Two more suspects have been named in the alleged murders of British journalist Dom Phillips and indigenous expert Bruno Pereira, including the alleged mastermind of the crime, Brazilian police say.

Phillips and Pereira were shot dead a year ago while they were returning from a reporting trip in the Amazon.

Ruben Villar, also known as “Colombia,” has been named as a suspect and the “mastermind” of the crime, according to the statement by Brazil’s Federal Police. He is suspected of being the leader of an illegal fishing criminal organization in the region.

Fisherman Janio Freitas de Souza has also been named as a suspect and has links to the illegal fishing criminal organization, the statement added.

Phillips and Pereira disappeared on June 5, 2022, while conducting research for a book project on conservation efforts in the region, which authorities have described as “complicated” and “dangerous.”

The pair had been traveling in the Javari Valley, in the far western side of the Brazilian Amazon, before they were killed and had received death threats just days prior to their disappearance, according to the Coordination of the Indigenous Organization, known as UNIVAJA.

Brazilian authorities said that although there are several people arrested and the investigation is well advanced, their police work is still not finished.

The deaths of Phillips and Pereira has drawn global attention to the perils often faced by journalists and environmental activists in Brazil.

Between 2009 and 2019, more than 300 people were killed in Brazil amid land and resource conflicts in the Amazon, according to Human Rights Watch, citing figures from the Pastoral Land Commission, a non-profit affiliated with the Catholic Church.

Former New Zealand leader Jacinda Ardern, who stepped down from her post earlier this year, has been made a dame in one of the country’s highest honors.

Prime Minister Chris Hipkins announced the appointment on Monday to mark the King’s Birthday public holiday, with Ardern among 182 recipients receiving various honors for their contributions to the country.

“Having served as Prime Minister from 2017 to 2023, Dame Jacinda Ardern is recognized for her service to New Zealand during some of the greatest challenges our country has faced in modern times,” Hipkins said in a statement.

“Leading New Zealand’s response to the 2019 terrorist attacks and to the Covid-19 pandemic represented periods of intense challenge for our 40th Prime Minister, during which time I saw first hand that her commitment to New Zealand remained absolute.”

Hipkins hails from the same party as Ardern, the Labour Party, and succeeded her as leader.

The move grants Ardern the title of Dame Grand Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit. The Order of Merit, established in 1996, is awarded to those in any field who have performed “meritorious service to the Crown and the nation” or who are known for their “eminence, talents, contributions, or other merits,” according to the government site.

“I was in two minds about accepting this acknowledgment,” she said. “So many of the things we went through as a nation over the last five years were about all of us rather than one individual.”

“But I have heard that said by so many Kiwis who I have encouraged to accept an honour over the years. And so for me this a way to say thank you – to my family, to my colleagues, and to the people who supported me to take on the most challenging and rewarding role of my life.”

When Ardern became the country’s prime minister in 2017 at the age of 37, she was New Zealand’s third female leader and one of the youngest leaders in the world. Within a year, she had become only the second world leader to give birth in office.

Her time in power was defined by multiple crises, including the Christchurch terrorist attack, a deadly volcanic explosion, and the pandemic.

She quickly became a progressive global icon, remembered for her empathy while steering New Zealand through these crises and for taking her baby daughter to the United Nations General Assembly.

However, at home her popularity ebbed amid the rising cost of living, housing shortages and economic anxiety. And she faced violent anti-lockdown protests in the capital Wellington, with threats made against her.

Ardern announced her shock resignation in January, saying she no longer had enough fuel in the tank to contest an election – prompting a wave of praise and warm farewells from other world leaders and her many international admirers.

In April, she revealed she will head to Harvard University this fall to complete two fellowships at the Harvard Kennedy School, the university’s school of public policy and government. She will be gone for a semester, missing out on the New Zealand general election, but will return at the end of the fellowships, she said.

Three people, including a young girl, were killed in Kyiv on Thursday while desperately trying to take cover in a closed bomb shelter amid fresh Russian strikes, in an incident that sparked anger in the Ukrainian capital.

Internal Affairs Minister Ihor Klymenko condemned the incident as a “crime” in a statement shared by Ukraine’s National Police, adding that an investigation had been launched.

Russia launched a total of 10 missiles at Kyiv early on Thursday morning, all of which were shot down, the Ukraine Armed Forces said.

However, falling debris from the skies killed three people – a 9-year-old girl, her 34-year-old mother, and a 33-year-old woman – according to the national police. Fourteen others were injured.

The husband of one of the women told public broadcaster Suspilne that when they heard the air raid alarm, people ran to the shelter but found it locked. “People knocked… They knocked for a very long time… There were women, children. No one opened. My wife and child [were there]. The child is fine, but my wife died,” he said.

“I just ran to the other side, calling for them to open. And just at that moment everything happened, at that moment something flew – I don’t know, fragments or something,” the man, named Yaroslav, added.

Another eyewitness named Kateryna Didukh said: “They ran here to hide, but unfortunately it was closed. This is the largest bomb shelter. They were all standing at the entrance. There is a polyclinic and a kindergarten here, and it fell right between them.”

An image taken in the aftermath of the incident shows the grandfather of the nine-year-old victim, who was killed alongside her mother, watching over her body.

The photographer, Serhii Okunev, said in a Facebook post the man “sat on his haunches for several hours, then a chair was found for him.”

Lessons would have to be learned from the incident, minister Klymenko said in his statement. “The 16th month of full-scale war. It would seem that during this time, responsible officials should have identified and fixed all the flaws in the issue of people’s safety. The enemy continues large-scale shelling of cities. But some shelters still remain closed during the air raid alarm.

“Closed bomb shelters during the war are not just indifference. It is a crime,” he added, calling for shelters to be kept open around the clock.

Bomb shelter patrols

In response to the incident on Thursday, Kyiv’s Mayor Vitalii Klitschko said police would now patrol bomb shelters in the city during night-time air-raid alarms to check they are open.

In a Telegram post, Klitschko said a missile fragment fell near the entrance to a clinic in the Desnianskyi district of the capital, “4 minutes after the air raid alarm was announced. People were running to the shelter.”

“Now the investigation is establishing whether the shelter was open. Whether there were people in it,” he said.

“I gave a separate order to the heads of the capital’s districts to immediately check all bomb shelters,” he added.

Klitchko said he had asked for the head of the Desnianskyi district to be removed from his duties while the investigation into the shelter at the clinic is underway, adding that the head of the medical institution should also be removed.

Belgorod strikes

Ukraine, meanwhile, unleashed an early-morning strike on Russia’s Belgorod region Thursday, a day after Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov lashed out at Western countries for not condemning recent strikes inside Russian territory.

“Shebekino is under incessant fire: at 12 a.m., 3:40 a.m. and 5:15 a.m., the Ukrainian armed forces fired Grad missiles at the center and outskirts of the city,” Belgorod regional governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said on Telegram.

Gladkov added that of the five injured, three people have been hospitalized, one woman was treated at the scene, and “there is information about a man who is unconscious with multiple shrapnel wounds. An ambulance team is transporting him to the hospital.”

Residential and administrative buildings were damaged in the strikes, according to Gladkov.

Belgorod – which borders Ukraine’s Kharkiv region – has recently become a hotbed of straying violence, marking a new turn in a conflict that is increasingly coming home to the Russian people.

In a regular call with journalists on Wednesday, before the overnight strikes, Peskov said the Kremlin was concerned about the situation in Belgorod.

He said: “We have not heard a single word of condemnation from any one from the collective West, so far. The situation is rather alarming. Measures are being taken.”

Meanwhile, the Russian Volunteer Corps – a group of anti-Putin Russian nationals aligned with the Ukrainian army – has denied shelling civilians as it claimed its “second phase” inside Russia had begun on Thursday.

In a video message, a fighter from the Russian Volunteer Corps claimed they were “once again fighting on Russian territory.”

The Freedom for Russia Legion posted a video online, claiming it shows the “detonation of ammunition and mortar of the enemy after a precise artillery work on them.”

The Russian Defense Ministry said Thursday that together with the Federal Security Service (FSB) it had prevented an incursion across its border by Ukraine, saying tanks and two motorized infantry companies attempted to enter the Belgorod region.

According to the daily briefing by the Russian MoD, around 3 a.m. Moscow time (8 p.m. Wednesday ET), “after intensive shelling of civilian targets in the Belgorod region, Ukrainian terrorist formations with up to two motorized infantry companies, reinforced with tanks, attempted to invade the territory of the Russian Federation near the settlement of Novaya Tavolzhanka and the Shebekino international automobile checkpoint.”

The Russian military repelled three attacks by Ukrainian terrorist groups, MOD spokesperson Igor Konashenkov said, adding that “terrorists of the Kyiv regime were pushed back, suffering significant losses.”

“Violations of the state border were not allowed,” he added.

The governor of Russia’s Belgorod region, Vyacheslav Gladkov, also denied these latest claims of a border incursion.

“There was no enemy on the territory of the Belgorod region and there is none,” Gladkov said in a Telegram video message Thursday.

“There is massive shelling. Of course, the lives of civilians, the population is under threat. Mainly, in Shebekino and in the surrounding villages,” he added.

Shelling continued into the afternoon on Thursday. Photographs and videos from social media showed a plume of smoke rising from downtown in Belgorod. One video showed broken windows in a nearby high-rise building.

Gladkov said on Telegram that it appears a drone caused the explosion, adding that two men were injured in the attack.

The Russian Volunteer Corps, alongside another anti-Putin group known as the Freedom for Russia Legion, last week claimed responsibility for an incursion into Belgorod.