aged 25 when working for the organisation that became the British Antarctic Survey.

"I had long given up on finding my brother. It is just remarkable, astonishing. I can't get over it," David Bell, 86, tells BBC News.

"Dennis was one of the many brave personnel who contributed to the early science and exploration of Antarctica under extraordinarily harsh conditions," says Professor Dame Jane Francis, director of the British Antarctic Survey .

"Even though he was lost in 1959, his memory lived on among colleagues and in the legacy of polar research," she adds.

It was David who answered the door in his family home in Harrow, London, in July 1959.

"The telegram boy said, 'I'm sorry to tell you, but this is bad news'," he says. He went upstairs to tell his parents.

"It was a horrendous moment," he adds.

Talking to me from his home in Australia and sitting next to his wife Yvonne, David smiles as stories from his childhood in 1940s England spill out.

They are the memories of a younger sibling admiring a charming, adventurous big brother.

"Dennis was fantastic company. He was very amusing. The life and soul of wherever he happened to be," David says.

"One of the funniest things was, and I still can't get over this, one evening when me, my mother and father came home from the cinema," David continues.

"And I have to say this in fairness to Dennis, he had put a newspaper down on the kitchen table, but on top of it, he'd taken a motorbike engine apart and it was all over the table," he says.

"I can remember his style of dress, he always used to wear duffel coats. He was just an average sort of fellow who enjoyed life," he adds.

Dennis Bell, nicked-named "Tink", was born in 1934. He worked with the RAF and trained as a meteorologist, before joining the Falkland Islands Dependencies Survey to work in Antarctica.

"He was obsessed with Scott's diaries," David says, referring to Captain Robert Scott who discovered the South Pole and died on an expedition in 1912.

Dennis went to Antarctica in 1958. He was stationed for a two-year assignment at Admiralty Bay, a small UK base with about 12 men on King George Island, which is roughly 120 kilometres (75 miles) off the northern coast of the Antarctic Peninsula.

The British Antarctica Survey keeps meticulous records and its archivist Ieuan Hopkins has dug out detailed base camp reports about Dennis's work and antics on the harsh and "ridiculously isolated" island.

Reading aloud, Mr Hopkins says: "He's cheerful and industrious, with a mischievous sense of humour and fondness for practical jokes."

Dennis's job was to send up meteorological weather balloons and radio the reports to the UK every three hours, which involved firing up a generator in sub-zero conditions.

Described as the best cook in the hut, he was in charge of the food store over the winter when no supplies could reach them.

Antarctica felt even more cut off than it is today, with extremely limited contact with home. David recalls recording a Christmas message at BBC studios with his parents and sister Valerie to be sent to his brother.

He was best known for his love of the husky dogs used to pull sledges around the island, and he raised two litters of dogs.

He was also involved in surveying King George Island to produce some of the first mapping of the largely unexplored place.

It was on a surveying trip that the accident happened, a few weeks after his 25th birthday.

On 26 July 1958, in the deep Antarctic winter, Dennis and a man called Jeff Stokes left the base to climb and survey a glacier.

Accounts in the British Antarctic Survey records explain what happened next and the desperate attempts to rescue him.

The snow was deep and the dogs had started to show signs of tiredness. Dennis went on ahead alone to encourage them, but he wasn't wearing his skis. Suddenly he disappeared into a crevasse, leaving a hole behind him.

According to the accounts, Jeff Stokes called into the depths and Dennis was able to shout back. He grabbed onto a rope that was lowered down. The dogs pulled on the rope and Dennis was hitched up to the lip of the hole.

But he had tied the rope onto his belt, perhaps because of the angle he lay in. As he reached the lip, the belt broke and he fell again. His friend called again, but this time Dennis didn't reply.

"That's a story I shall never get over," says David.

The base camp reports about the accident are business-like.

"We heard from Jeff […] that yesterday Tink fell down a crevasse and was killed. We hope to return tomorrow, sea ice permitting," it continues.

Mr Hopkins explains that another man, called Alan Sharman, had died weeks earlier, and the morale was very low.

"The sledge has got back. We heard the sad details. Jeff has badly bitten frostbitten hands. We are not taking any more risks to recover," the report reads the day after the accident.

Reading the reports again, Mr Hopkins discovered that earlier in the season, it had been Dennis who'd made the coffin for Alan Sharman.

"My mother never really got over it. She couldn't handle photographs of him and couldn't talk about him," David says.

He recalls that two men on Dennis's base visited the family, bringing a sheepskin as a gesture.

"But there was no conclusion. There was no service, there was no anything. Just Dennis gone," David says.

About 15 years ago, David was contacted by Rod Rhys Jones, chair of the British Antarctic Monument Trust.

Since 1944, 29 people have died working on British Antarctic Territory on scientific missions, according to the trust.

Rod was organising a voyage for relatives of some of the 29 to see the spectacular and remote place where their loved ones had lived and died.

David joined the expedition, called South 2015.

"The captain stopped at the locations and give four or five hoots of the siren," he says.

The sea ice was too thick for David to reach his brother's hut on King George Island.

"But it was very, very moving. It lifted the pressure, a weight off my head, as it were," he says.

It gave him a sense of closure.

"And I thought that would be it," he says.

But on 29 January this year, a team of Polish researchers working from the Henryk Arctowski Polish Antarctic Station stumbled across something practically on their doorstep.

Dennis had been found.

Some bones were in the loose ice and rocks deposited at the foot of Ecology Glacier on King George Island. Others were found on the glacier surface.

The scientists explain that fresh snowfall was imminent, and they put down a GPS marker so their "fellow polar colleague" would not be lost again.

A team of scientists made up of Piotr Kittel, Paulina Borówka and Artur Ginter at University of Lodz, Dariusz Puczko at the Polish Academy of Sciences and fellow researcher Artur Adamek carefully rescued the remains in four trips.

It's a dangerous and unstable place, "criss-crossed with crevasses", and with slopes of up to 45 degrees, according to the Polish team.

Climate change is causing dramatic changes to many Antarctic glaciers, including Ecology Glacier, which is undergoing intense melting.

"The place where Dennis was found is not the same as the place where he went missing," the team explains.

"Glaciers, under the influence of gravity, move their mass of ice, and with it, Dennis made his journey," they say.

Fragments of bamboo ski poles, remains of an oil lamp, glass containers for cosmetics, and fragments from military tents were also collected.

"Every effort was made to ensure that Dennis could return home," the team say.

"It's an opportunity to reassess the contribution these men made, and an opportunity to promote science and what we've done in the Antarctic over many decades," says Rod Rhys Jones.

David still seems overwhelmed by the news, and repeats how grateful he is to the Polish scientists.

"I'm just sad my parents never got to see this day," he says.

David will soon visit England where he and his sister, Valerie, plan to finally put Dennis to rest.

"It's wonderful, I'm going to meet my brother. You might say we shouldn't be thrilled, but we are. He's been found - he's come home now."

The death of a one-month-old baby girl who was the victim of female genital mutilation (FGM) in The Gambia has sparked widespread outrage.

The baby was rushed to a hospital in the capital, Banjul, after she developed severe bleeding, but was pronounced dead on arrival, police said.

Although an autopsy is still being conducted to establish the cause of her death, many people have linked it to FGM, or female circumcision, a cultural practice outlawed in the West African state.

"Culture is no excuse, tradition is no shield, this is violence, pure and simple," a leading non-governmental organisation, Women In Leadership and Liberation (WILL), said in a statement.

Two women had been arrested for their alleged involvement in the baby's death, police said.

The MP for the Kombo North District where the incident happened emphasised the need to protect children from harmful practices that rob them of their health, dignity, and life.

"The loss of this innocent child must not be forgotten. Let it mark a turning-point and a moment for our nation to renew its unwavering commitment to protecting every child's right to life, safety, and dignity," Abdoulie Ceesay said.

FGM is the deliberate cutting or removal of a female's external genitalia.

The most frequently cited reasons for carrying it out are social acceptance, religious beliefs, misconceptions about hygiene, a means of preserving a girl or woman's virginity, making her "marriageable", and enhancing male sexual pleasure.

The Gambia is among the 10 countries with the highest rates of FGM, with 73% of women and girls aged 15 to 49 having undergone the procedure, with many doing so before the age of six years.

• 'I wanted my clitoris back' - FGM survivor

WILL founder Fatou Baldeh told the BBC that there was an increase in FGM procedures being performed on babies in The Gambia.

"Parents feel that if they cut their girls when they're babies, they heal quicker, but also, because of the law, they feel that if they perform it at such a young age, it's much easier to disguise, so that people don't know," she said.

FGM has been outlawed in The Gambia since 2015, with fines and jail terms of up to three years for perpetrators, and life sentences if a girl dies as a result.

However, there have only been two prosecutions and one conviction, in 2023.

A strong lobby group has emerged to demand the decriminalisation of FGM, but legislation aimed at repealing the ban was voted down in parliament last year.

FGM is banned in more than 70 countries globally but continues to be practised particularly in Africa's Muslim-majority countries, such as The Gambia.

You may also be interested in:

• What is FGM, where does it happen and why?
• FGM survivor refuses to let mutilation define her life
• 'Why I broke the law to be circumcised aged 26'

Go to BBCAfrica.com for more news from the African continent.

Follow us on Twitter @BBCAfrica, on Facebook at BBC Africa or on Instagram at bbcafrica

It's the bilateral summit every European leader wants to be at.

And for good reason. On Friday, Donald Trump is scheduled to meet Vladimir Putin in Alaska to discuss ending the war in Ukraine.

Territorial concessions will likely be discussed, and Europe (not least Ukraine) doesn't want its borders to be redrawn through force.

But, as things stand, there are no invites for the country being invaded, nor the continent it sits in.

"Brace ourselves for some pretty outrageous Russian demands," warns Lord Simon McDonald, a former head of the UK Foreign Office.

"It will be theatrical," he adds. "Putin is going to ask for things that nobody else would concede - with the possible exception of Donald Trump."

• Trump says he will try to get back territory for Ukraine in talks with Putin

President Zelensky has said he won't agree to the giving up of any land, or even freezing the conflict along the current front lines.

His argument is that it won't slow a Russian war machine that has waged a full-scale war for more than three and a half years. Concessions, he claims, would only speed it up.

"It's clear Putin wants a photo with the most influential people on Earth, which is President Trump, and he wants sanctions to be postponed, which he'll probably get," the EU's foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, tells me.

"The question is, what is success for the US in the meeting?" she asks. "If President Zelensky is there, it would be a clear success."

But if Ukraine's leader isn't at the Alaskan table, how might the Kremlin's proposals be challenged?

"He could go," said the US president on that possibility. But Kyiv and Europe want it to go from a "maybe" to a "yes".

Adding to their anxiety is the one-on-one format being a Kremlin idea the White House agreed to.

A European scramble

Brussels' European Quarter isn't its usual flurry of political activity during August, but these US-Russia talks have changed that.

On Monday, Kallas hosted a virtual meeting of foreign ministers where they called for an unconditional ceasefire before any deal. New sanctions for Moscow were announced as well.

I asked Kallas what she thought Donald Trump meant by suggesting some land could be swapped.

"We have to ask President Trump," she says. "But it is clear an aggressor can't be awarded for aggression. Otherwise, we will just see more aggression around the world because it pays off."

Europe is trying to do two things: rally around Ukraine, as well as muscle in on this American-led peace process.

Whether or not Zelensky does make the trip, the door for Europe has firmly remained shut since Trump retook office at the start of the year.

At the time his envoy to Ukraine, Keith Kellogg, said the bloc wouldn't be involved in any peace talks. It's a position the Europeans have been unable to change through diplomacy.

Their relationship with the US has still improved, not least with significant increases in their defence spending. But Radoslaw Sikorski, Poland's foreign minister, believes they need a more central role.

"This is a matter of existential European security interest," he explains.

"We appreciate Trump's efforts but we'll be taking our own decision in Europe too.

"A simple ceasefire would not resolve the problem."

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has secured a remote sit down between European leaders, as well as Volodymyr Zelensky and Donald Trump, this Wednesday.

They hope to be consulted on America's plan to end Russia's invasion, but ex-UK Foreign Office head Lord McDonald would be surprised to see a last-minute European invite for Friday.

"The end will be as protracted as the war has been long," he warned.

"The meeting is a milestone, but it doesn't actually mean it will lead anywhere."

President Donald Trump has deployed the National Guard to Washington DC and taken control of the city's police force as he pledges to crack down on crime and homelessness in the nation's capital.

Trump declared a "public safety emergency" on Monday, deploying 800 National Guard troops who will bolster hundreds of federal law enforcement officers who were deployed over the weekend.

"It's becoming a situation of complete and total lawlessness," he told reporters at the White House.

The city's Mayor Muriel Bowser has rejected the president's claims about crime and while there was a spike in 2023, statistics show it has fallen since then. Violent crime in the city is also at a 30-year low.

"I'm announcing a historic action to rescue our nation's capital from crime, bloodshed, bedlam and squalor and worse," Trump said during a news conference in which he was flanked by US Attorney General Pam Bondi, who will lead the city's police force while it is under federal control.

"This is liberation day in DC, and we're going to take our capital back," he said.

Trump said Washington DC had been "taken over by violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals" as well as "drugged out maniacs and homeless people".

According to data from the city's Metropolitan Police Department, homicides dropped by 32 percent between 2023 and 2024 and reached their lowest level since 2019.

There has been another substantial drop this year of 12 percent, the data shows.

Mayor Bowser, a Democrat, acknowledged there had been a "terrible" spike in crime in 2023, which mirrored a national trend, but she pushed back against any claims of a crimewave in the city.

"We are not experiencing a crime spike," she told MSNBC on Sunday. "The president is very aware of our efforts."

When asked about White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller's comment that Washington is more violent than Baghdad, Bowser said "any comparison to a war-torn country is hyperbolic and false".

Of the 800 National Guard troops who will be activated, between 100-200 will be deployed and supporting law enforcement at any given time, the army said in a statement.

As well as that deployment, Trump said he would place the city's police department under direct federal control using the District of Columbia Home Rule Act.

That act was instituted by former President Richard Nixon to allow residents of Washington DC - which is the only US city that is not in any of the 50 states - to elect a city council and a mayor.

But it also has a caveat that allows the president to take control of the city's police force if "special conditions of an emergency nature exist".

If the president intends to take control for longer than 48 hours, they need to provide a written notice to Congress. And even if that notice is provided, they cannot keep control of the police for longer than 30 days.

On Sunday, when asked about the possibility of the president taking control of the city's police department, Mayor Bowser said: "There are very specific things in our law that would allow [that]. None of those conditions exist in our city right now."

She said she was "concerned" about the National Guard enforcing local laws.

The mayor's office has not yet responded to a request for comment from the BBC on Trump's Monday announcement.

As well as crime, Trump also spoke at length about homelessness in Washington DC.

"We're getting rid of the slums," he said, without giving further details. He said homeless people would be sent elsewhere but did not say where.

Trump added that "everything should be perfect" when dignitaries and foreign leaders visit the city.

"It's a very strong reflection of our country," he said. "If our capital is dirty, our whole country is dirty and they don't respect us."

Local groups working with homeless people in the capital told the BBC they had actually seen progress in recent years.

Homelessness is down almost 20% for individuals in Washington DC in 2025 compared to five years ago, said Ralph Boyd, the president and chief executive of So Others Might Eat (SOME) - a group that provides people in the city with housing, clothing and other social services.

He also said Trump's proposal to move people out of the city was not a long-term solution.

"All it will do is transfer the problem somewhere else into communities that are perhaps less equipped to deal with it than we are," Boyd said.

Meanwhile, outside the White House, protesters concerned about Trump's actions gathered and chanted "hands off DC" and "protect home rule".

"Trump does not care about DC's safety, he cares about control," a speaker at the event said.

The president's actions follow a series of social media posts in recent days in which he has criticised the running of Washington DC. Trump has long complained about the city's Democratic leadership for their handling of crime and homelessness.

He has also responded angrily to a former employee of the Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) who was attacked recently in in the city.

During Monday's press conference, Trump said the employee was "savagely beaten by a band of roaming thugs" and was "left dripping in blood".

He also mentioned other federal government employees and elected officials who have been attacked, including a Democratic lawmaker and an intern.

"This is a threat to America," Trump said.

The first time Trump deployed the National Guard was in June, when he ordered 2,000 National Guardsmen to Los Angeles to deal with unrest over raids on undocumented migrants.

The last time the National Guard was deployed to Washington DC was in response to the Capitol riot in 2021.

An explosion was reported at the US Steel Clairton plant outside Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on Monday, causing multiple injuries and trapping several people, officials say.

Allegheny County Emergency Services spokesperson Kasey Reigner confirmed there were "dozens" of injuries but could not confirm fatalities or a cause, CBS News reported.

Another spokesperson confirmed a rescue operation was underway for people trapped.

Governor Josh Shapiro posted on social media that the state's emergency management services and police had been deployed to the plant.

US Senator John Fetterman wrote on X that he was also at the scene and witnessed "an active search and rescue underway."

KDKA News, a local broadcaster, reported at least one person was unaccounted for.

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