Mark Carney’s Liberals have won Canada’s federal election – riding a backlash of anti-Trump sentiment to form the next government.

It is a stunning political turnaround for a party who were widely considered dead and buried just a few months ago.

It’s not yet clear if the party – which has been in power for almost a decade – will be able to secure a majority as results continue to roll in.

Either way, the prime minister faces major challenges, including divisions in the country laid bare by the campaign.

Here are five takeaways from an election which saw the Conservative opposition make major gains but still lose.

There is no doubt the US president’s tariff threats and comments undermining Canada’s sovereignty played an outsized role in this election, suddenly making leadership and the country’s economic survival the defining issues of the campaign.

Mark Carney used it to his advantage, running as much against Trump as he did against his main opposition rival, Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre.

Carney warned Canada was at a crisis moment, saying frequently on the campaign trail – and in his victory speech – that Trump “wants to break us so America can own us”.

Poilievre brought Trump up much less frequently during the campaign, focusing his message on domestic issues – the cost of living, the housing affordability crisis, and crime – and targeting the Liberals for their record on those matters.

Carney – who has declared the old relationship with the US “over” – plans to start negotiations on a new economic and security relationship immediately following the election.

Kevin O’Leary, a Canadian businessman close to Trump who previously ran for the Conservative leadership, acknowledged it was a successful campaign strategy.

“Right now Canadians are very frustrated with America and Carney has used that to his advantage,” he told the BBC just before polls closed. “He was able to distract Canadians from his own mistakes… and say ‘Stop looking at that. Look south of the border and I can save you’.”

At the start of the year, Carney was a former central banker with no experience as a politician. By mid-March, he was being sworn in as prime minister – the first to have never held elected public office before – after a resounding win in the Liberal leadership race.

Now, he’s faced the Canadian electorate as a first time campaigner, won an Ottawa-area seat in the House of Commons and steered his party to an unlikely victory.

Carney had long flirted with entering Canadian politics – and he seized his moment, swooping in after former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s sudden resignation in January.

He also took full advantage of the new political landscape, leaning into his experience helping Canada and the UK navigate previous crises at a time when Canadians were feeling anxious about their economic future.

Trump’s late-March announcement of global levies on foreign automobile imports gave Carney the chance to publicly audition to keep his job during the campaign. He was able to step away from the trail and take on the prime minister’s mantle, setting up a call with the president and meeting US Cabinet ministers.

• REACTION: Follow the latest live
• RESULTS: How Canada voted – in charts
• ANALYSIS: A turnaround victory made possible by Trump
• EXPLAINER: What happens next?

In a different election, this would have been a successful one for the Conservatives.

In 2011, the Conservatives won a majority with 39.6% of the vote. Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre is on track to beat that this time, with roughly 41.4% of the vote with most polls reporting, according to Elections Canada.

They are currently projected to have won 144 seats – that’s up from 120 at dissolution, when the election was called in March.

But with the progressive vote coalescing around the Liberals, those numbers weren’t enough this time.

The bitter blow was Poilievre losing his riding (parliamentary seat) in Carleton, Ontario.

Only months ago his party had a clear path to victory and they will now need to figure out a way forward after a series of electoral defeats.

Whether that includes the diminished figure of Poilievre as leader is the first big question for them to face.He is the third leader they’ve had since the Liberals swept the 2015 election.

The election results have highlighted divisions in Canada that could pose a challenge for Carney.

Notably, the Liberals are largely shut out of Alberta and Saskatchewan – oil-rich and gas-rich prairie provinces where a sense of alienation from the centre of power in Ottawa has long festered.

Even before the election, some in those regions were warning of a national unity crisis if the Liberals won another mandate.

Carney touched on those divisions in his victory speech, acknowledging the millions who had voted for a different outcome.

“I intend to govern for all Canadians,” he said.

Meanwhile, Poilievre’s message, which relentlessly focused on cost of living issues, especially on housing affordability, resonated with many young people.

Support for the Conservatives outpaced Liberals by 44% to 31.2% among 18 to 34 year olds, a Nanos poll on 25 April indicated. The divide was more stark among younger men.

Separately, Abacus Data polling found that about 18% of 18 to 29 year olds were worried about Trump. That jumped to 45% for voters over 60, suggesting a polarisation on issues between generations.

On Monday night, Poilievre remarked on demographic breakthroughs Conservative had made, including with younger Canadians.

“We gave voices to countless people across the country who’ve been left out and left behind for far too long,” he said.

In this election, the smaller political parties have taken a hit as Canadians choose to park their votes with either the Liberals or the Conservatives – especially the left-wing New Democrats, or NDP.

Some of the smaller parties have lost a significant amount of vote share – particularly the NDP who have received just 6% of votes counted across Canada so far, compared with 18% in 2021.

Jagmeet Singh, who has been NDP leader for almost eight years, lost his own riding in British Columbia and announced he will step down.

“Obviously I know this night is a disappointing night for New Democrats,” he said, adding: “We’re only defeated if we stop fighting.”

The Greens have also seen their vote share cut in half from 2% to 1%.

Shachi Kurl, president of the Angus Reid Institute, a non-profit public opinion research organisation, told the BBC that Trump’s rhetoric was behind the shift to the Liberals.

“The threats, the annexation talk, all of that has been a huge motivator for left of centre voters,” she said.

The sovereigntist Bloc Québécois have maintained a vote share of around 7%. They are on track to win 23 seats in Quebec.

This is based on around 97% of polls reporting.

Canada doesn’t have a two-party system, even though it has historically voted in conservative or liberal governments in some form.

In the country’s political system, these smaller parties still play a role in Parliament. Both the NDP and the Bloc have at some points formed Official Opposition in the House of Commons.

One of Prince Andrew’s prized business assets was administered for two years by a company controlled by the controversial millionaire Doug Barrowman, the BBC can reveal.

After the prince’s disastrous Newsnight interview in 2019, legal ownership of his Dragons’ Den-style start-up competition, Pitch@Palace Global, was transferred to a Barrowman-linked firm, Knox House Trustees (UK).

Barrowman and his wife, lingerie boss Baroness Michelle Mone, hit the headlines when she admitted they had lied about their links to a company that won large government contracts during the Covid pandemic after she recommended it to ministers.

A lawyer for Mr Barrowman said he “at no time… had any business or personal involvement with the duke”.

Pitch@Palace Global remained the prince’s company, under his control. But in line with longstanding royal practice, it was owned under the names of other people or companies, acting on his behalf as so-called “nominees”.

Documents filed at Companies House show that from 2021, the nominee owner was Knox House Trustees (UK), which was controlled and ultimately owned by Mr Barrowman until 2023.

Prince Andrew’s finances have been under intense scrutiny, with questions about how he can afford to live in his Royal Lodge mansion in Windsor after he was cut off financially by his brother, King Charles.

The prince’s choice of business associates has long been controversial. In December, he said he “ceased all contact” with Yang Tengbo, who led the Chinese arm of Pitch@Palace, after receiving advice from the UK government which alleged that he was a spy.

Mr Yang has denied being a spy or doing anything unlawful.

Mr Barrowman has attracted plenty of controversy too. In 2017, HMRC began an investigation into one of his companies, AML Tax (UK), which it said “aggressively promoted” tax avoidance schemes. It was fined £150,000 in 2022.

In January that year, the Guardian newspaper first reported links between Mr Barrowman, Baroness Mone and PPE Medpro. The pair denied involvement until December 2023, when she admitted in a BBC interview that they had lied about their links with the company.

The National Crime Agency is now investigating suspected criminal offences at the firm. Mr Barrowman and Baroness Mone both deny any wrongdoing.

Author Andrew Lownie, who is writing a biography of the prince, said: “Andrew has a long history of associating with dubious business figures and disguising his business activities behind nominee and offshore accounts. There really needs to be a full investigation into the duke’s financial activities.”

Pitch@Palace was a start-up competition, founded in 2014, where entrepreneurs would pitch their ideas to possible investors in the hope of winning their backing. It had two parts:

• a UK-based version, set up as a community interest company, which cannot pay profits to shareholders
• an international arm, Pitch@Palace Global Ltd, which held competitions in places such as Australia, Bahrain and China, and was set up as a for-profit UK company

Both arms of Pitch@Palace suspended operations following the Newsnight interview in 2019 about the prince’s links to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, which led to Andrew stepping down as a working royal.

Nonetheless, the international operation has emerged as a possible way for the duke to fund his lifestyle. In a court witness statement from 2023, Mr Yang wrote that the duke had needed money “and saw the relationships with China through Pitch as one possible source of funding”.

Earlier this year a Dutch company said it was in talks to buy it, saying it saw “immense value” in the network, even though it had suspended operations.

However, Prince Andrew has never held the company in his own name.

Founded in 2017, Pitch@Palace Global Ltd was initially held in the name of Amanda Thirsk, the prince’s private secretary, in an arrangement often used by the Royal Family.

But early in 2021, the legal ownership was transferred to Knox House Trustees (UK) Limited.

This company had been set up the year before, and Mr Barrowman was named as having “significant influence and control” over it.

Corporate filings in the Isle of Man show Knox House Trustees (UK) was ultimately owned by Knox Limited, whose sole shareholder is Mr Barrowman.

In 2023, ownership of Knox House Trustees (UK) Ltd – which still owned Pitch@Palace Global – was transferred to Arthur Lancaster, an accountant who has a longstanding working relationship with both the prince and Mr Barrowman. This remains the situation today.

The same year Mr Lancaster took over as the sole director and shareholder of PPE Medpro. He was also a director of many of the companies involved in the AML tax avoidance case.

The judge in that case called him “evasive” and said he had “real concerns as to the reliability of Mr Lancaster’s evidence”, which contained “significant inconsistencies”.

After the case, his lawyer wrote to the court arguing that the conclusions were “unnecessarily harsh”, that Mr Lancaster had been a “diligent and truthful witness”, and that his efforts to provide information had been hampered by the Covid pandemic.

For decades the Royal Family has held investments through nominees, and still does. In the past this has served to keep details of their holdings private, though not in this case. Prince Andrew’s involvement in Pitch@Palace Global is well known, and he is listed as having “significant influence or control” over the company on Companies House.

Mr Barrowman’s lawyer said in a statement: “Mr Lancaster was a director of KHT (UK) Ltd which provided company administration services to a number of external companies, including Pitch@Palace, a company wholly owned by the duke. Mr Lancaster acted for the duke in a personal capacity at all times and has been an associate of the duke for many years.”

Mr Lancaster declined to comment. Prince Andrew did not respond to requests for comment.

A teenager has been charged after Australian opposition leader Peter Dutton’s office was vandalised for the third time during the election campaign.

The Liberal Party leader’s office in Arana Hills, Brisbane was splattered in red paint, and covered with posters criticising his stance on a number of issues.

Police say four people seen acting suspiciously at the site in the early hours of the morning fled when officers arrived, but an 18-year-old woman was tracked by the dog squad and charged with causing wilful damage.

Australians vote in an election on Saturday, 3 May, and Dutton has in recent days caused controversy for his comments about ceremonial Aboriginal rites.

The opposition leader has been criticised by some Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, including former party colleagues, after saying Aboriginal “welcome to country” ceremonies are “overdone”. The short ritual has become standard at public events and recognises traditional land owners.

One of the posters plastered on his office said “always was, always will be Aboriginal land”. Others criticised his comments about finding “common ground” with Donald Trump, his stance on the Israel-Gaza war, and his links to mining billionaire Gina Rinehart.

The same office was vandalised earlier this month, with the words “maggot” and “scum” written in black, and again a few days later, with a window smashed and white paint splashed across the entrance.

Dutton is yet to comment on the vandalism, but members of his party have previously said attacks on political offices are “out of control”.

“Unfortunately this is an increasingly frequent occurrence, not just targeting Peter’s office – although his has been targeted a number of times – but targeting members of parliament all around the country with graffiti and even more serious acts of violence,” James Paterson told Sky News Australia last week.

Prosecutors have dropped some of the charges against an Australian woman accused of killing three relatives and seriously injuring another with a toxic mushroom lunch.

Erin Patterson will not face trial over allegations she also attempted to murder her husband, after those charges were withdrawn.

She still faces four charges: three counts of murder and one of attempted murder.

The 50-year-old has always maintained her innocence and has pleaded not guilty, with her trial to begin in the Supreme Court of Victoria on Wednesday.

Three people died in hospital days after the July 2023 lunch, including Patterson’s former in-laws, Don Patterson, 70, and Gail Patterson, 70, as well as Gail’s sister, Heather Wilkinson, 66.

Heather’s husband, 68-year-old Baptist pastor Ian Wilkinson, survived after weeks of treatment in hospital.

The jury has been picked and is receiving instructions from the judge ahead of opening statements, which are expected Wednesday.

Justice Christopher Beale told the jury that most if not all them would probably have been aware of the previous charges in relation to Patterson’s husband, but said that the Director of Public Prosecutions had dropped them.

“In other words… you must put them out of your mind,” he said.

He also urged them to “dispassionately” weigh the evidence in the case, using their heads and not their hearts.

The trial is being held at a small courthouse in Morwell, about 60km (37 miles) from Leongatha, Victoria, where prosecutors allege the lunch took place.

One week after a devastating militant attack near the mountain resort of Pahalgam in Indian-administered Kashmir killed 26 people, the town wears a look of quiet desolation, although tourists have begun trickling back in small numbers.

The main high street, abandoned by visitors last week – with shops shuttered and hotels completely emptied out – is seeing fleeting signs of life again.

Last Tuesday, militants opened fire on people, mostly tourists, who were visiting Baisaran, a mountain-top meadow three miles (5 km) from Pahalgam, often described as the “Switzerland of India”.

The attack was one of the deadliest in recent years, devastating the lives of many families and sparking widespread anger in India.

In the days since, tensions between India and Pakistan, which both claim Kashmir in full but administer it only in part, have significantly risen, with each side announcing retaliatory measures against the other.

There is now growing speculation about whether there will be a military response from Delhi. The government in Kashmir has closed down over half the tourist destinations in the valley, as authorities review the security situation and carry out search operations.

While violence has often broken out in the region, with militants targeting security forces and civilians since an insurgency broke out in 1989, the brazen killing of tourists has been rare and has shocked local businesses and tourists alike.

Tourism is a mainstay of the economy in places like Pahalgam and there’s now fear that many livelihoods might be irrevocably hit.

At a “selfie point” outside town, overlooking lush meadows and a rushing river, Akshay Solanki, a tourist from Mumbai, said there was “panic” among his group of travellers on the day of the attack. But they had decided to continue with their journey because flights back home had become unaffordable.

Other tourists said constant reassurances from the locals and security forces had given them a sense of comfort. A driver who had brought visitors from the capital, Srinagar, told BBC Hindi that he was pleading with those visiting not to “distance” themselves from Kashmir.

After a washout three days, shawl-seller Rafi Ahmed said he’d managed to sell just a few pieces and feared for his livelihood in the long run if tourists stopped coming.

Among those exhorting tourists to come to Pahalgam was Bollywood actor Atul Kulkarni, who visited the town days after the attack. He told BBC Hindi, if the message from the militants was “don’t come here, we should respond by coming in even larger numbers”.

“Don’t cancel bookings, cancel your other plans and come here,” Kulkarni said.

But uncertainty and apprehension loom large in Pahalgam and it could take several years before a sense of normalcy is restored, local business owners and residents told the BBC.

Indian authorities have launched combing operations in the region, detaining hundreds of people and destroying homes belonging to alleged militants.

India and Pakistan have also reportedly exchanged small arms fire across the border.

The escalation in tensions is keeping tourists and business owners on tenterhooks.

Indian authorities have often claimed Kashmir witnessed a period of relative peace after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government revoked its autonomous status in 2019. Ahead of India’s general elections in 2024, Modi hailed the “freedom” that had come to the region, saying Kashmir was touching new heights of development because it was breathing freely.

Top leaders pointed to high tourism numbers – some 23 million last year and millions more in the years before – as proof of a big boom after years of unquiet. But last week’s attacks have, yet again, shattered any idea of lasting peace in the restive valley.

“This [attack] is a blot on us…How we wipe it off is a long-term concern,” Rafi Ahmed Meer, a politician from Pahalgam told BBC Hindi, urging tourists to remember that it was local Kashmiris who rushed to help after the attacks, even picking up bodies.

The cancellation rate for trips planned from cities like Pune, Mumbai and Bengaluru are very high, Abhishek Sansare, a Mumbai-based tour operator told the BBC. A group of prominent tour operators said in a press conference that some 80-90% of all bookings had been cancelled.

“After the attack, there’s a sense that a war is looming. So tourists are confused about what to do,” said Sansare. “Some of those who’ve already made advance bookings are going ahead with their plans. I’m also going there on the 2nd of next month.”

The attack on tourists is also likely to weigh on Kashmir in other ways. The inauguration of the world’s highest single-arch rail bridge, set to connect the Kashmir valley with the rest of India was slated to happen this month after several delays.

The timeline for the opening of this showpiece project now “looks uncertain”, a source told the BBC.

The region was just beginning to attract fledgling business investments, but those too could dry up if hostilities go up.

“People who were investing in logistics and other sectors will now think twice because of the security environment. Until they regain some confidence, I don’t foresee investments coming to Kashmir immediately,” said Ubair Shah, who owns one of Kashmir’s largest cold storage facilities for fruits in Pulwama district in south Kashmir.

As the region continues to boil over, local leaders have expressed deep anguish to the families who lost their loved ones.

In an impassioned speech in the Jammu and Kashmir assembly on Monday, the state’s chief minister and tourism minister Omar Abdullah paid tributes to the victims by reading out names of all the 26 people.

He said people from every part of the country had come under attack, and while they’d come to Kashmir at his invitation he could not ensure their safe return.

“I had no words to apologise to them. What could I say to the children who saw their father drenched in blood? To the widow of the navy officer who was married barely a few days ago?

“Some people told me they’d come to Kashmir for the first time, but will have to pay for their holiday life long,” he said, adding that the attack had “hollowed out” Kashmir.

Hong Kong has released four former opposition lawmakers who were among dozens of pro-democracy leaders jailed under the city’s controversial National Security Law (NSL).

The four – Claudia Mo, Kwok Ka-ki, Jeremy Tam and Gary Fan – had pleaded guilty and were each sentenced to four years and two months behind bars in November.

They were released on Tuesday because the fact they had been in prison since their arrests in 2021 was taken into account when calculating their sentence.

The four lawmakers were part of a group known as the Hong Kong 47. They were accused of trying to overthrow the government by running an unofficial primary to pick opposition candidates for local elections.

Police said they had left their correctional facilities early on Tuesday.

This was the biggest trial under the national security law (NSL) which China imposed on the city shortly after explosive pro-democracy protests in 2019.

Hundreds of thousands took to the streets in a months-long standoff against Beijing. Triggered by a proposed government treaty that would have allowed extradition to mainland China, the protests quickly grew to reflect wider demands for democratic reform.

Beijing and Hong Kong authorities argue the law is necessary to maintain stability and deny it has weakened autonomy.

But critics have called it “the end of Hong Kong” and say it has created a climate of fear in the city.

The Hong Kong 47 included famous figures like Joshua Wong and Benny Tai, who were icons of the 2014 pro-democracy protests that rocked Hong Kong.

Others were arrested after they stormed the city’s Legislative Council (LegCo) and spray-painted Hong Kong’s emblem in what became a pivotal moment in the 2019 protests.

A total of 45 people were jailed for conspiring to commit subversion. Two of the defendants were acquitted in May.

The sentences were widely condemned by the international community including the UK and the US.

Claudia Mo, known affectionately in Cantonese as Auntie Mo, is among the most well known of the group.

A prominent opposition lawmaker, the 67-year-old helped set up the now disbanded opposition Civic Party in 2006 and by 2012 she had won a seat in LegCo.

She was among 15 lawmakers who resigned en masse from LegCo after four pro-democracy lawmakers were ousted in November 2020. The move left LegCo with no opposition presence.

Kwok Ka-ki and Jeremy Tam were also former Civic Party lawmakers. Gary Fan was a co-founder of another opposition party, the Neo Democrats.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has dismissed concerns that election spending promises could jeopardise the country’s prized AAA sovereign credit rating.

Analysts at S&P Global this week wrote that Australia’s public spending was at “post-war highs”, and warned both major parties that the country’s rating was at risk if savings were not found.

Party leaders have made big spending promises in Australia’s tightly-fought election, scheduled for 3 May – with the cost of living a critical issue for voters.

Speaking to reporters on Tuesday morning, Albanese said that he was proud of his Labor Party’s economic record, adding that he “delivered responsible economic management”.

Earlier, Albanese had said the authors of the S&P report “must have been beside themselves”. He added: “The Coalition left us with a A$78bn ($5bn; £3.7bn) deficit. We turned that into a $2bn surplus.”

Angus Taylor, Australia’s shadow treasurer, wrote on social media that Albanese “mocking the ratings agency shows he’s not fit to lead”.

During Australia’s election campaign, both main parties have pledged billions of dollars for housing, healthcare and energy – aimed at easing cost pressures for citizens.

But the S&P report wrote that “larger, structural deficits”, coupled with more volatility in the global economy, could threaten Australia’s AAA credit rating – the highest tier.

Sovereign credit ratings are an indication of a country’s creditworthiness. The highest rating means a country can borrow at cheaper rates.

Only 11 countries currently have a AAA sovereign credit rating from S&P, including Australia, Germany and Denmark – higher than the US and UK.

Anthony Walker, one of the S&P Global report’s authors, told Sky News Australia that neither party seemed “interested” in raising taxes to fund their spending plans.

“We are seeing tax cuts in the next 12 to 18 months from both parties. So the answer for us is: ‘Is there going to be additional taxes to cover it? Are they going to find internal savings or are they just going to keep debt funding it?'”

The warning came on the same day Albanese’s ruling Labor Party announced costing plans.

If re-elected, the government said it would slash $6.4bn in costs on consultants, and raise $760m by increasing application fees for student visas.

Lily Allen has apologised to Katy Perry for “being mean” about her when she joined in the backlash against the recent space flight carrying the US singer.

“There was actually no need for me to bring her name into it, and it was my own internalised misogyny,” Allen said on her BBC podcast Miss Me.

“I’ve been thinking about it a lot, and it was just completely unnecessary to pile on with her. I mean, I disagree with what it was that they did, but she wasn’t the only person that did it.”

The English pop star and actress was one of a number of high-profile critics of the Blue Origin flight, which briefly took Perry and five other women to the edge of space two weeks ago.

“She was possibly the most famous, and the one that divides people the most, and so there was something in me that decided to choose her as the person that should [be singled out],” Allen continued.

“Well, anyway, I’m just sorry. I would have been hurt if it had been me and someone in my industry used me and my name, and I saw that, and I’m sorry.”

Allen’s apology came after she discussed “Katy Perry and her mates all going up to space for 12 minutes” with co-host Miquita Oliver in a previous episode.

“I mean, what the… hell was all that about?” Allen said. “I mean, in all seriousness, what? Why? For why?

“It’s so out of touch. Like, we’re on the brink of recession. People are really… struggling to make ends meet and put food on their tables.”

She added: “And the fact that they’ve, like, made it like some sort of feminist thing…”

The flight, on a rocket designed by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’s company Blue Origin, marked the first all-female mission to space since 1963.

Perry said beforehand: “It’s an important moment for the future of commercial space travel and for humanity in general and for women all around.”

Also on board were Bezos’s fiancée Lauren Sánchez, TV presenter Gayle King, former Nasa rocket scientist Aisha Bowe, civil rights activist Amanda Nguyen, and film producer Kerianne Flynn.

But Perry bore the brunt of the ridicule after it emerged she sung Louis Armstrong’s What a Wonderful World, and held up the setlist for her new tour to an in-flight camera.

Fast food chain Wendy’s posted on social media, “Can we send her back”, before adding several days later that they had “a ton of respect for Katy Perry and her out-of-this-world-talent”.

Model Emily Ratajkowski was among the other critics of the flight, saying she was “disgusted”, and took aim at Bezos in a follow-up video arguing that taking “his fiancée and a few other famous women to space for space tourism is not progress”.

US actress Olivia Munn described the flight as “gluttonous”, explaining: “It’s so much money to go to space, and there’s a lot of people who can’t even afford eggs. What’s the point? Is it historic that you guys are going on a ride?”

But King hit back, saying she was “very disappointed and very saddened” by the backlash. “Have you been?” she asked the haters. “If you’ve been and you still feel that way after you come back, please let’s have a conversation.”

Iran’s interior minister has said negligence was a factor in the massive explosion and fire at the country’s largest container port, as the death toll rose to at least 70.

Eskandar Momeni said Saturday’s blast at Shahid Rajaee port in Bandar Abbas, which also injured more than 1,000 people, was caused by “shortcomings, including noncompliance with safety precautions and negligence”.

“Some individuals deemed responsible” had been summoned for questioning, he added.

Customs authorities have said imported cargo caught fire and exploded. The defence ministry has denied foreign reports that it was a shipment of a missile fuel chemical.

The crisis management director for Hormozgan province, Mehrdad Hassanzadeh, also said on Monday that the firefighting effort at the port was “almost in its final stages”.

Hormozgan Governor Mohammad Ashouri Taziani meanwhile said clearing-up operations at the port could continue for several more days, and that it could take one to two weeks before the situation there returned to normal.

He estimated that 1,500 hectares (3,700 acres) – almost two-thirds of the site – were severely affected by the explosion.

The Customs Administration said the cargo which caught fire and exploded had neither been registered nor formally declared before the incident, according to the Isna news agency.

On Sunday, the CEO of the firm that was operating the affected area, Sina Marine and Port Services Development Company, blamed “a repeated and catastrophic error involving false declarations of hazardous goods”.

Iran’s defence ministry denied reports that the explosion was caused by the improper handling of a shipment of sodium perchlorate, a solid fuel used for ballistic missiles.

Spokesman Brig Gen Reza Talai-Nik said on Sunday that there “were and are no import or export of fuel shipments or cargo for military use in the vicinity of the incident”, and accused foreign media of spreading “fake news”.

Ambrey Intelligence, a private maritime risk consultancy, told the Associated Press that the port received a shipment of sodium perchlorate last month, and that the blast was “reportedly the result of improper handling”.

The New York Times also cited an unnamed person with ties to Iran’s Revolutionary Guards as saying that sodium perchlorate exploded.

The first sign of trouble Peter Hughes noticed was when his train to Madrid started to slow down.

Then the TV monitor and lights went off. Emergency lights switched on, but did not last, and the locomotive ground to a halt.

Four hours later, Mr Hughes was still stuck on the train 200 kilometres (124 miles) outside of Spain’s capital. He had food and water, but the toilets were not working.

“It will be getting dark soon and we could be stuck here for hours,” he told the BBC.

The massive power cut that stranded Mr Hughes triggered chaos across Spain and Portugal, and also impacted Andorra and parts of France, from about midday local time (10:00 GMT).

Traffic lights shut off. Metros closed. Businesses shuttered and people joined queues to get cash as card payments did not work.

Jonathan Emery was on a different train halfway between Seville and Madrid when the cuts hit.

For an hour, he sat on the train, the doors closed, until people could pry them open to let in ventilation. Half an hour later, passengers left, only to find themselves stranded.

That was when people from local villages started coming and dropping off supplies – water, bread, fruit.

“Nobody is charging for anything, and word must be getting around in the local town because people just keep coming,” he said.

Commuters in Madrid were left confused in the dark when the blackout hit the city’s metro station network. One resident, Sarah Jovovich, was getting off the train when the lights went out.

People were “hysterical” and “panicking”, she told the BBC. “It was quite chaotic really.”

Mobile phones had stopped working and nobody had any information. Once out of the metro station, she found the roads gridlocked with heavy traffic.

“No-one understood anything. Businesses were closed and buses were full,” she said.

Hannah Lowney was halfway through scanning her grocery shopping at Aldi when the power went out in the Spanish capital.

People were coming out of their offices and walking home because they could not tell when the buses were coming, Ms Lowney said in a voice message sent to BBC Radio 5 Live.

“It’s a bit disconcerting that it’s the whole country, I’ve never experienced this before,” she said.

Mark England was eating lunch in the restaurant of the hotel where he is staying on holiday in Benidorm when “everything went off and the fire alarm started going off and the fire doors started closing”.

In an international school in Lisbon, the electricity flickered on and off for a while, then gave up, teacher Emily Thorowgood said.

She kept teaching in the dark, the children in good spirits, but lots of parents were taking their children out of school, she said.

Will David, a Brit living in Lisbon, was having a haircut and beard trim in the basement of a barber when the power went down. The barber found him a spot by the window upstairs to finish the cut with scissors.

“The walk home felt very strange, both with the lack of traffic lights meaning a complete free-for-all for vehicles and pedestrians on the roads – as well as so many people milling around outside their places of work with nothing to do,” he said.

Initially, mobile phone networks also went down for some, leaving many scrambling for information.

Curtis Gladden, who is in La Vall D’Uixo, about 30 miles from Valencia, said it was “scary” as he struggled to get updates about what was happening.

Eloise Edgington, who could not do any work as a copywriter in Barcelona, said she was only receiving occasional messages, could not load web pages on her phone and was trying to conserve her battery.

An hour and a half after the power went out, one resident of Fortuna, in south-east Spain, said her husband was driving around, trying to find a petrol station that could supply fuel to run a generator and keep their fridge powered.

“We are worried about food, water, cash and petrol in case this goes on for a couple of days,” said Lesley, a Brit who has been living in Spain for 11 years.

• LIVE UPDATES: Disruption continues after widespread power outage
• TRAVEL IMPACT: Flights cancelled and trains called off
• DAY IN PICTURES: The best news photographs from a day of chaos

Locals “have more to worry about” than the Madrid Open tennis tournament being suspended, she said, adding there is “very little news about what’s happened”.

Mr England said walking down the street in Benidorm, a “majority of shops are in darkness and shuttered or have people on the entrances saying you can’t come in. There’s no cash machines, no traffic lights so it’s strange.”

After Mr Gladden’s phone signal returned after about two hours, he and others ventured out to cafes, but found “nothing is working – we came to get some food and a drink but they can’t cook without electricity”.

Within two hours, Spanish power grid operator Red Electrica said it was beginning to recover power in the north and south of the country.

But two-and-a-half hours after the cuts, Madrid’s mayor José Luis Martínez-Almeida still urged all residents to “keep their movements to an absolute minimum and, if at all possible, to remain where they are”, in a video recorded from the city’s integrated emergency security centre.

At 15:00 local time, Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez pulled together an “extraordinary” meeting of Spain’s national security council.

Red Electrica CEO Eduardo Prieto said at a news conference shortly afterwards that it could take “between six and ten hours” to restore power.

Just before 16:00, electricity flicked back on in Malaga. By 17:00, the grid operator said power was being restored “in several areas of the north, south and west of the [Iberian] peninsula”.

Portugal’s power firm REN gave a more dire prediction, saying that it could “take up to a week” before the network was back to normal.

A state of emergency was later declared across Spain, with regions able to request special measures.

But by Monday evening, Sanchez said 50% of power had been restored across Spain, while REN said electricity had been restored to 750,000 customers. Many, however, remain without power.

Knock on effects continue: Back-up generators at airports kicked on, allowing most flights to leave on time, but some have been unable to operate.

Tom McGilloway, on holiday in Lisbon, was due to return to London on Monday night, but as of early evening did not know what would happen.

He said for the time being people were getting drinks and food – but vendors told him they would only be able to keep working until the batteries ran out on their payment terminals.

“If I need to book a hotel if the plane is cancelled, I don’t know how I can do it if payments are down,” he added.

“My partner’s parents are trying to get petrol so they can pick us up to take us back to Alentejo but many petrol stations are closed or not taking payment. We might be stuck with no plan for where to stay tonight.”

Spanish violinist Isaac Bifet went to a rehearsal in the morning at the symphony orchestra in Madrid. But the building was all dark and most of the other orchestra players hadn’t turned up because they were stranded with no transport.

People without cash were particularly stuck, he told the BBC, because online payments systems were down.

The day without power was “strange” and “a little medieval”, Mr Bifet said. But “the atmosphere was actually pretty nice.”

And with the electricity still out in his apartment, he spent the evening drinking beers with friends by candlelight.

• Have you been affected? Email haveyoursay@bbc.co.uk

The world’s rainforests are often referred to as the “lungs of the earth”.

They store billions of tonnes of carbon and in doing so help to reduce the impacts of climate change.

But with more than one and half trillion trees, measuring exactly how much carbon they store has been virtually impossible, until now.

On Thursday, the European Space Agency (ESA) successfully launched a first-of-a-kind satellite which uses a special radar system to reveal what lies beneath the canopy.

It is hoped it will help scientists better understand the importance of rainforests in storing carbon and the impact of deforestation.

The rocket took off from ESA’s Kourou station in French Guiana and flying over the Amazon, one of the rainforests it will study.

The satellite on board has been affectionately named “space brolly” for its giant 12m diameter antenna which will send out signals.

“We really want to interrogate these forests. We can actually look inside,” Prof John Remedios, director of The National Centre for Earth Observation, which proposed the idea to ESA, said after the launch.

He said that it would be a major achievement “to actually know for the first time with high accuracy how much is actually in the Amazon, Congo, Indonesia”.

The antenna is using P-band radar which has a very long wavelength – allowing it to see deeper inside forests and reveal branches and trunks obscured by the canopy.

“Most radars that we have in space today take wonderful images of icebergs, but when they look at forests they see the tops of the forest, the little twigs, the little leaves, they don’t penetrate down into the forests,” explained Dr Ralph Cordey, head of geosciences at Airbus.

“But what we found was that by using a much longer radar wavelength, we could see down into the depths of trees and forests,” he said.

The 1.2-tonne satellite will use an approach not dissimilar to that used in a CT scan, and analyse slices through the trees on repeat passes to build up a picture of how much woody material is present.

It is this material that can be used as a proxy for the amount of planet-warming carbon dioxide stored.

Currently scientists have been measuring individual trees and trying to extrapolate, but this presents a “huge challenge” said Prof Mat Disney, professor of remote sensing, at University College London.

“Our current understanding is really patchy, because it’s really, really difficult to measure,” he said. “Essentially, what we’re talking about is trying to weigh the amount of carbon that’s stored in one and a half trillion trees across the tropics.

“Satellites are really the only way you can do that consistently.”

On the ground measurements will continue to take place after the satellite is launched to verify the data it is sending back.

The satellite was built in the UK and first conceived by University of Sheffield academic Professor Shaun Quegan, but he said it was an international effort: “The mission is the culmination of decades of highly innovative work in partnership with some of the best scientists in Europe and the US.”

Despite decades of testing, the deployment of the satellite has many challenging stages beyond the rocket launch.

“Certain things on the satellite are big, that includes its big 12-metre, deployable antenna. It’s a bit like deploying an umbrella in space, only a very big one, so we will be looking for that to happen smoothly,” said Dr Cordey.

Airbus brought in engineers from the American company L3Harris Technologies to their site in Stevenage to oversee the construction of the antenna-reflector.

L3Harris are specialists in these large, unfurlable systems – expertise which is not currently possessed in Europe.

The team is hoping to produce the first maps within six months, and will then continue to gather data for the next five years.

These annual maps will not only show how much carbon is stored but how much is being lost through deforestation.

“The kind of observations that we’ve had for 50 years from [other] satellites like Landsat are affected very heavily by clouds. And in tropical regions, we have clouds a lot of the time, so you may not see a chunk of tropical forest,” said Prof Disney.

Another advantage of the longer wavelength of the Biomass satellite is that it can penetrate clouds giving a consistent, comparable view of a forest from one year to the next.

It is this outcome which has motivated the scientists who have worked on the project for more than 20 years.

“It’s exciting, because it’s going to tell us about how something that we perhaps take for granted,” said Dr Cordey. “Our forests, our trees, how they are contributing to the processes which govern our planet, and in particular, the processes behind climate change which are so important to us today and for the future.”

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Now predominantly Muslim, North Africa was once a Christian heartland, producing Catholic popes who left their mark on the Church to this day.

Their papacies were in the era of the Roman Empire, which stretched across modern-day Tunisia, the north-east of Algeria and the coast of western Libya.

“North Africa was the Bible Belt of ancient Christianity,” says Prof Christopher Bellitto, a historian at Kean University in the US.

Many Catholics in Africa are hoping that the papacy will return to the continent for the first time in more than 1,500 years, as a successor to Pope Francis is chosen.

Here, we look at the three previous African popes – and how they got Christians to celebrate Easter Sunday and St Valentine’s Day.

All three have been recognised in the Church as saints.

Thought to be of Berber origin, Pope Victor I was in charge of the Catholic Church at a time when Christians were sometimes being persecuted by Roman officials for refusing to worship Roman gods.

He is perhaps best known for ensuring Christians celebrate Easter on a Sunday.

In the 2nd Century, some Christian groups from the Roman province of Asia (in modern-day Turkey) celebrated Easter on the same day that Jews celebrated Passover, which could fall on different days of the week.

However, Christians in the Western part of the Empire believed that Jesus was resurrected on a Sunday, so Easter should always be celebrated on that day.

The debate over when the resurrection took place made it an extremely contentious issue.

The “Easter controversy” was symbolic of larger conflicts between East and West, and whether or not Christians should follow Jewish practices.

Victor I called the very first Roman Synod – a gathering of Church leaders – to resolve the impasse.

He did this by threatening to excommunicate from the Church those bishops who refused to comply with his wishes.

“He was a rather forceful voice for getting everyone on literally the same page,” Prof Bellitto told the BBC.

This was an impressive feat, the historian said, because “he was the Bishop of Rome when Christianity was illegal in the Roman empire.”

Another important part of Victor I’s legacy was to introduce Latin as the common language of the Catholic Church. Previously Ancient Greek was the primary language of the Catholic Liturgy as well as official communication for the Church.

Victor I himself wrote in – and spoke – Latin, which was widely spoken in North Africa.

Pope Miltiades is believed to have been born in Africa.

During his reign, Christianity gained increasing acceptance from successive Roman emperors, eventually becoming the Empire’s official religion.

Before this, the persecution of Christians had been widespread at different points in the Empire’s history.

However, Prof Bellitto pointed out that Miltiades was not responsible for this change, saying the Pope was the “recipient of the Roman benevolence” rather than being a great negotiator.

Miltiades was given a palace by the Roman Emperor Constantine, becoming the first pope to have an official residence.

He was also granted permission by Constantine to build the Lateran Basilica, now the oldest public church in Rome.

While modern popes live and work in the Vatican, the Lateran church is sometimes referred to in Catholicism as “the mother of all churches”.

Gelasius I is the only one of the three African popes who historians believe was not born in Africa.

“There’s a reference to him being… Roman-born. So we don’t know if he [ever] lived in North Africa, but it seems clear that he was of North African descent,” Prof Bellitto explained.

He was the most important of the three African church leaders, according to Prof Bellitto.

Gelasius I is widely recognised as the first pope to officially be called the “Vicar of Christ”, a term that signifies the Pope’s role as Christ’s representative on Earth.

He also developed the Doctrine of the Two Swords, which emphasised the separate-but-equal powers of the Church and the state.

Gelasius I made the critical distinction that both powers were given to the Church by God, who then delegated earthly power to the state, making the Church ultimately superior.

“Later on, in the Middle Ages, popes sometimes tried to veto the selection of an emperor or a king, because they said God gave them that power,” said Prof Bellitto.

Gelasius I is remembered, too, for his response to the Acacian Schism – a split between the Eastern and Western Christian Churches from 484 to 519.

During this period, Gelasius I asserted the supremacy of Rome and the papacy over the entire Church, East and West, which experts believe went further than any of his predecessors.

Gelasius is also responsible for a popular celebration which is still marked every year – establishing St Valentine’s Day on 14 February in 496 to commemorate the Christian martyr St Valentine.

Some accounts say Valentine was a priest who continued to perform weddings in secret when they were banned by Emperor Claudius II.

Historians believe that Valentine’s Day is rooted in the Roman love and fertility festival, Lupercalia, and was a move by Gelasius I to Christianise pagan traditions.

Prof Bellitto says there is no way of knowing with any degree of accuracy what the three popes looked like.

“We have to remember that the Roman Empire, and indeed the Middle Ages, didn’t think of race as we think of it nowadays. It had nothing to do with skin colour,” he told the BBC.

“People in the Roman Empire didn’t deal with race, they dealt with ethnicity.”

Prof Philomena Mwaura, an academic at Kenya’s Kenyatta University, told the BBC that Roman Africa was very multicultural, with local Berber and Punic groups, freed slaves and people who had come from Rome found there.

“The North African community was quite mixed, and it was a trade route also for many people who were involved in trade in the earlier antiquity,” she explained.

Rather than identifying with specific ethnic groups, “most people who belonged to areas within the Roman Empire regarded themselves as Roman”, Prof Mwaura added.

• Who will be the next Pope?
• How a Pope is elected
• Why the conclave is so unpredictable

None of of the 217 popes since Gelasius I are believed to have come from Africa.

“The church in North Africa was weakened by very many forces, including the fall of the Roman Empire and also the incursion of Muslims [into North Africa] in the 7th Century,” Prof Mwaura said.

However, some experts argue that the prevalence of Islam in North Africa does not explain the absence of a pope from the entire continent over more than 1,500 years.

Prof Bellitto said the process of electing a new pontiff became an “Italian monopoly” for many years.

However, he said there was a strong chance of a pope from Asia or Africa in the near future because Catholics in the southern hemisphere outnumber those in the north.

In fact, Catholicism is expanding more rapidly in sub-Saharan Africa today than anywhere else.

The latest figures show there were 281 million Catholics in Africa in 2023. This accounts for 20% of the worldwide congregation.

Three Africans are in the race to succeed Pope Francis – the Democratic Republic of Congo’s Fridolin Ambongo Besungu, Ghana’s Peter Kodwo Appiah Turkson and Guinea’s Robert Sarah.

But Prof Mwaura argued that “although Christianity is very strong in Africa, the power of the Church is still in the north, where the resources have been”.

“Maybe, as it continues to be very strong within the continent and supporting itself, then a time will come when there could be an African pope,” she said.

• Will the next pope be from Africa?
• Africa remembers Pope who spoke for the continent
• Extraordinary photos from the funeral of Pope Francis

When is a ceasefire a genuine attempt to secure peace? And when is it simply PR?

It’s a question that’s been asked a lot lately.

Mostly in relation to Russia’s president.

Short ceasefires are becoming quite the Kremlin thing.

First, Vladimir Putin declared a 30-hour cessation of hostilities over Easter, portraying it as a “humanitarian” gesture.

Now the Kremlin leader has announced a three-day unilateral truce for early May. It will run from 8 May to 10 May to coincide with events marking the 80th anniversary of the end of World War Two.

In a statement, the Kremlin said that for 72 hours all military actions would cease. It cited “humanitarian” considerations (again) and made it clear Moscow expected Ukraine to follow suit.

In response to the proposal, Ukraine questioned why Russia could not commit to a ceasefire immediately and called for one to be implemented for at least 30 days.

“If Russia truly wants peace, it must cease fire immediately,” Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said, adding: “Why wait until May 8th?”

So, from the Russian president who launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine more than three years ago, is this a sincere effort to end the fighting?

Or simply a public relations exercise by the Kremlin to impress Donald Trump?

Kremlin critics will suspect PR.

During the extremely brief so-called Easter ceasefire, Ukraine had accused Russian troops of violating it repeatedly.

Moscow had used its announcement of a 30-hour pause in the fighting to send a signal to the White House: that in this war Russia is the peacemaker and Kyiv the aggressor. It accused Ukraine of ignoring what Moscow presented as an olive branch and of prolonging the war.

• Trump questions Putin’s desire for peace
• Critical week for US’s future in war talks

Recent comments by Trump suggest the US president hasn’t bought that.

In a post on his Truth Social platform at the weekend, Trump wrote that “there was no reason” for Putin “to be shooting missiles into civilian areas, cities and towns [in Ukraine], over the last few days”.

“It makes me think,” he added, “that maybe he doesn’t want to stop the war, he’s just tapping me along, and has to be dealt with differently, through ‘Banking’ or ‘Secondary Sanctions?’ Too many people are dying!!!”

Cue today’s announcement of another Russian ceasefire. This one slightly longer: three days. And, again, that claim of “humanitarian” concerns.

Another attempt to signal to Washington that the Kremlin has only the best of intentions? That Russia is really the good guy in all of this?

If so, it doesn’t appear to have worked. Not immediately. The White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt noted Moscow’s offer of a temporary ceasefire, but said: “The president [Donald Trump] has made it clear he wants to see a permanent ceasefire first to stop the killing, stop the bloodshed.

“He is increasingly frustrated with leaders of both countries,” Leavitt said.

It’s an indication that the US president may be losing patience now with the Kremlin, despite having directed most of his public criticism in recent months towards President Zelensky.

Last month the Trump administration was pushing both Russia and Ukraine to agree to a 30-day comprehensive unconditional ceasefire. Ukraine had signed up to that. Russia did not.

Already senior Russian officials are using President Putin’s three-day ceasefire offer to try to cast Ukraine in a bad light.

“It is doubtful that [President] Zelensky will support the decision of our president and accept the ceasefire,” the speaker of the lower house of the Russian parliament, Vyacheslav Volodin, told Russian state TV.

Hardly an encouraging sign, so soon after the announcement of another brief ceasefire.

Cardinals will meet next month in a secret conclave to elect the next pope, the Vatican has said.

The closed-door meeting will start inside the Sistine Chapel on 7 May and will involve some 135 cardinals from across the world.

It follows the death of Pope Francis who died at the age of 88 on Easter Monday and whose funeral was held on Saturday.

There is no timescale as to how long it will take to elect the next pope, but the previous two conclaves, held in 2005 and 2013, lasted just two days.

Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni said cardinals will take part in a solemn mass at St Peter’s Basilica, after which those eligible to vote will gather in the Sistine Chapel for the secretive ballot.

Once they enter the Sistine Chapel, cardinals must have no communication with the outside world until a new Pope is elected.

There is only one round of voting on the first afternoon of the conclave, but the cardinals will vote up to four times every day afterwards.

A new pope requires a two-thirds majority – and that can take time.

• Who will be the next Pope?
• How a Pope is elected
• Why the conclave is so unpredictable
• Extraordinary photos from the funeral of Pope Francis

Each cardinal casts his vote on a simple card that says, in Latin: “I elect as Supreme Pontiff” to which they add the name of their chosen candidate.

If the conclave completes its third day without reaching a decision, the cardinals may pause for a day of prayer.

Outside the Sistine Chapel the world will be watching for the smoke from the chimney.

If the smoke is black, there will be another round of voting. White smoke signals that a new pope has been chosen.

On Saturday, politicians and royalty joined thousands of mourners as Pope Francis’ funeral was held in St Peter’s Square.

Hymns played out on giant speakers, occasionally drowned out by the sound of helicopters flying overhead, before 91-year-old Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re gave a homily on the pope’s legacy.

After a ceremony, huge crowds lined the streets of Rome to watch as the Pope’s coffin was carried in a procession to his final resting place, Santa Maria Maggiore Basilica.

Authorities said 140,000 people had lined the streets, clapping and waving as the hearse – a repurposed white popemobile – crossed the Tiber river and drove past some of Rome’s most recognisable sights: the Colosseum, the Forum and the Altare della Patria national monument on Piazza Venezia.

On Sunday images of Pope Francis’s tomb at the church were released showing a single white rose lying on the stone that bears the name he was known by during his pontificate, below a crucifix illuminated by a single spotlight.

The Scottish FA is updating its gender policy in order to ban transgender women competing in women’s football, BBC Scotland has learned.

From next season, only those born biologically female will be allowed to take part in competitive matches in the women’s game.

The current policy allows transgender women to compete in their affirmed gender category on a case-by-case basis, with testosterone levels also taken into account.

The new policy will apply to all competitive football in Scotland, including the grassroots game from under-13s and over.

However, it is understood there are currently no transgender women playing competitive football north of the border.

The revised policy was given the go-ahead at a recent board meeting but discussions aimed at updating the current guidelines had been ongoing for some time.

The final decision was taken after the recent Supreme Court ruling that a woman is defined by biological sex under equalities law.

The SFA rule change will see the governing body bring football into line with other sports like rugby, swimming and athletics.

In England, the FA rules state that transgender women can compete in the women’s game if they show low enough testosterone levels and they are assessed by a match observer.

There are 20 transgender women registered to play amateur football in England among the millions who play at that level.

Days after a 7.7-magnitude earthquake shook Myanmar at the end of March, killing at least 3,700 people, the country’s ruling junta agreed to a halt in its devastating military campaign.

It then violated that ceasefire, again and again.

I went inside rebel-held territory in the eastern Karenni state for 10 days from mid-April. I witnessed daily violations by the junta, including rocket and mortar attacks which killed and injured civilians and resistance fighters.

One of those was Khala, a 45-year-old father killed in a strike by military warplanes, in a place his wife Mala said should have been safe.

When the ceasefire was announced, on 2 April, Mala and Khala sensed an opportunity to return to their home for the first time in years.

With their four-year-old child, they headed from the camp where they’d taken refuge to their village, Pekin Coco. They found it abandoned, with buildings shattered from drawn-out fighting. Almost everyone there had moved to farmland further away from the junta’s weapons.

But as the young family was about to leave Pekin Coco again, their car loaded with their possessions, the shelling started.

“We were all at the front of the house. Then, shells landed near us. We hid at the back of the house. But he [Khala] stayed where he was,” said Mala. “The artillery shell landed and exploded near him. He died in the place where he thought he was safe.

“He was a good man,” she said and began to cry.

• Myanmar military announces temporary ceasefire
• Inside Mandalay: BBC finds huge devastation and little help for Myanmar quake survivors

Later that afternoon, the junta’s warplanes attacked a house on the same street, killing four more men.

“I hate them,” Mala said. “They always attack people without reason. I don’t feel safe here. Jet fighters are flying over the sky often but there is no place to hide.”

Mala is 31 and seven months pregnant. When we spoke she was back in a displaced people’s camp, grieving. Her son Zoe, missing his father, wouldn’t leave her side.

Before the earthquake, Myanmar was in the midst of a nationwide civil war.

After decades of military rule and brutal repression, ethnic groups, along with a new army of young insurgents, brought the dictatorship to crisis point. As much as two-thirds of the country has fallen to the resistance.

Tens of thousands of people have been killed, including many children, since the military seized power in a coup in 2021. The UN says the earthquake has pushed a further two million people into need, some 2.5 million were already displaced before the quake.

Karenni, or Kayah, state is far from the earthquake’s epicentre. Its remoteness is both a blessing and a curse. Its thick jungle provides cover for those who oppose military rule, but it is difficult to get around, the roads are poor and main highways remain in range of the army’s guns. Most of the state is now controlled by rebel and armed ethnic groups.

On 28 March when the quake hit, there were no reported deaths in Karenni – but the hospitals still filled quickly with people suffering spinal and crush injuries.

A 30m (100ft) sinkhole had appeared in the forests around the town of Demoso. Locals who heard the ground open up thought it was another air strike. For many weeks, the sinkhole continued to expand with the aftershocks.

The UN noted that the Myanmar military continued operations after the earthquake and beyond the ceasefire, and called for them to end. The State Administration Council, the ruling junta, has not commented on the alleged violations but has claimed that it was attacked by resistance groups. During the ceasefire all sides in the conflict have reserved the right to respond if attacked.

During my 10 days in Mobeye, Karenni, I witnessed daily attacks by the junta.

I met Stefano there, a 23-year-old fighting the military dictatorship with the Karenni Nationalities Defence Force (KNDF).

He leads a platoon of young fighters who have set up trenches around the base.

From a dugout just 100m (330ft) from the junta’s positions, he explained the army had continued attacks “using all means” during the ceasefire – soldiers on the ground, drones and jets.

“They usually attack with drones and heavy artillery on this side. When it rains, they advance by taking advantage of the weather.”

He called the ceasefire a “joke”.

“We did not believe the military council from the beginning. We don’t believe it now, and we won’t believe it in the future.”

The day after we spoke, the military launched a full-scale assault with heavy weapons and men, attacking rebel lines. As we made our way to the front lines, small-arms fire could be heard nearby, along with mortar strikes. The ground was pitted with fresh hits from armed drones.

Nearby lay the corpse of a junta fighter who had tried to breach the rebel positions. The resistance forces say they have suspended all offensive activities during the ceasefire, but they have said they will respond if attacked. Yi Shui, the commander of another resistance group, the Karenni National Army, showed me pictures on his phone. “When we saw them, we shot them. One of them got hit” and another ran away, he said.

And again, the military wasn’t just targeting the resistance forces. Its rockets hit farmland beyond, killing a 60-year-old woman. We arrived at fields where four rockets had landed, children were playing with the bent metal and shrapnel from the strikes.

The injured were taken to local hospitals, which are hidden deep in the jungle to avoid air strikes from junta warplanes.

In one, a young fighter was being treated in a wooden ward with a dirt floor. He had a shrapnel wound to his shoulder and was losing a lot of blood.

The doctor in charge, 32-year-old Thi Ha Tun, said he’d treated around a dozen patients for war-related injuries since the ceasefire was declared. Two of the patients, resistance fighters, died.

He dismissed what he called the junta’s lies. “They only care about their own interests,” he said. “They will only care about their own organisation. They will not care about the rest of this country, their own generation, the youth, the children, the elderly, anything.”

The only solution is to keep fighting, he said.

High on a hilltop in the rebel-controlled areas is the church of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. The earthquake brought down the church steeple and part of the roof. The bell from Rome now sits in a temporary cradle. Repairs have been made, but the church will probably need to be rebuilt.

They are still feeling the aftershocks here weeks later.

But for Father Philip, the local priest, the greatest threat to his congregation, many of whom are the war displaced, comes from above, not below.

“No place is safe. When we have jet fighters flying in the sky… you never know what will come falling from the sky.”

Back at the Mobeye front, Stefano and his men pass the hours between attacks, cleaning their weapons and singing songs. “I can hear the people’s prayers, cries, and cries. We will overthrow the dictatorship,” they sing in unison. They say the only ceasefire they will trust will come with the junta’s defeat.

The truce will finish at the end of the month, but for most of the people here, it’s as if it never existed at all.

A teenager has been charged after Australian opposition leader Peter Dutton’s office was vandalised for the third time during the election campaign.

The Liberal Party leader’s office in Arana Hills, Brisbane was splattered in red paint, and covered with posters criticising his stance on a number of issues.

Police say four people seen acting suspiciously at the site in the early hours of the morning fled when officers arrived, but an 18-year-old woman was tracked by the dog squad and charged with causing wilful damage.

Australians vote in an election on Saturday, 3 May, and Dutton has in recent days caused controversy for his comments about ceremonial Aboriginal rites.

The opposition leader has been criticised by some Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, including former party colleagues, after saying Aboriginal “welcome to country” ceremonies are “overdone”. The short ritual has become standard at public events and recognises traditional land owners.

One of the posters plastered on his office said “always was, always will be Aboriginal land”. Others criticised his comments about finding “common ground” with Donald Trump, his stance on the Israel-Gaza war, and his links to mining billionaire Gina Rinehart.

The same office was vandalised earlier this month, with the words “maggot” and “scum” written in black, and again a few days later, with a window smashed and white paint splashed across the entrance.

Dutton is yet to comment on the vandalism, but members of his party have previously said attacks on political offices are “out of control”.

“Unfortunately this is an increasingly frequent occurrence, not just targeting Peter’s office – although his has been targeted a number of times – but targeting members of parliament all around the country with graffiti and even more serious acts of violence,” James Paterson told Sky News Australia last week.

The Prince and Princess of Wales are spending their 14th wedding anniversary in Scotland on the Isle of Mull.

William and Kate will tour the island over two days and visit community halls that their Royal Foundation is helping to refurbish.

The couple, who married at Westminster Abbey on 29 April 2011, will stay at a self-catering cottage on Mull following official engagements.

William and Kate, known by their Scottish titles the Duke and Duchess of Rothesay when in Scotland, met while studying at the University of St Andrews.

This is the first time Kate has been on an overnight stay during an official engagement since her cancer treatment.

Mull, on Scotland’s west coast, is part of lands once ruled by the Lord of the Isles – one of a number of Scottish titles William inherited from his father when Charles became King.

The visit will begin with a tour of Aros Hall, home to a community fridge which saves food from landfill, a charity shop and a children’s indoor play area.

Later they will visit the nearby harbour to chat to makers and creators at Tobermory Producers Market.

They will end their day by travelling to a combined croft and restaurant on the west coast of Mull, touring some of its 50 acres of land, seeing the Hebridean sheep farmed on site, and helping select garden produce for the menu.

William and Kate will also spend time privately at Pennyghael Community Hall and on the island of Iona after taking the public ferry from Mull and meeting those who use and run the service.

The visit aims to highlight the importance of communities and protecting and championing the natural environment.

The Royal Foundation’s Community Impact Programme is providing undisclosed grants for the renovation of facilities at Aros Hall in Tobermory, where popular BBC children’s TV series Balamory was filmed.

Communal spaces will also be updated and roof repairs undertaken at Pennyghael Community Hall.

Interior designer Banjo Beale, presenter of the BBC’s Designing The Hebrides programme and a Mull resident, will work with islanders to ensure community-owned centres in Mull’s main town of Tobermory and the village of Pennyghael reflect the area’s culture.

He said: “It’s an absolute joy to be working with the Royal Foundation of the Prince and Princess of Wales to redesign and preserve these vital community spaces.

“Together, we’re not just restoring old walls – we’re reimagining what’s possible when community and creativity come together. I’m excited to breathe new life into beloved buildings and celebrate the island’s warmth, resilience and quiet magic.”

Daniela Relph, Senior Royal Correspondent in Mull

It’s been a while since we’ve seen the Prince and Princess of Wales go on a trip like this together. Since her cancer treatment, the princess hasn’t travelled too far from home in Windsor – so to come to Mull and Iona and spend some time here is significant.

We’re told by those who work with the couple that they’d wanted to come to Mull for a long time. And it’s not hard to see why – its natural beauty is on show everywhere.

In recent months, the princess in particular, has spoken of how connecting with nature has given her strength – she will get a chance to do that here during several engagements – from visiting a local croft to taking part in some outdoor learning with schoolchildren in an ancient woodland.

The 29th April is also the couple’s wedding anniversary. It is exactly 14 years since they got married in Westminster Abbey with thousands lining the street for their wedding procession up to Buckingham Palace.

The celebrations will be a bit less grand today.

The prince and princess will spend their wedding anniversary night in a self-catering holiday cottage on Mull – a decision we’re told they’ve made to support the tourism industry on the Scottish islands .

Belfast-based rap group Kneecap have apologised to the families of murdered MPs Sir David Amess and Jo Cox.

The statement posted on X follows the emergence of footage of the group at a concert in November 2023, where one of the band members appears to say: “The only good Tory is a dead Tory. Kill your local MP.”

The footage is being assessed by counter-terrorism police and Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has called for prosecution.

A spokesperson for Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said he did not think “individuals expressing those views should be receiving government funding”.

In a statement, Kneecap said they rejected “any suggestion that we would seek to incite violence against any MP or individual. Ever.”

They added that “an extract of footage, deliberately taken out of all context, is now being exploited and weaponised, as if it were a call to action”.

The trio added: “To the Amess and Cox families, we send our heartfelt apologies, we never intended to cause you hurt.”

Labour MP Jo Cox was fatally shot and stabbed in June 2016.

On Monday, the daughter of Conservative MP Sir David Amess, who was stabbed to death at a constituency surgery in 2021, said the rap group should apologise.

Katie Amess said she was “gobsmacked at the stupidity of somebody or a group of people being in the public eye and saying such dangerous, violent rhetoric”.

Sir Keir’s spokesperson said the PM believed the comments were “completely unacceptable” and there would be no further public funds directed towards Kneecap.

Kneecap has previously been given arts funding from the government. Last year, they won a discrimination case against the UK government after it withdrew arts funding for the band, and were awarded £14,250.

Speaking on Tuesday, UK Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said that “what they’re reported to have said is a total disgrace”.

“It’s dangerous and irresponsible to say these sorts of things, and I hope that everybody involved – not just the band but also those involved surrounding them and those involved in events – also take some responsibility on this and looks very seriously at the consequences of these kinds of remarks, not just what’s been said,” she told Times Radio.

The Metropolitan Police have said they are also looking at another video, from November last year, where the footage appeared to show a band member shouting “up Hamas, up Hezbollah” at a performance in London.

In its statement on Monday, Kneecap said: “Let us be unequivocal: We do not, and have never, supported Hamas or Hezbollah.

“We condemn all attacks on civilians, always. It is never okay. We know this more than anyone, given our nation’s history.”

Both Hamas and Hezbollah are banned in the UK and it is a crime to express support for them.

Speaking to BBC Radio Ulster’s Good Morning Ulster programme on Tuesday morning, Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) MP Carla Lockhart called for Kneecap to be denied entry to the USA and Canada ahead of their North America tour.

It comes after the Traditional Unionist Voice (TUV) wrote to the US Department of State “to request that Kneecap be denied visas to spread their toxic ideology to America”.

Ms Lockhart said she wrote to the US Department of Homeland Security and Canadian Border Services Agency on Monday “to carefully review any applications for entry and to take all necessary steps to prevent their planned tour from proceeding”.

“The very name of this group sends out the wrong message,” she added.

“And any language that undermines values or incites hate, shouldn’t be used, or shouldn’t be tolerated in our society.

“Those words: ‘Kill your MP’, how can they be taken out of context? You either say that or you don’t.”

Ms Lockhart welcomed Kneecap’s apology to the Amess and Cox families but said it “very much screams sorry because they were caught”.

Kneecap are an Irish-speaking rap trio who have courted controversy with their provocative lyrics and merchandise.

The group was formed in 2017 by three friends who go by the stage names of Mo Chara, Móglaí Bap and DJ Próvaí.

Their rise to fame inspired a semi-fictionalised film starring Oscar-nominated actor Michael Fassbender.

The film won a British Academy of Film Award (Bafta) in February 2025.

Last week, TV personality Sharon Osbourne said the group should have their US work visas revoked after they ended their set at Coachella, an annual music festival in California, with pro-Palestinian messages.

On Monday, the First Minister of Scotland, John Swinney, backed calls for Kneecap to be axed from Glasgow’s TRNSMT music festival this summer.

In a letter to Sir Michael Eavis, a co-creator of the festival, Labour MP David Taylor said it would be “deeply troubling” to see the band performing at Glastonbury Festival this summer.

North Antrim MP and leader of the TUV Jim Allister said he had written to organisers of the Glastonbury Festival asking them to drop Kneecap.

A BBC spokesperson said: “As the broadcast partner, the BBC will be bringing audiences extensive music coverage from Glastonbury, with artists booked by the festival organisers.

“The Glastonbury broadcast plans will be considered in the coming weeks, and all output will adhere to our editorial guidelines,” they added.

Plaid Cymru has been criticised for attending a Welsh independence rally which included a message of support from a member of Kneecap.

Plaid said it was not one of the organisers of the rally and condemned any comments that may support terrorist groups.

None of the members of Kneecap has been charged with any offences.

Mark Carney’s Liberal Party is expected to win enough seats in the House of Commons to form a government in Canada. However, they are still short of the majority they wanted in the House of Commons.

Carney is set to remain prime minister, having only assumed the role in early March following Justin Trudeau’s resignation.

His main rival, Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre, is projected to have lost his own seat as has Jagmeet Singh, leader of the New Democratic Party (NDP).

Carney’s Liberals are leading in 168 seats but would need 172 for a majority.

The Conservatives are set to remain in opposition as the second-largest party and are leading in 144 seats, with 99% of polls having reported results.

Bloc Québécois is leading in 23 seats and only runs candidates in the province of Quebec. The NDP is leading in seven seats and the Green Party in one.

Both the Liberals and the Conservatives have seen a significant rise in their share of the national vote compared with four years ago.

Increased support for Canada’s two largest parties has come at the expense of smaller parties, particularly the New Democratic Party (NDP) whose share of the popular vote is down by around 12 percentage points.

The NDP’s leader, Jagmeet Singh, has lost his own seat in the House of Commons and came third behind the Liberal and Conservative candidates.

The increased support for the Conservatives was not enough to save Mr Poilievre, who is projected to have lost his own seat in Carleton, Ontario.

The 45-year-old had promised a return to “common sense politics”.

Opinion polls at the start of the year had the Conservatives over 20 percentage points ahead of the Liberals. But after the resignation of former Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the arrival of new PM Mark Carney and the tariffs announced by US President Donald Trump, that lead evaporated.

In his own seat, Mr Poilievre had 90 opponents, mostly independent candidates linked to a group calling for electoral reform.

Canada has a “first-past-the-post” electoral system.

The candidate who gets the most votes in each electoral district, or riding, wins that seat and become a Member of Parliament (MP).

The Liberals and the Conservatives have dominated the popular vote, with both parties receiving more than 40% each of ballots counted across Canada so far.

This has them on track to win a combined 90% of seats.

The NDP has received just over 6% of the total vote declared so far, but this translates to just 2% of seats in the House of Commons.

Bloc Québécois has just over 6% of the vote and a similar share of seats.

The Liberals are on course to win the most seats in the key provinces of Ontario and Quebec, which account for 200 of Canada’s 343 electoral districts.

The Conservatives are ahead in Alberta, while there is little to choose between the two main parties in British Columbia.

About two-thirds of registered electors voted, according to the preliminary results from Elections Canada. This is in up on the last election in 2021 and similar to 2015 and 2019.

More than 7 million Canadians cast their ballots in advance, setting a new record for early voter turnout, Elections Canada said.

• LIVE: Follow BBC’s coverage of the election
• RESULTS: How Canada voted – in charts
• ANALYSIS: Why Carney’s Liberals won – and the Conservatives lost
• WATCH: How Canada’s election night unfolded
• PROFILE: Who is Mark Carney, Canada’s new PM?
• VOTERS: How I decided who gets my vote
• US VIEW: A turnaround victory made possible by Trump

Mark Carney’s Liberals have won Canada’s federal election – riding a backlash of anti-Trump sentiment to form the next government.

It is a stunning political turnaround for a party who were widely considered dead and buried just a few months ago.

It’s not yet clear if the party – which has been in power for almost a decade – will be able to secure a majority as results continue to roll in.

Either way, the prime minister faces major challenges, including divisions in the country laid bare by the campaign.

Here are five takeaways from an election which saw the Conservative opposition make major gains but still lose.

There is no doubt the US president’s tariff threats and comments undermining Canada’s sovereignty played an outsized role in this election, suddenly making leadership and the country’s economic survival the defining issues of the campaign.

Mark Carney used it to his advantage, running as much against Trump as he did against his main opposition rival, Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre.

Carney warned Canada was at a crisis moment, saying frequently on the campaign trail – and in his victory speech – that Trump “wants to break us so America can own us”.

Poilievre brought Trump up much less frequently during the campaign, focusing his message on domestic issues – the cost of living, the housing affordability crisis, and crime – and targeting the Liberals for their record on those matters.

Carney – who has declared the old relationship with the US “over” – plans to start negotiations on a new economic and security relationship immediately following the election.

Kevin O’Leary, a Canadian businessman close to Trump who previously ran for the Conservative leadership, acknowledged it was a successful campaign strategy.

“Right now Canadians are very frustrated with America and Carney has used that to his advantage,” he told the BBC just before polls closed. “He was able to distract Canadians from his own mistakes… and say ‘Stop looking at that. Look south of the border and I can save you’.”

At the start of the year, Carney was a former central banker with no experience as a politician. By mid-March, he was being sworn in as prime minister – the first to have never held elected public office before – after a resounding win in the Liberal leadership race.

Now, he’s faced the Canadian electorate as a first time campaigner, won an Ottawa-area seat in the House of Commons and steered his party to an unlikely victory.

Carney had long flirted with entering Canadian politics – and he seized his moment, swooping in after former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s sudden resignation in January.

He also took full advantage of the new political landscape, leaning into his experience helping Canada and the UK navigate previous crises at a time when Canadians were feeling anxious about their economic future.

Trump’s late-March announcement of global levies on foreign automobile imports gave Carney the chance to publicly audition to keep his job during the campaign. He was able to step away from the trail and take on the prime minister’s mantle, setting up a call with the president and meeting US Cabinet ministers.

• REACTION: Follow the latest live
• RESULTS: How Canada voted – in charts
• ANALYSIS: A turnaround victory made possible by Trump
• EXPLAINER: What happens next?

In a different election, this would have been a successful one for the Conservatives.

In 2011, the Conservatives won a majority with 39.6% of the vote. Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre is on track to beat that this time, with roughly 41.4% of the vote with most polls reporting, according to Elections Canada.

They are currently projected to have won 144 seats – that’s up from 120 at dissolution, when the election was called in March.

But with the progressive vote coalescing around the Liberals, those numbers weren’t enough this time.

The bitter blow was Poilievre losing his riding (parliamentary seat) in Carleton, Ontario.

Only months ago his party had a clear path to victory and they will now need to figure out a way forward after a series of electoral defeats.

Whether that includes the diminished figure of Poilievre as leader is the first big question for them to face.He is the third leader they’ve had since the Liberals swept the 2015 election.

The election results have highlighted divisions in Canada that could pose a challenge for Carney.

Notably, the Liberals are largely shut out of Alberta and Saskatchewan – oil-rich and gas-rich prairie provinces where a sense of alienation from the centre of power in Ottawa has long festered.

Even before the election, some in those regions were warning of a national unity crisis if the Liberals won another mandate.

Carney touched on those divisions in his victory speech, acknowledging the millions who had voted for a different outcome.

“I intend to govern for all Canadians,” he said.

Meanwhile, Poilievre’s message, which relentlessly focused on cost of living issues, especially on housing affordability, resonated with many young people.

Support for the Conservatives outpaced Liberals by 44% to 31.2% among 18 to 34 year olds, a Nanos poll on 25 April indicated. The divide was more stark among younger men.

Separately, Abacus Data polling found that about 18% of 18 to 29 year olds were worried about Trump. That jumped to 45% for voters over 60, suggesting a polarisation on issues between generations.

On Monday night, Poilievre remarked on demographic breakthroughs Conservative had made, including with younger Canadians.

“We gave voices to countless people across the country who’ve been left out and left behind for far too long,” he said.

In this election, the smaller political parties have taken a hit as Canadians choose to park their votes with either the Liberals or the Conservatives – especially the left-wing New Democrats, or NDP.

Some of the smaller parties have lost a significant amount of vote share – particularly the NDP who have received just 6% of votes counted across Canada so far, compared with 18% in 2021.

Jagmeet Singh, who has been NDP leader for almost eight years, lost his own riding in British Columbia and announced he will step down.

“Obviously I know this night is a disappointing night for New Democrats,” he said, adding: “We’re only defeated if we stop fighting.”

The Greens have also seen their vote share cut in half from 2% to 1%.

Shachi Kurl, president of the Angus Reid Institute, a non-profit public opinion research organisation, told the BBC that Trump’s rhetoric was behind the shift to the Liberals.

“The threats, the annexation talk, all of that has been a huge motivator for left of centre voters,” she said.

The sovereigntist Bloc Québécois have maintained a vote share of around 7%. They are on track to win 23 seats in Quebec.

This is based on around 97% of polls reporting.

Canada doesn’t have a two-party system, even though it has historically voted in conservative or liberal governments in some form.

In the country’s political system, these smaller parties still play a role in Parliament. Both the NDP and the Bloc have at some points formed Official Opposition in the House of Commons.

Prosecutors have dropped some of the charges against an Australian woman accused of killing three relatives and seriously injuring another with a toxic mushroom lunch.

Erin Patterson will not face trial over allegations she also attempted to murder her husband, after those charges were withdrawn.

She still faces four charges: three counts of murder and one of attempted murder.

The 50-year-old has always maintained her innocence and has pleaded not guilty, with her trial to begin in the Supreme Court of Victoria on Wednesday.

Three people died in hospital days after the July 2023 lunch, including Patterson’s former in-laws, Don Patterson, 70, and Gail Patterson, 70, as well as Gail’s sister, Heather Wilkinson, 66.

Heather’s husband, 68-year-old Baptist pastor Ian Wilkinson, survived after weeks of treatment in hospital.

The jury has been picked and is receiving instructions from the judge ahead of opening statements, which are expected Wednesday.

Justice Christopher Beale told the jury that most if not all them would probably have been aware of the previous charges in relation to Patterson’s husband, but said that the Director of Public Prosecutions had dropped them.

“In other words… you must put them out of your mind,” he said.

He also urged them to “dispassionately” weigh the evidence in the case, using their heads and not their hearts.

The trial is being held at a small courthouse in Morwell, about 60km (37 miles) from Leongatha, Victoria, where prosecutors allege the lunch took place.

Canadian Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre is projected to have lost his seat in the House of Commons, according to public broadcaster CBC.

The report of Poilievre’s defeat in an Ottawa-area riding (constituency) came after his party was defeated nationwide by Mark Carney’s Liberal Party.

Before President Donald Trump returned to power in the neighbouring US, Poilievre and his Conservatives were predicted to win at the Canadian polls. But new trade tariffs issued by Trump – coupled with his threats to make Canada the 51st American state – appear to have changed the race.

In his seat, Poilievre also faced a challenge from local advocates wanting to change an electoral system.

Liberal Party candidate Bruce Fanjoy is projected by CBC to win the Carleton seat that Poilievre held for two decades.

There has been no immediate reaction from Poilievre.

Earlier on Tuesday morning – while conceding the election as a whole to Carney – he described the nationwide results as a “virtual tie” and said he wanted Canadians to come together to “hold the government to account”.

The Conservatives are set to remain in opposition as the second-largest party. Like the Liberals, they saw a significant rise in their share of the national vote compared to four years ago – despite Poilievre’s projected result being a personal blow.

Ahead of the race, local media outlets suggested he could struggle in his riding – but the Conservative party largely dismissed the threats.

He was opposed by a protest group, the Longest Ballot Committee, which advocates for the abolition of Canada’s first-past-the-post electoral system.

The group registered dozens of challengers in the riding, which some media predicted could make the seat harder for Poilievre to win.

Some 90 other candidates appeared on the ballot alongside Poilievre in the Carleton riding – giving voters a long ballot to vote on.

As a conservative, Poilievre also struggled to maintain distance from Trump. Poilievre previously praised the US president, but sought to highlight their differences after Trump intensified his trade war.

Poilievre, who hails from Calgary, Alberta, had held his seat since 2005. He was the youngest MP at the time he was elected.

The 45-year-old rose to power in 2022 when he won a landslide victory to become leader of the Conservative Party.

• LIVE: Follow BBC’s coverage of the election
• RESULTS: How Canada voted – in charts
• ANALYSIS: Why Carney’s Liberals won – and the Conservatives lost
• WATCH: How Canada’s election night unfolded
• PROFILE: Who is Mark Carney, Canada’s new PM?
• VOTERS: How I decided who gets my vote
• US VIEW: A turnaround victory made possible by Trump

Lily Allen has apologised to Katy Perry for “being mean” about her when she joined in the backlash against the recent space flight carrying the US singer.

“There was actually no need for me to bring her name into it, and it was my own internalised misogyny,” Allen said on her BBC podcast Miss Me.

“I’ve been thinking about it a lot, and it was just completely unnecessary to pile on with her. I mean, I disagree with what it was that they did, but she wasn’t the only person that did it.”

The English pop star and actress was one of a number of high-profile critics of the Blue Origin flight, which briefly took Perry and five other women to the edge of space two weeks ago.

“She was possibly the most famous, and the one that divides people the most, and so there was something in me that decided to choose her as the person that should [be singled out],” Allen continued.

“Well, anyway, I’m just sorry. I would have been hurt if it had been me and someone in my industry used me and my name, and I saw that, and I’m sorry.”

Allen’s apology came after she discussed “Katy Perry and her mates all going up to space for 12 minutes” with co-host Miquita Oliver in a previous episode.

“I mean, what the… hell was all that about?” Allen said. “I mean, in all seriousness, what? Why? For why?

“It’s so out of touch. Like, we’re on the brink of recession. People are really… struggling to make ends meet and put food on their tables.”

She added: “And the fact that they’ve, like, made it like some sort of feminist thing…”

The flight, on a rocket designed by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’s company Blue Origin, marked the first all-female mission to space since 1963.

Perry said beforehand: “It’s an important moment for the future of commercial space travel and for humanity in general and for women all around.”

Also on board were Bezos’s fiancée Lauren Sánchez, TV presenter Gayle King, former Nasa rocket scientist Aisha Bowe, civil rights activist Amanda Nguyen, and film producer Kerianne Flynn.

But Perry bore the brunt of the ridicule after it emerged she sung Louis Armstrong’s What a Wonderful World, and held up the setlist for her new tour to an in-flight camera.

Fast food chain Wendy’s posted on social media, “Can we send her back”, before adding several days later that they had “a ton of respect for Katy Perry and her out-of-this-world-talent”.

Model Emily Ratajkowski was among the other critics of the flight, saying she was “disgusted”, and took aim at Bezos in a follow-up video arguing that taking “his fiancée and a few other famous women to space for space tourism is not progress”.

US actress Olivia Munn described the flight as “gluttonous”, explaining: “It’s so much money to go to space, and there’s a lot of people who can’t even afford eggs. What’s the point? Is it historic that you guys are going on a ride?”

But King hit back, saying she was “very disappointed and very saddened” by the backlash. “Have you been?” she asked the haters. “If you’ve been and you still feel that way after you come back, please let’s have a conversation.”

Mark Carney and the Liberal Party have claimed a remarkable victory in the Canadian election – and it appears to have come with a big assist from Donald Trump.

The US president’s constant badgering of America’s northern neighbour and taunts about making it the 51st US state since his return to office in January coincided with a dramatic reversal in fortune for the centre-left party.

Carney has been almost singularly focused on his neighbour, and this was reflected in his victory speech. After warning that the US wanted Canada’s land and resources, Carney declared: “President Trump is trying to break us so that America can own us. That will never ever happen.”

Until Trump’s return to power, Pierre Poilievre’s Conservative Party had held what looked like high and insurmountable ground in voter preference polls amidst general dissatisfaction with the state of the Canadian economy and almost a decade of Liberal government under then leader Justin Trudeau.

The past year has been devastating for incumbent governments around the world, with parties all along the political spectrum losing ground or outright control – with the US, UK, Japan, Germany, France and India among the most prominent examples.

This Canadian general election broke that trend, as the Liberals forced Trudeau to resign and picked a political outsider, former Bank of England chief Carney, as their leader.

He ran hard against what the party continuously characterised as the real threat Trump posed not just to their economy but also to Canada’s very sovereignty.

Although Trump doesn’t appear to have the same distaste for Carney that he clearly held for Trudeau, his political and policy interests and those of Canada now appear destined to continue to diverge.

Already there are indications that Canada is looking more toward Europe as a reliable partner, rather than Trump’s America – a move that is sure to irk the American leader.

Carney has pledged to quickly begin new trade negotiations with Trump in an attempt to stave off US tariffs on Canadian auto exports set to kick in on 3 May.

The Canadian economy, which heavily depends on exports to the US, is at considerable risk if a full trade war erupts, and Carney – an economist by training and a veteran central banker – has promised voters that he will do everything in his power to keep Canada from tumbling into a recession.

Meanwhile, Trump belly-flopped into Canadian politics one more time on Monday, while voters were casting their ballots, again calling the US-Canadian border “artificially drawn” and saying the nation would be better off as a “cherished” American state.

Carney ascended to political power quite suddenly, at a time when his country is facing a generational challenge from its superpower neighbour. Many world leaders are still working out how to deal with Donald Trump in his second term, but few will face this kind of test.

• LIVE: Follow BBC’s coverage of the election
• RESULTS: How Canada voted – in charts
• ANALYSIS: Why Carney’s Liberals won – and the Conservatives lost
• VIDEO: Moment Liberal supporters cheer projected election win
• VOTERS: How I decided who gets my vote

No one should expect those Liberals to say thank you to the American leader, however – or for Trump to soften his rhetoric, even though last month he said he preferred a Liberal prime minister. (He would go on to say that he really didn’t care who won.)

Instead, more of the same is the likely result – more pointed quips about Canada joining the US, more threats of a trade war and more willingness to cast longstanding ties and agreements with America’s northern neighbour into doubt.

The irony, however, is that Trump’s derisive focus on Canada may have denied him a northern neighbour run by, if not a kindred spirit, at least a politician more in line with his populist conservative priorities than Liberal Carney.

While Poilievre, a veteran politician, will never be mistaken for the American businessman-turned-president, they have some similarities – a goal of shrinking government, lowering taxes and trimming social services, a desire to promote fossil fuel production, and a distaste for what they both deride as “woke” leftist culture.

A Conservative victory in this election would have been viewed by many – in America and throughout the world – as a new sign that the Trump win last year was more than just a singular American event. It would have represented what many in Trump’s orbit like to believe is a global movement toward their brand of culturally conservative, anti-elite, anti-immigration, and pro-working-class politics.

No criminal charges will be brought against a professional ice hockey player arrested on suspicion of manslaughter following the death of Adam Johnson.

The Nottingham Panthers player died after suffering a neck injury from a skate during a collision with Sheffield Steelers’ Matt Petgrave on 28 October 2023.

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) said it worked with South Yorkshire Police to determine whether any criminal charges should be brought.

“We have concluded that there is not a realistic prospect of conviction for any criminal offence and so there will not be a prosecution,” Michael Quinn, deputy chief crown prosecutor, said.

Mr Quinn added: “This was a shocking and deeply upsetting incident.

“The CPS and South Yorkshire Police have worked closely together to determine whether any criminal charges should be brought against the other ice hockey player involved.

“Our thoughts remain with the family and friends of Adam Johnson.”

He said the police investigation had been “thorough” and the CPS had undertaken a “comprehensive review of all the evidence”.

The death of Johnson, who was from Minnesota in the US, sparked an outpouring of grief across the world.

Johnson previously played in North America’s National Hockey League (NHL), featuring 13 times for Pittsburgh Penguins.

He made the move to the Swedish Hockey League (SHL) for the 2020-21 season, before spells with the Ontario Reign and the Lehigh Valley Phantoms in the American Hockey League.

Johnson played for Augsburger Panther in Germany before switching to the Nottingham Panthers in August.

After his death, the player’s aunt Kari Johnson told local Minnesota news station KSTP-TV said her nephew had been planning to propose to his partner, Ryan Wolfe.

“We were all really excited because we were really looking forward to their future and he didn’t get a chance to ask her, and then this happened,” Ms Johnson said.

The Panthers retired Johnson’s number 47 jersey following a ceremony before their game with Fife Flyers in December 2024.

Lynn DeGrio, another of Johnson’s aunts, spoke at the event on behalf of the family, describing him as “humble, modest and down to earth”.

Panthers chief executive Omar Pacha also spoke at the ceremony, and said: “Adam was a top player, but he was an even better human being.”

Mr Pacha described Johnson as “a quiet, positive leader, a committed player that guys loved, and a huge, calming presence in the locker room”, and added that he “cannot even imagine the feelings” that all of Johnson’s friends and family “felt and still feel”.

A child has damaged a painting worth millions of pounds by the American artist Mark Rothko at a museum in Rotterdam.

A spokesperson for the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen said it was considering the “next steps” for the treatment of Rothko’s Grey, Orange on Maroon, No. 8.

The damage occurred during an “unguarded moment”, a museum spokesperson told the Dutch media outlet Algemeen Dagblad (AD) last week.

A spokesperson for the museum told the BBC the damage was “superficial”, adding: “Small scratches are visible in the unvarnished paint layer in the lower part of the painting”.

The abstract painting is estimated to be worth up to €50m (£42.5m), according to newspaper AD.

“Conservation expertise has been sought in the Netherlands and abroad. We are currently researching the next steps for the treatment of the painting”, the museum spokesperson told the BBC.

“We expect that the work will be able to be shown again in the future,” they added.

Sophie McAloone, the conservation manager at the Fine Art Restoration Company, said that “modern unvarnished” paintings like Rothko’s Grey, Orange on Maroon, No. 8 are “particularly susceptible to damage”.

This is “owing to a combination of their complex modern materials, lack of a traditional coating layer, and intensity of flat colour fields, which make even the smallest areas of damage instantly perceptible,” she said.

“In this case, scratching of the upper paint layers can have a significant impact on the viewing experience of the piece,” Ms McAloone said.

The Rothko painting was hanging in the museum’s Depot – a publicly accessible storage facility beside the main museum – as part of an exhibition displaying a selection of “public favourites” from the gallery’s collection.

Jonny Helm, a marketing manager at the art restoration service Plowden & Smith, said the incident had implications for UK institutions such as V&A East and the British Museum, which are considering “opening up the display of things that would otherwise be obscured in archives.”

“How will this event affect other UK institutions who are opening up their archives in the same way?” Mr Helm said.

Restoring a Rothko painting is a difficult task because “Rothko’s mixture of pigments and resins and glues were quite complex”, Mr Helm said.

He said the fact the painting is unvarnished – meaning it is “open to the environment” – will pose an additional challenge to conservators.

Conservators working to restore the painting will now likely be in the process of documenting the extent of the damage and researching “historic successful treatments” of Rothko paintings.

“Rothko works seem to have terrible luck – this isn’t the first damaged Rothko we’ve heard about,” Mr Helm said.

Rothko’s 1958 work, Black on Maroon, was deliberately vandalised by Wlodzimierz Umaniec at London’s Tate Modern gallery in October 2012.

Umaniec was sent to prison for two years and subsequently apologised for his actions.

During his trial, prosecuting barrister Gregor McKinley said the cost of repairing the work would be about £200,000. It took conservators 18 months to repair the painting.

Rachel Myrtle, Head of Specie and Fine Arts at Aon, a company that offers insurance broking to its clients, said fine art insurance policies typically cover “all risks associated with physical loss and damage to artwork”.

This includes “accidental damage caused by children or visitors, albeit with certain exclusions”, she said.

She said that when an artwork is damaged, a gallery’s insurer will appoint a specialist fine art loss adjuster to visit the museum.

The loss adjustor typically “reviews the damage to the artwork, examines any CCTV footage to determine the exact cause of the loss, and assesses conservation options”, Ms Myrtle said.

The museum did not comment on who will be held liable for the damage to the 1960 painting, which the gallery reportedly bought in the 1970s.

The Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen has previously billed visitors who have caused damage to artworks on display.

In 2011, the museum asked an unsuspecting tourist who stepped on Wim T. Schippers’ peanut butter floor artwork, called Pindakaasvloer, to pay for repairs to the work.

Sharon Cohen, a spokesperson for the museum at the time, was quoted by AD as saying: “It is normal procedure for people to pay if they damage art.”

The Rothko painting is described by the museum as an example of colour field painting, a term used to describe art characterised by large blocks of flat, solid colour spread across a canvas.

Rothko’s Grey, Orange on Maroon, No. 8 painting is one of several works of modern art that have been damaged in the Netherlands in recent years.

In November 2024, multiple screen prints by the US pop artist Andy Warhol were damaged by thieves during an attempted robbery of the MPV art gallery in the town of Oisterwijk.

In another incident, a Dutch town hall admitted it “most likely” disposed of 46 artworks by accident – including an Andy Warhol print of the former Dutch queen – during renovation works last year.

Museums have different policies when responding to damage caused by children.

In August last year, a four-year-old boy accidentally smashed a 3,500-year-old jar into pieces at the Hecht Museum in Israel.

At the time, Hecht Museum worker Lihi Laszlo told the BBC the museum would not treat the incident “with severity” because “the jar was accidentally damaged by a young child”.

The family were invited back to the exhibition with his family for an organised tour shortly after the incident occurred.

Mark Carney will return to the Canadian parliament with a strengthened mandate, after his Liberal Party triumphed in a snap election that he called soon after becoming prime minister.

Although one of his most pressing tasks is to deal with his US counterpart President Donald Trump – who has targeted Canada with trade tariffs and even vowed to make the country the 51st state of America – Carney has also promised action on a range of domestic issues.

In his victory speech in the early hours of Tuesday, Carney pledged to “build, baby, build” – an apparent nod to Trump’s pledges on oil drilling.

“It’s time to build twice as many homes every year with an entirely new housing industry using Canadian technology, Canadian skilled workers, Canadian lumber,” Carney told supporters.

Housing prices have skyrocketed across the country in the last decade. By doubling the rate of building, Carney hopes to have a supply of 500,000 new homes a year.

The Liberals want to create a standalone federal entity that would act as a developer for affordable housing. They plan to use this body to supply tens of billions of Canadian dollars in debt-financing for prefabricated home builders.

Like people in other countries, Canadians have been grappling with higher prices for everyday goods while wages have failed to keep up – an issue over which Carney’s party was criticised while under the stewardship of his predecessor Justin Trudeau.

The Liberals have proposed a slight tax cut for those in the lowest bracket, who are due to see their rate reduce from 15% to 14%.

Carney’s party has also vowed to scrap sales taxes on homes under C$1m ($720,000; £540,000) for first-time buyers.

It also wants to make dental care cheaper, by opening applications to a national insurance programme for 4.5 million Canadians aged 18 to 64.

The Liberals have vowed to maintain the push on reducing emissions – as part of the fight against climate change – while ensuring Canadian companies are still competitive.

Carney has promised to build a national “east to west” electricity grid to reduce energy dependence on the US.

One of his first moves as PM, before the election, was to repeal Trudeau’s unpopular carbon pricing programme, which was designed to give financial incentives for people and firms to turn away from fossil fuels.

But Carney maintained a similar tax on large carbon emitters.

In his victory speech, he said: “It’s time to build Canada into an energy superpower in both clean and conventional energy.”

Carney has vowed to raise defence spending to 2% of Canada’s GDP, which is the target for all countries in the Nato military alliance. Last year, it spent less than 1.4%.

Trump has been critical of countries not meeting the 2% benchmark, and says Canada relies too much militarily on the US.

And Trump’s pursuit of Canada as a “51st state” of the US has focused minds north of the border on their own security independence.

The Liberals say they will spend C$18bn on defence over the next four years, which will go to purchasing new equipment like submarines and heavy icebreakers that can be used in Canada’s north.

Carney has pledged to find new ways to trade in light of the impediments placed on cross-border commerce by Trump’s tariffs regime.

In his speech on Tuesday, Carney vowed new “trade and energy corridors working in partnership with the provinces, territories, and Indigenous peoples”.

Among his plans are an “all-in-Canada” network for vehicle parts, under which more manufacturing will happen domestically – meaning less reliance on imports from the US.

The Liberals also want to invest C$5bn in national ports, railways, roads and other infrastructure that would help the country further diversify its trading partners.

• LIVE: Follow BBC’s coverage of the election
• RESULTS: How Canada voted – in charts
• ANALYSIS: Why Carney’s Liberals won – and the Conservatives lost
• WATCH: How Canada’s election night unfolded
• PROFILE: Who is Mark Carney, Canada’s new PM?
• VOTERS: How I decided who gets my vote
• US VIEW: A turnaround victory made possible by Trump

One of Prince Andrew’s prized business assets was administered for two years by a company controlled by the controversial millionaire Doug Barrowman, the BBC can reveal.

After the prince’s disastrous Newsnight interview in 2019, legal ownership of his Dragons’ Den-style start-up competition, Pitch@Palace Global, was transferred to a Barrowman-linked firm, Knox House Trustees (UK).

Barrowman and his wife, lingerie boss Baroness Michelle Mone, hit the headlines when she admitted they had lied about their links to a company that won large government contracts during the Covid pandemic after she recommended it to ministers.

A lawyer for Mr Barrowman said he “at no time… had any business or personal involvement with the duke”.

Pitch@Palace Global remained the prince’s company, under his control. But in line with longstanding royal practice, it was owned under the names of other people or companies, acting on his behalf as so-called “nominees”.

Documents filed at Companies House show that from 2021, the nominee owner was Knox House Trustees (UK), which was controlled and ultimately owned by Mr Barrowman until 2023.

Prince Andrew’s finances have been under intense scrutiny, with questions about how he can afford to live in his Royal Lodge mansion in Windsor after he was cut off financially by his brother, King Charles.

The prince’s choice of business associates has long been controversial. In December, he said he “ceased all contact” with Yang Tengbo, who led the Chinese arm of Pitch@Palace, after receiving advice from the UK government which alleged that he was a spy.

Mr Yang has denied being a spy or doing anything unlawful.

Mr Barrowman has attracted plenty of controversy too. In 2017, HMRC began an investigation into one of his companies, AML Tax (UK), which it said “aggressively promoted” tax avoidance schemes. It was fined £150,000 in 2022.

In January that year, the Guardian newspaper first reported links between Mr Barrowman, Baroness Mone and PPE Medpro. The pair denied involvement until December 2023, when she admitted in a BBC interview that they had lied about their links with the company.

The National Crime Agency is now investigating suspected criminal offences at the firm. Mr Barrowman and Baroness Mone both deny any wrongdoing.

Author Andrew Lownie, who is writing a biography of the prince, said: “Andrew has a long history of associating with dubious business figures and disguising his business activities behind nominee and offshore accounts. There really needs to be a full investigation into the duke’s financial activities.”

Pitch@Palace was a start-up competition, founded in 2014, where entrepreneurs would pitch their ideas to possible investors in the hope of winning their backing. It had two parts:

• a UK-based version, set up as a community interest company, which cannot pay profits to shareholders
• an international arm, Pitch@Palace Global Ltd, which held competitions in places such as Australia, Bahrain and China, and was set up as a for-profit UK company

Both arms of Pitch@Palace suspended operations following the Newsnight interview in 2019 about the prince’s links to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, which led to Andrew stepping down as a working royal.

Nonetheless, the international operation has emerged as a possible way for the duke to fund his lifestyle. In a court witness statement from 2023, Mr Yang wrote that the duke had needed money “and saw the relationships with China through Pitch as one possible source of funding”.

Earlier this year a Dutch company said it was in talks to buy it, saying it saw “immense value” in the network, even though it had suspended operations.

However, Prince Andrew has never held the company in his own name.

Founded in 2017, Pitch@Palace Global Ltd was initially held in the name of Amanda Thirsk, the prince’s private secretary, in an arrangement often used by the Royal Family.

But early in 2021, the legal ownership was transferred to Knox House Trustees (UK) Limited.

This company had been set up the year before, and Mr Barrowman was named as having “significant influence and control” over it.

Corporate filings in the Isle of Man show Knox House Trustees (UK) was ultimately owned by Knox Limited, whose sole shareholder is Mr Barrowman.

In 2023, ownership of Knox House Trustees (UK) Ltd – which still owned Pitch@Palace Global – was transferred to Arthur Lancaster, an accountant who has a longstanding working relationship with both the prince and Mr Barrowman. This remains the situation today.

The same year Mr Lancaster took over as the sole director and shareholder of PPE Medpro. He was also a director of many of the companies involved in the AML tax avoidance case.

The judge in that case called him “evasive” and said he had “real concerns as to the reliability of Mr Lancaster’s evidence”, which contained “significant inconsistencies”.

After the case, his lawyer wrote to the court arguing that the conclusions were “unnecessarily harsh”, that Mr Lancaster had been a “diligent and truthful witness”, and that his efforts to provide information had been hampered by the Covid pandemic.

For decades the Royal Family has held investments through nominees, and still does. In the past this has served to keep details of their holdings private, though not in this case. Prince Andrew’s involvement in Pitch@Palace Global is well known, and he is listed as having “significant influence or control” over the company on Companies House.

Mr Barrowman’s lawyer said in a statement: “Mr Lancaster was a director of KHT (UK) Ltd which provided company administration services to a number of external companies, including Pitch@Palace, a company wholly owned by the duke. Mr Lancaster acted for the duke in a personal capacity at all times and has been an associate of the duke for many years.”

Mr Lancaster declined to comment. Prince Andrew did not respond to requests for comment.

No criminal charges will be brought against a professional ice hockey player arrested on suspicion of manslaughter following the death of Adam Johnson.

The Nottingham Panthers player died after suffering a neck injury from a skate during a collision with Sheffield Steelers’ Matt Petgrave on 28 October 2023.

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) said it worked with South Yorkshire Police to determine whether any criminal charges should be brought.

“We have concluded that there is not a realistic prospect of conviction for any criminal offence and so there will not be a prosecution,” Michael Quinn, deputy chief crown prosecutor, said.

Mr Quinn added: “This was a shocking and deeply upsetting incident.

“The CPS and South Yorkshire Police have worked closely together to determine whether any criminal charges should be brought against the other ice hockey player involved.

“Our thoughts remain with the family and friends of Adam Johnson.”

He said the police investigation had been “thorough” and the CPS had undertaken a “comprehensive review of all the evidence”.

The death of Johnson, who was from Minnesota in the US, sparked an outpouring of grief across the world.

Johnson previously played in North America’s National Hockey League (NHL), featuring 13 times for Pittsburgh Penguins.

He made the move to the Swedish Hockey League (SHL) for the 2020-21 season, before spells with the Ontario Reign and the Lehigh Valley Phantoms in the American Hockey League.

Johnson played for Augsburger Panther in Germany before switching to the Nottingham Panthers in August.

After his death, the player’s aunt Kari Johnson told local Minnesota news station KSTP-TV said her nephew had been planning to propose to his partner, Ryan Wolfe.

“We were all really excited because we were really looking forward to their future and he didn’t get a chance to ask her, and then this happened,” Ms Johnson said.

The Panthers retired Johnson’s number 47 jersey following a ceremony before their game with Fife Flyers in December 2024.

Lynn DeGrio, another of Johnson’s aunts, spoke at the event on behalf of the family, describing him as “humble, modest and down to earth”.

Panthers chief executive Omar Pacha also spoke at the ceremony, and said: “Adam was a top player, but he was an even better human being.”

Mr Pacha described Johnson as “a quiet, positive leader, a committed player that guys loved, and a huge, calming presence in the locker room”, and added that he “cannot even imagine the feelings” that all of Johnson’s friends and family “felt and still feel”.