The blood of a US man who deliberately injected himself with snake venom for nearly two decades has led to an “unparalleled” antivenom, say scientists.

Antibodies found in Tim Friede’s blood have been shown to protect against fatal doses from a wide range of species in animal tests.

Current therapies have to match the specific species of venomous snake anyone has been bitten by.

But Mr Friede’s 18-year mission could be a significant step in finding a universal antivenom against all snakebites – which kill up to 14,000 people a year and leave three times as many needing amputations or facing permanent disability.

In total, Mr Friede has endured more than 200 bites and more than 700 injections of venom he prepared from some of the world’s deadliest snakes, including multiple species of mambas, cobras, taipans and kraits.

He initially wanted to build up his immunity to protect himself when handling snakes, documenting his exploits on YouTube.

But the former truck mechanic said that he had “completely screwed up” early on when two cobra bites in quick succession left him in a coma.

“I didn’t want to die. I didn’t want to lose a finger. I didn’t want to miss work,” he told the BBC.

Mr Friede’s motivation was to develop better therapies for the rest of the world, explaining: “It just became a lifestyle and I just kept pushing and pushing and pushing as hard as I could push – for the people who are 8,000 miles away from me who die from snakebite”.

Antivenom is currently made by injecting small doses of snake venom into animals, such as horses. Their immune system fights the venom by producing antibodies and these are harvested to be used as a therapy.

But venom and antivenom have to be closely matched because the toxins in a venomous bite vary from one species to another.

There is even wide variety within the same species – antivenom made from snakes in India is less effective against the same species in Sri Lanka.

A team of researchers began searching for a type of immune defence called broadly neutralising antibodies. Instead of targeting the part of a toxin that makes it unique, they target the parts that are common to entire classes of toxin.

That’s when Dr Jacob Glanville, chief executive of biotech company Centivax, came across Tim Friede.

“Immediately I was like ‘if anybody in the world has developed these broadly neutralising antibodies, it’s going to be him’ and so I reached out,” he said.

“The first call, I was like ‘this might be awkward, but I’d love to get my hands on some of your blood’.”

Mr Friede agreed and the work was given ethical approval because the study would only take blood, rather than giving him more venom.

The research focused on elapids – one of the two families of venomous snakes – such as coral snakes, mambas, cobras, taipans and kraits.

Elapids primarily use neurotoxins in their venom, which paralyses their victim and is fatal when it stops the muscles needed to breathe.

Researchers picked 19 elapids identified by the World Health Organization as being among the deadliest snakes on the planet. They then began scouring Mr Friede’s blood for protective defences.

Their work, detailed in the journal Cell, identified two broadly neutralising antibodies that could target two classes of neurotoxin. They added in a drug that targets a third to make their antivenom cocktail.

In experiments on mice, the cocktail meant the animals survived fatal doses from 13 of the 19 species of venomous snake. They had partial protection against the remaining six.

This is “unparalleled” breadth of protection, according to Dr Glanville, who said it “likely covers a whole bunch of elapids for which there is no current antivenom”.

The team is trying to refine the antibodies further and see if adding a fourth component could lead to total protection against elapid snake venom.

The other class of snake – the vipers – rely more on haemotoxins, which attack the blood, rather than neurotoxins. In total there are around a dozen broad classes of toxin in snake venom, which also includes cytotoxins that directly kill cells.

“I think in the next 10 or 15 years we’ll have something effective against each one of those toxin classes,” said Prof Peter Kwong, one of the researchers at Columbia University.

And the hunt continues inside Mr Friede’s blood samples.

“Tim’s antibodies are really quite extraordinary – he taught his immune system to get this very, very broad recognition,” said Prof Kwong.

The ultimate hope is to have either a single antivenom that can do everything, or one injection for elapids and one for vipers.

Prof Nick Casewell, who is the head of the centre for snakebite research and interventions at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, said the breadth of protection reported was “certainly novel” and provided “a strong piece of evidence” that this was a feasible approach.

“There is no doubt that this work moves the field forwards in an exciting direction.”

But he cautioned there was “much work to do” and that the antivenom still needed extensive testing before it could be used in people.

But for Mr Friede, reaching this stage “makes me feel good”.

“I’m doing something good for humanity and that was very important to me. I’m proud of it. It’s pretty cool.”

At a military training ground near the city of Wroclaw, ordinary Poles are lining up, waiting to be handed guns and taught how to shoot. “Once the round is loaded, the weapon is ready to fire,” barks the instructor, a Polish soldier, his face smeared with camouflage paint.

Young and old, men and women, parents and children, they’ve all come here for one reason: to learn how to survive an armed attack.

As well as a turn on the shooting range, this Saturday morning programme, called “Train with the Army”, also teaches civilians hand-to-hand combat, first aid and how to put on a gas mask.

“The times are dangerous now, we need to be ready,” says the co-ordinator of the project, Captain Adam Sielicki. “We have a military threat from Russia, and we are preparing for this.”

Capt Sielicki says the programme is oversubscribed, and the Polish government now has plans to expand it so that every adult male in the country receives training. Poland, which shares borders with both Russia and Ukraine, says it will spend almost 5% of GDP on defence this year, the highest in Nato.

Last week, Prime Minister Donald Tusk said Poland aims to build “the strongest army in the region”. Warsaw has been on a spending spree, buying planes, ships, artillery systems and missiles from the US, Sweden and South Korea, among others.

Dariusz is one of those attending the Saturday course in Wroclaw, and says he would be the “very first” to volunteer if Poland were attacked. “History has taught us that we must be prepared to defend ourselves on our own. We cannot rely on anyone else. Today alliances exist, and tomorrow they are broken.”

As he removes his gas mask, Bartek says he thinks most Poles “will take up arms” if attacked, “and be ready to defend the country.”

Agata is attending with a friend. She says the election of Donald Trump has made people more worried. “He wants to pull out [of Europe]. That’s why we feel even less safe. If we’re not prepared and Russia attacks us, we’ll simply become their prisoners.”

Statements by Donald Trump and members of his administration have caused deep concern among officials in Warsaw. During a visit to the Polish capital in February, the US defence secretary Pete Hegseth said Europe mustn’t assume that the US troop presence on the continent “will last forever”.

The US currently has 10,000 troops stationed in Poland, but Washington announced last month it was pulling out of a key military base in the city of Rzeszow in the east of Poland. Officials say the troops will be redeployed within Poland, but the move has caused yet more unease in the country.

Donald Trump’s apparent hostility towards Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, and warm words for Russia’s Vladimir Putin, have only added to the worry.

Poland is due to sign a defence agreement with France in the coming days, and another pact with the UK is in the pipeline – further moves by Warsaw to pivot away from its historically strong military ties with Washington. There is also talk of Poland being brought under the French military’s “nuclear umbrella”.

“I think [Trump] has certainly pressed us to think more creatively about our security,” says Tomasz Szatkowski, the permanent representative of Poland to Nato and presidential advisor on defence. “I think the US can’t afford to lose Poland, because that would be a sign… that you can’t rely on the US. However, we do have to think of other options and develop our own capabilities.”

“If the Russians continue their aggressive intentions towards Europe, we’re going to be the first one – the gatekeeper,” Mr Szatkowski says. He ascribes Poland’s rapid military build-up to “first of all, the geopolitical situation, but also, the experience of history.”

The painful legacy of Russian occupation can be felt everywhere here.

At a state-run care home in Warsaw, 98-year-old Wanda Traczyk-Stawska recalls the last time Russian forces invaded – in 1939, when a pact between Stalin and Hitler resulted in Poland being carved up between the USSR and Nazi Germany.

“In 1939 I was twelve years old. I remember my father was very concerned about [the Russians],” Wanda recalls, “We knew that Russia had attacked us, they took advantage of the fact that the Germans had exposed us.”

On a shelf is a photograph of Wanda as a fighter, brandishing a machine gun during the Warsaw Uprising of 1944, when the Polish underground fought the German Army amidst the ruins of the city. After pushing back the Germans in the dying days of World War Two, the Soviet Union installed a pro-Moscow regime in Poland, which ruled the country until 1989.

Currently, around 216,000 servicemen and women make up the Polish armed forces. The government says they intend to increase that to half a million, including reservists – which would give it the second-largest military in Nato after the United States.

I ask Wanda whether she thinks it’s a good thing that Poland is building up its military. “Of course, yes. Russia has this aggression written into its history. I’m not talking about people, but the authorities are always like that,” she sighs. “It is better to be a well-armed country than to wait for something to happen. Because I am a soldier who remembers that weapons are the most important thing.”

Eighty years since the end of World War Two, Poles are once again eyeing their neighbours nervously. In a warehouse in southern Poland, by popular demand, one company has constructed a mock-up of a bomb shelter.

“These shelters are designed primarily to protect against a nuclear bomb, but also against armed attacks,” says Janusz Janczy, the boss of ShelterPro, who shows me around the steel bunker, complete with bunk beds and a ventilation system. “People are building these shelters simply because they don’t know what to expect tomorrow.”

Janusz says demand for his shelters has soared since Donald Trump took office. “It used to be just a few phone calls a month. Now there are dozens a week,” he says, “My clients are most afraid of Russia. And they’re concerned that Nato wouldn’t come to defend Poland.”

But are Poles ready to defend the country if those fears become a reality? A recent poll found that only 10.7% of adults said they would join the army as volunteers in the event of war, and a third said they would flee.

On a sunny afternoon in Wroclaw, I ask Polish students whether they’d be ready to defend their country if attacked. Most say they wouldn’t. “The war is very close but feels quite far,” says medical student Marcel, “but if Russia attacked, I think I’d run.”

“I would probably be the first one trying to escape the country,” says another student, Szymon. “I just don’t really see anything worth dying for here.”

Australia’s 2025 election began with a false start.

Everyone was poised and ready to go when a cyclone blew the government’s preferred date – for April 12 – off course.

Instead, Albanese settled for a May 3 polling date with the firing gun finally fired in late March.

There have been announcements about health, vows to cut fuel tax and proposals from each side to fix the country’s housing crisis – but as the campaign dragged on, both leaders struggled to compete for Australia’s attention.

They had to contend with Donald Trump and his sweeping tariffs scheme for headlines, weave their campaigns around Easter, suspend them briefly to mark the Pope’s death, only to revive them ahead of a long weekend most Australians would not have spent thinking about politics.

“It has been hard to cut through… but the major parties have lost the trust of the voters which has amplified their problems of communications,” says John Warhurst, an Emeritus Professor at the Australian National University’s School of Politics.

“The government has been timid and the opposition has been shambolic.”

So now, after five weeks of campaigning, Australia’s 18 million citizens are facing a choice between Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and his rival Peter Dutton, both of whom may need to form the next government by securing the support of independent MPs or minor parties.

Here’s everything you need to know about Australia’s 2025 vote.

Australia has two major parties: the left-leaning Australian Labor Party and the conservative Liberal-National coalition.

The Labor Party’s Anthony Albanese who has been the prime minister since 2022, is running for re-election.

A stalwart of parliament for almost 30 years, he enjoyed a period of broad popularity after coming to power. However, in recent times he has come under pressure over his handling of divisive topics like housing, Indigenous affairs, antisemitism and Islamophobia.

Albanese is being challenged by Peter Dutton, who became head of the Liberal-National coalition after their 2022 defeat. He is contesting his first election as opposition leader.

Known as a staunch conservative, Dutton has years of experience in important ministerial portfolios – like defence and home affairs – but has been a controversial figure at times, particularly on social issues.

Australians do not get to vote for the PM candidates themselves as there is no separate leadership ballot. The leader of the party that receives the most seats in the House of Representatives becomes prime minister.

The cost of living is the biggest concern for many voters.

Since the 2022 election, inflation – which is now slowing – has pushed up the prices of everyday essentials such as food and utilities, leaving many households feeling stretched.

The Albanese government has implemented a string of policies that it says are aimed at providing relief, such as keeping the cost of medications down, and offering tax cuts, energy rebates and rental assistance to those eligible.

However, Australia has raised interest rates 12 times since Albanese was elected in May 2022 – something that is done independently of government but seen to reflect their economic management. That has put additional pressure on borrowers and those with mortgages.

Housing affordability will also be a key issue, with several Australian cities among the most expensive in the world for homebuyers.

Australia’s universal healthcare system, now struggling because of staff shortages and soaring costs, is another major concern for voters. Politicians across the spectrum admit there’s a crisis, with many Australians delaying or skipping care – and both parties have promised billions in additional funding to fix it.

There are also global issues voters will consider, including the US President Donald Trump’s tariffs, and his trade war with China.

Like many other nations, Australia has a close strategic alliance with the US while also maintaining a strong trading relationship with China. The country’s new government will find itself dealing with a very different – and much more unpredictable – world order.

Australia famously has a unique electoral system – and some quirky polling day traditions.

Voting is mandatory for all citizens over 18 and picking up a “democracy sausage” – a barbecued sausage typically served on bread and sold at polling booths – is an election day custom.

Australia uses a preferential voting system, where candidates are ranked in order of preference.

If no candidate wins more than 50% of the vote in the first tally, the votes from the least popular candidates are redistributed, and that process is repeated until someone secures a majority.

In races for the House of Representatives, voters are required to mark a preference down for every single candidate listed on the ballot in their area.

However, in Senate races, voters only need to mark down a designated number of preferences.

In this election, all 150 seats in the House of Representatives will be up for grabs, as well as 40 of the 76 seats in the Senate.

One party needs to win at least 76 seats in the House to form a majority government.

If it cannot do that, it must try to win support from minor parties or independent MPs.

Labor formed a majority government after winning the 2022 election, which delivered the biggest loss for the Liberal Party since its inception.

As it stands, Labor has 78 seats in the House of Representatives, while the coalition has 57, with minor parties and independents splitting the remainder.

But with one House seat abolished, Labor will be stripped of its majority in parliament if it loses just two seats.

In order to form a government in its own right, the coalition will need to win 19 seats, likely including many of those it lost to independent candidates during the 2022 vote.

In both state and federal elections, the vote share for minor parties and independents has been steadily increasing in Australia for decades.

That reached record levels in the 2022 federal election, with one in three Australians casting votes for candidates outside the two major parties.

Once polls close, counting begins right away and results are updated in real time on the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) website – in what is known as an unofficial preliminary counting.

Historically, Australians will know who forms government on election night based off this – and the result will usually be called by media commentators, election experts or even the candidates themselves.

Official results can take days or even weeks to come, as the AEC has to go through a rigorous counting process, counting approximately 18 million ballot papers by hand, including postal and overseas ballot papers.

The Duke of Sussex has told the BBC he “would love a reconciliation” with the Royal Family, in an emotional interview in which he said he was “devastated” at losing a legal challenge over his security in the UK.

Prince Harry said the King “won’t speak to me because of this security stuff”, but that he did not want to fight anymore and did “not know how much longer my father has”.

The prince spoke to BBC News in California after losing an appeal over the levels of security he and his family are entitled to while in the UK.

Buckingham Palace said: “All of these issues have been examined repeatedly and meticulously by the courts, with the same conclusion reached on each occasion.”

After Friday’s court ruling, the prince said: “I can’t see a world in which I would bring my wife and children back to the UK at this point.”

“There have been so many disagreements between myself and some of my family,” he added, but had now “forgiven” them.

“I would love reconciliation with my family. There’s no point continuing to fight any more, life is precious,” said Prince Harry, who said the dispute over his security had “always been the sticking point”.

The prince had wanted to overturn changes to his security that were introduced in 2020 as he stepped down as a working royal and moved to the United States.

Saying that he felt “let down”, he described his court defeat as a “good old fashioned establishment stitch up” and blamed the Royal Household for influencing the decision to reduce his security.

Asked whether he had asked the King to intervene in the dispute over security, Prince Harry said: “I never asked him to intervene – I asked him to step out of the way and let the experts do their jobs.”

The prince said his treatment during the process of deciding his security had “uncovered my worst fears”.

He said of the decision: “I’m devastated – not so much as devastated with the loss that I am about the people behind the decision, feeling as though this is okay. Is it a win for them?”

He continued: “I’m sure there are some people out there, probably most likely the people that wish me harm, [who] consider this a huge win.”

Prince Harry said the decision to remove his automatic security entitlement impacts him “every single day”, and has left him in a position where he can only safely return to the UK if invited by the Royal Family – as he would get sufficient security in those circumstances.

The prince said changes to his security status in 2020 had impacted not just him, but his wife and, later, his children too.

He went on to say: “Everybody knew that they were putting us at risk in 2020 and they hoped that me knowing that risk would force us to come back.

“But then when you realise that didn’t work, do you not want to keep us safe?

“Whether you’re the government, the Royal Household, whether you’re my dad, my family – despite all of our differences, do you not want to just ensure our safety?”

Asked whether he missed the UK, he added: “I love my country, I always have done, despite what some people in that country have done… and I think that it’s really quite sad that I won’t be able to show my children my homeland.”

Prince Harry said he would not be seeking a further legal challenge, saying Friday’s ruling had “proven that there was no way to win this through the courts”.

“I wish someone had told me that beforehand,” he said, adding that the ruling had been a “surprise”.

He continued: “This, at the heart of it, is a family dispute, and it makes me really, really sad that we’re sitting here today, five years later, where a decision that was made most likely, in fact I know, to keep us under the roof.”

Prince Harry spoke to the BBC shortly after losing his latest legal challenge against the UK government over the level of security he and his family are entitled to when visiting.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the prince’s case, which hinged on how an official committee made the decision to remove his eligibility for automatic, full-scale protection in line with what other senior royals receive.

On Friday, the court ruled that Prince Harry had made “powerful” arguments about the level of threat he and his family face, but said his “sense of grievance” did not “translate into a legal argument”.

His legal complaint centred around a committee called the Protection of Royalty and Public Figures (Ravec), which authorises security for senior royals on behalf of the Home Office, and was chaired at the time by Sir Richard Mottram.

Under the committee’s regulations, Prince Harry argued, his case should have been put before Ravec’s Risk Management Board (RMB), which would have assessed the threats to his and family’s security – but that did not happen.

On Friday, senior judges said the committee had diverged from policy when making its 2020 decision over the prince’s security, but concluded it had been “sensible” to do so because of the complexity of his circumstances.

Prince Harry said his “jaw hit the floor” when he found out a representative of the Royal Household sat on the Ravec committee, and claimed Friday’s ruling had proved its decision-making process was more influenced by the Royal Household than by legal constraints.

He claimed there had been “interference” by the Royal Household in the 2020 decision, which he said resulted in his status as the most at-risk royal being downgraded to the least at risk “overnight”.

“So one does question how that is even possible and also the motive behind that at the time,” he added.

Prince Harry called on UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and Home Secretary Yvette Cooper to intervene in his security case, and to overhaul how the Ravec committee operates.

In a statement released later on Friday, the prince said he would write to Cooper to “ask her to urgently examine the matter and review the Ravec process”.

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Germany’s Foreign Office has defended a decision to classify the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party as right-wing extremist, after sharp criticism from the White House.

US Vice-President JD Vance accused “bureaucrats” of rebuilding the Berlin Wall, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio slammed the designation as “tyranny in disguise”.

In an unusual move, the foreign office directly replied to Rubio on X, writing: “We have learnt from our history that right-wing extremism needs to be stopped.”

The intelligence agency that made the classification found AfD’s “prevailing understanding of people based on ethnicity and descent” goes against Germany’s “free democratic order”.

The AfD came second in federal elections in February, winning a record 152 seats in the 630-seat parliament with 20.8% of the vote.

The agency, Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz (BfV), had already classed the AfD as right-wing extremist in three eastern states where its popularity is highest. Now, that designation has been extended to the entire party.

The AfD “aims to exclude certain population groups from equal participation in society”, it said in a statement. The agency said specifically that the party did not consider citizens “from predominantly Muslim countries” as equal members of the German people.

Joint party leaders Alice Weidel and Tino Chrupalla said the decision was “clearly politically motivated” and a “severe blow to German democracy”.

Beatrix von Storch, the party’s deputy parliamentary leader, told the BBC’s Newshour programme that the designation was “the way an authoritarian state, a dictatorship, would treat their parties”.

• AfD classified as extreme-right by German intelligence

The new classification gives authorities greater powers to monitor the AfD using tactics like phone interception and undercover agents.

“That’s not democracy – it’s tyranny in disguise,” wrote Marco Rubio on X.

But the German Foreign Office hit back.

“This is democracy,” it wrote, directly replying to the politician’s X account.

The post said the decision had been made after a “thorough and independent investigation” and could be appealed.

“We have learnt from our history that right-wing extremism needs to be stopped,” the statement concluded – a reference to Hitler’s Nazi party and the Holocaust.

JD Vance, who met Weidel in Munich nine days before the election and used a speech to the Munich Security Conference to show support for the AfD, said that “bureaucrats” were trying to destroy the party.

“The West tore down the Berlin Wall together. And it has been rebuilt – not by the Soviets or the Russians, but by the German establishment,” he wrote on X.

The Berlin Wall, built in 1961, separated East and West Berlin for nearly 30 years during the Cold War.

The new designation has reignited calls to ban the AfD ahead of a vote next week in the parliament, or Bundestag, to confirm conservative leader Friedrich Merz as chancellor. He will be leading a coalition with the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD).

Lars Klingbeil, the SPD leader who is expected to become vice-chancellor and finance minister, said that while no hasty decision would be made, the government would consider banning the AfD.

“They want a different country, they want to destroy our democracy. And we must take that very seriously,” he told Bild newspaper.

Conservatives in Canada are trading blame for Monday night’s election loss, showing that Pierre Poilievre will need to heal divisions within the movement as he fights to stay on as leader.

As a clear Liberal win was emerging on election night, Conservative candidates and their supporters had one question: What the heck just happened?

The party had lost a remarkable 27-point lead in opinion polls and failed to win an election for the fourth time in a row.

And while it gained seats and earned almost 42% of the popular vote – its highest share since the party was founded in 2003 – its leader Poilievre was voted out of the seat he had held for the past 20 years.

“Nobody’s happy about that,” Shakir Chambers, a Conservative strategist and vice-president of Ontario-based consultancy firm the Oyster Group, told the BBC.

The party is now trying to work out how it will move forward.

At the top of the agenda will be finding a way for the Conservatives to perform their duties as the Official Opposition – the second-place party in Canada’s parliament whose job is to hold the sitting government to account – without their leader in the House.

Ahead of a caucus meeting next Tuesday to discuss this, Poilievre announced on Friday his plan to run in an Alberta constituency special election to win back a seat.

That special election will be triggered by the resignation of Conservative MP-elect Damien Kurek, who said he will voluntarily step down to let Poilievre back in after what he called “a remarkable national campaign”.

“An unstoppable movement has grown under his leadership, and I know we need Pierre fighting in the House of Commons,” Kurek said in a statement.

Unlike the US, federal politicians in Canada do not have to live in the city or province they run in. Poilievre grew up in Alberta, however, and will likely win handily as the constituency he is running in is a Conservative stronghold.

A big question is whether Poilievre still has the backing of his own party to stay on as leader. Mr Chambers said the answer, so far, is a resounding yes.

“Pierre has a lot of support in the caucus,” he said. “I don’t think there’s anybody that wants him removed, or that has super high ambitions that wants to replace him as leader.”

A number of high-profile Conservatives have already rallied behind him. One of them is Andrew Scheer, a current MP and former leader of the party, who said Poilievre should stay on to “ensure we finish the job next time”.

Others are casting blame on where they went wrong.

Jamil Jivani, who won his own constituency in a suburb of Toronto handily, felt that Ontario leader Doug Ford had betrayed the conservative movement and cost the party the election.

The federal and provincial Conservative parties are legally different entities, though they belong to the same ideological tent, and Ford is leader of Ontario’s Progressive Conservative Party.

He frequently made headlines during the election campaign for his get-tough attitude with Donald Trump and the US president’s trade war.

“He couldn’t stay out of our business,” Jivani told a CBC reporter.

Jivani, who in a past life attended Yale University with US Vice-President JD Vance, where the two became good friends, accused Ford of distracting from the federal Conservatives’ campaign and of “positioning himself as some political genius that we need to be taking cues from”.

But Mr Chambers, the Conservative strategist, said that Poilievre will also need to confront where the party fell short.

Poilievre, who is known for his combative political style, has struggled with being unlikeable among the general Canadian public.

He has also failed to shore up the support of popular Conservative leaders in some provinces, like Ontario’s Ford, who did not campaign for Poilievre despite his recent landslide victory in a provincial election earlier this year. Ford did, however, post a photo of him and Liberal leader Mark Carney having a coffee.

“Last time I checked, Pierre Poilievre never came out in our election,” Ford told reporters earlier this week. “Matter of fact, he or one of his lieutenants told every one of his members, ‘don’t you dare go out and help'”.

“Isn’t that ironic?”

Another Conservative premier, Tim Houston of Nova Scotia – who also did not campaign for Poilievre – said the federal party needs to do some “soul-searching” after its loss.

“I think the Conservative Party of Canada was very good at pushing people away, not so good at pulling people in,” Houston said.

Not every premier stood on the sidelines. Poilievre was endorsed by Alberta’s Danielle Smith and Saskatchewan’s Scott Moe, both western Conservatives.

Kory Teneycke, Ford’s campaign manager, who publicly criticised Poilievre’s campaign during the election, angering federal Conservatives, rejected the notion that Ford’s failure to endorse Poilievre had cost him the election.

He told the BBC that, to him, the bigger problem was Poilievre’s failure to unite Conservative voters in Canada.

“What constitutes a Conservative in different parts of the country can look quite different,” he said, adding that Poilievre’s populist rhetoric and aggressive style appealed to Conservatives in the west, but alienated those in the east.

“There was a lot of Trump mimicry in terms of how they presented the campaign,” Mr Teneycke said.

“Donald Trump is public enemy number one to most in Canada, and I don’t think it was coming across very well.”

He added he believes some of the “soul-searching” by Poilievre’s Conservatives will need to include a plan of how to build a coalition of the right in a country “as big and diverse as Canada”.

Asked by reporters what it would take to heal the rift, Ford answered: “All they have to do is make a phone call.”

Seven people have died in a collision between a tour bus and a truck near Yellowstone National Park.

Eight others were injured when a Chevy pickup truck and a van carrying 14 tourists crashed on a highway in eastern Idaho on Thursday. Police said an air ambulance flew some victims to hospital “due to the severity of the injuries”.

Both vehicles caught fire. “Tragically, six individuals in the van and the driver of the pickup died as a result of the crash,” Idaho State Police said. The identities or nationalities of the victims have not been revealed.

Police are still investigating the cause. The route where the crash took place leads into the park, which is now entering peak tourist season.

A photo from a passerby shows flames and billowing smoke near the crumpled front of the truck.

The witness who took the photo, local resident Roger Merrill, told the BBC’s US partner CBS News he was on his way home when he saw the wreck.

Both vehicles were on fire, he said, and bystanders were trying to care for the survivors on the side of the highway.

“It is a very dangerous highway because it leads to the main entrance of Yellowstone National Park,” he said. “It’s extremely busy.”

The road was closed for seven hours while emergency teams treated victims and cleared the crash site, about 16 miles (25km) from Yellowstone’s entrance.

Police said the local coroner’s office will release the names of the dead after family members have been notified.

Yellowstone, the US’s oldest national park, covers nearly 3,500 sq miles in three states: Idaho, Wyoming and Montana.

It draws an average of four million tourists every year, with the majority of visitors coming between May and September, according to the National Park Service.

Nigel Farage’s Reform UK has made big gains in English local elections, cementing it as a prime challenger to Britain’s traditional main parties.

It won 677 of around 1,600 seats contested on Thursday across a clutch of mainly Tory-held councils last contested in 2021.

Reform seized control of eight authorities from the Conservatives, including former strongholds Kent and Staffordshire.

The party has also won control of Doncaster, the only council Labour was defending, and Durham, where Labour was previously the largest party.

Reform also displaced Labour in Runcorn and Helsby, where it won a tightly-fought Westminster by-election to make Sarah Pochin its fifth MP.

As well as winning control of its first-ever councils, Reform has also won its first mayoral contests in the newly-created combined authorities of Greater Lincolnshire, and Hull and East Yorkshire.

A jubilant Farage said the results meant Reform had overtaken the Tories as the main opposition party to Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour government.

The elections in 23 councils, across mainly rural and suburban areas of England, marked the first major electoral test since Labour’s landslide general election victory last year.

The Tories, who were defending the most seats, had been braced for big losses since the councils up for re-election were last contested in 2021, when the party was riding high under Boris Johnson during the Covid vaccine rollout.

But their results have been even worse than expected, with the party losing over 676 seats and control of all the 16 authorities it was defending.

It captured the Cambridgeshire & Peterborough mayoralty from Labour – a silver lining for the party in an otherwise dismal set of results.

Reacting to the results in the Times on Saturday, Sir Keir said simply: “I get it”.

The prime minister said he shared in the “sharp edge of fury” felt by voters leaning away from the major parties, arguing that it spurs him on to “go further and faster” in delivering Labour’s promised changes to public services, immigration and cost of living pressures.

• Live: Follow latest on local elections
• Who won the local election in my area?
• Sir John Curtice: Reform challenging traditional party dominance
• Henry Zeffman: Seven things we learnt from the elections

Tory leader Kemi Badenoch acknowledged that her party was facing a “long journey” to rebuild after its long spell in government, adding that “protest is in the air” in a “very competitive political environment”.

Writing for the Telegraph, she acknowledged the results had been a “bloodbath” for her party, but argued it had been “making progress” under her leadership, including on party unity and holding Labour ministers to account.

Labour, which was defending far fewer seats this year, was down by 186 seats.

It held a trio of mayoralties in Doncaster, North Tyneside and the West of England, but saw its share of the vote significantly dented by Reform in all of them.

Sir Keir said the results showed the need for his party to go “further and faster” to deliver on voters’ priorities in government, adding: “I get it.”

Lib Dem leader Sir Ed Davey said the party had supplanted the Conservatives as the “party of Middle England” after gaining 163 seats.

The party seized Shropshire from the Tories, and gained control of Oxfordshire and Cambridgeshire, two county councils where previously no party was in overall control.

They have also become the biggest party in Hertfordshire and Wiltshire, as well as in Gloucestershire and Devon, where they narrowly fell short of overall majorities.

The Greens gained over 40 seats, but will have been disappointed not to snatch the West of England mayoral contest from Labour, where they came a narrow third to Reform.

The BBC is estimating that, if elections had taken place across Britain on Thursday, the Conservatives would have slumped to just 15% of the national vote, its worst-ever share of such a projection, behind the Liberal Democrats on 17%.

Labour would have won 20% of the vote, according to the projection, equalling its lowest previous recorded performance in 2009.

It is the first time the combined projected share of the vote for the Conservatives and Labour has fallen below 50%, underlining the continuing fragmentation of the British political landscape.

Farage has made gaining a foothold in town halls a key staging post ahead of the next UK general election, which is expected in 2029.

Before Thursday’s elections it only had around 100 councillors, mainly as a result of defections from other parties.

However, the results will also increase scrutiny of how his party performs in office and how it intends to wield its newly-acquired local powers.

During the campaign, both the Reform UK and Tory leaders were repeatedly questioned during media interviews about how their local councillors might co-operate with each other after the elections.

Farage ruled out striking formal coalitions with other parties to share power, but left the door open to more informal forms of co-operation, including the Conservatives.

That position could soon be put to the test in councils including Leicestershire and Worcestershire, where it fell short of a majority despite becoming the largest party.

Speaking to supporters on Friday, Farage said his party would seek to “reduce excessive expenditure” in local government, and suggested his councillors would scale back local diversity and climate policies.

He added his party would also look to push back on asylum seekers being housed in hotels, saying he was opposed to the government “plonking scores of young men” in counties where his party now has control.

In his first news conference since the federal election, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney laid out his priorities, including how he will approach upcoming talks with US President Donald Trump.

His election campaign focused on standing up to Trump’s tariff plans and threats to make Canada the 51st US state, which Carney has said will “never ever” happen.

The Liberals won 168 seats out of 343 in Canada’s House of Commons in Monday’s election, enough to form a minority government but falling short of the 172 necessary for a majority.

Carney’s new cabinet will be sworn in the week of 12 May.

Here are three things we learned from Carney’s comments:

Off the top, Carney announced an upcoming visit from King Charles III and Queen Camilla, who will visit Canada later this month.

“This is a historic honour that matches the weight of our times,” he told reporters gathered in Ottawa.

Carney says he had invited the King to formally open Canada’s 45th Parliament on 27 May.

That request is certainly strategic.

Carney said the King’s visit “clearly underscores the sovereignty of our country” – a nod to Trump’s 51st state remarks.

Trump also has a well-known admiration for the Royal family. In February, UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer used his trip to the White House to present Trump with a letter from King Charles offering to host a second state visit.

The King is Canada’s head of state and is represented in Canada by Governor General Mary Simon.

After an election, the new parliamentary session is usually opened by the governor general, who reads the Speech from the Throne on behalf of the prime minister. The speech, read in Canada’s Senate, sets out the government’s agenda.

While it is not unprecedented for the Throne speech to be read by the head of state, the last time this happened was in October 1977 when Queen Elizabeth II read the speech for the second time. The first was in 1957.

Carney will visit the White House on Tuesday, barely a week after the federal election.

His first official visit to the White House as prime minister comes amid frayed ties between the close allies in the wake of Trump’s threatened and imposed tariffs, as well as the president’s repeated comments about making Canada the 51st US state.

Carney said there are two sets of issues to discuss: the immediate tariffs and the broader relationship.

• Trump disliked Trudeau – why Carney may fare better
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“My government will fight to get the best deal for Canada,” Carney said, making it clear there would be no rush to secure an agreement.

He added that the high-level dialogue indicates seriousness of the conversation between the leaders.

He said he expects “difficult but constructive” discussions with the president.

He also said he would strengthen relationship with “reliable” trading partners, pointing to recent conversations he has had with world leaders in Europe and Asia.

Canada’s election highlighted divisions within Canada, along regional, demographic and political lines.

On Friday, Carney said Canada must be united in this “once in a lifetime crisis”.

“It’s time to come together put on our Team Canada sweaters and win big,” he said.

He offered olive branches both to Canadians who did not vote for his Liberal Party and to his political rivals.

• Why young voters flocked to Canada’s Conservatives

While Canadians voted for a robust response to Trump, they also sent “a clear message that their cost of living must come down and their communities need to be safe”, Carney said.

“As prime minister I’ve heard these messages loud and clear and I will act on them with focus and determination.”

He said he is committed to working with others, including those across the aisle.

Under leader Pierre Poilievre, the Conservative campaign focused heavily on cost of living issues and crime.

The Conservatives came in second, forming Official Opposition but Poilievre lost his own Ottawa-area seat.

Carney said he is open to calling a special election that would allow Poilievre to seek another seat if that is the path the Conservatives wanted to take.

“No games,” he said.

On Friday, an MP-elect in Alberta announced he would resign his safe Conservative seat to allow Poilievre to run.

Listen to Katy read this article

In Western Sydney, an audience of Stetson-wearing Australians are sitting in their fold-up camping chairs, swigging beers and eating a spiralled fried potato on a skewer known as a ‘chip on a stick’.

People here are enjoying bull rides, barrel racing and bucking broncos. It feels like a slice of Americana in New South Wales perhaps – but that would miss the point that here, rodeo has become very much an outback Australian tradition in its own right.

In recent months, politics here in Australia could be compared to watching a rodeo. Between conflict in Europe, the Middle East and more recently US President Donald Trump and his threat of global trade wars, every day has brought with it a sharp jolt that changes the dynamics of the campaign trail. Politicians, like these cowboys, have been thrown off course despite their best efforts.

“Tariffs are great,” exclaims rodeo fan Guy Algozzino, who’s dressed in a cowboy hat, a waistcoat and a Western-style bolo tie with an engraved image of a cowboy riding a bull. “We should have had tariff protection many years ago – it looks bad now [but] America’s fantastic … Trump’s the best thing America ever had.”

Other spectators are more nuanced.

“It’s going nuts,” admits Jared Harris, when asked about world politics. “I’m just sitting back and watching. It’s a bit like a show. It’s quite interesting to watch, it’s entertaining. It probably affects me more than I realise, but I just choose to ignore it.”

Australia didn’t worry too much about President Trump’s second coming when he won power back in November. The country had already witnessed a Trump presidency – and weathered it. Australia felt far removed from the shores of America.

But Trump’s second term is panning out very differently. Tariffs – imposed on ally and adversary alike – have travelled the whole world.

Trump doesn’t care about making enemies. But Australia does. People here pride themselves on ‘mateship’ – a value that embodies friendship and loyalty – and that extends to politics too.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said as much when Trump initially announced tariffs without exemptions. This was not “the act of a friend,” said Albanese, while he also committed to not responding in kind.

All of this comes as the country heads to a federal election on 3 May. Candidates would rather focus on domestic issues they can control: cost-of-living, housing and healthcare. Instead, they are forced to grapple with a question that goes right to the heart of Australia’s role in the world: how to deal with a US president as unpredictable as Trump?

In the final few days of campaigning before up to 18 million Australians go to the polls, the Labor Party’s Albanese, who entered power three years ago after promising to invest in social services and tackle climate change, went on a speedy tour of six states. That effort appears to be paying off, with the latest YouGov poll putting Labor on 54 per cent of the two-party vote, versus 47 per cent for the opposition Coalition (an alliance of the Liberals and Nationals). This is a modest turnaround from the beginning of the year, when Labor was consistently lagging the Coalition in polls.

“It’s not the campaign either party thought they would be having,” says Amy Remeikis, chief political analyst at the Australia Institute think tank. “The looming figure of Trump is overshadowing the domestic campaign but also forcing Australia’s leaders to do something they haven’t had to do in a long time – examine Australia’s links to the US.”

The US-Australia relationship has perhaps been taken for granted in these parts. Australia likes the fact the US has long been a dominant military force in the Pacific. Australia relies on its funding and benefits from being part of alliances like Aukus – the far-reaching defence pact between Australia, the UK and the US, designed to counter China – and the Anglo-intelligence alliance Five Eyes.

The rise of China has made Australia even more conscious about having the US on its side. Beijing has expanded its military presence in the Pacific, launching various military exercises in recent years – including one live-fire drill in February that saw Chinese naval vessels just 340 nautical miles from the New South Wales coast. Australia recently announced efforts to expand its navy and now hosts four US military bases – decisions fuelled in part by the rise of China.

It’s all placed extra value on Canberra’s alliance with Washington DC – one that Trump may be throwing into doubt.

Back in February, Trump held a meeting with the UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer. He was asked whether they would be discussing Aukus.

“What does that mean?” Trump asked the reporter. After being given an explanation of Aukus, he continued. “We’ll be discussing that … we’ve had a very good relationship with Australia.”

Australia collectively held its breath, then let it out in a big sigh of relief.

A blip maybe – but an indication perhaps of how little Trump thinks about Australia right now. However, Australia, like much of the world, is thinking about the US.

“We don’t have anywhere else to turn,” says David Andrews, senior policy advisor at the National Security College, which is part of the Australian National University in Canberra. “We are physically isolated from everyone. As long as we’ve had European settlement here, we’ve always been concerned about the distance [and] isolation, which is why we’ve always maintained such a strong relationship with first Britain and then the US as the dominant maritime power.”

While only 5% of Australia’s exports go to the US (China is by far Australia’s biggest trading partner), the US still dominates the conversation here.

“This isn’t a time to end alliances,” says Justin Bassi, director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, a think tank. “That would be cutting off our nose to spite our face.”

And, perhaps counter to the majority view here, Bassi thinks that Australia should support Trump’s moves.

“We should continue to make it clear that any measures the US takes against Australia are unjustified but we should welcome and support American measures to counter Beijing’s malign actions – or for that matter Russia,” he says. “Not to keep Trump happy but because it is in Australia’s interests to constrain the adversary that is undermining our strategic interests.”

A poll published by the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper last month found that 60% of Australians felt Trump’s victory was bad for Australia. That was up from last November when it was just 40%.

And a Lowy Institute poll published two weeks later showed almost two in three Australians held ‘not very much’ or no trust ‘at all’ in the US to act responsibly.

Big questions on transnational alliances are not part of normal campaigning. But when Albanese and opposition leader Peter Dutton faced each other in their first televised debate, the first question asked by the audience was one on Trump.

Dutton has long stressed that he would be the politician best suited to dealing with the US President. He often cites his experience as a cabinet minister during tariff negotiations in Trump’s first term. But that strategy doesn’t always serve him well.

“He went into the election telling people he and Trump were similar enough that they would get on better, that he was the sort of personality Trump liked,” says Remeikis. “He’s not repeating that now because people don’t want someone to get on with Trump – they want someone who will stand up to him.”

Dutton has had to do some back-pedalling on comments he made earlier in the year. Back in February, after Trump said he had plans to eject Palestinians from Gaza, Dutton called the US president “a deal-maker … a big thinker.”

And he has come in for some criticism amid accusations of copying the US president. He’s talked about cutting public sector jobs, for example. And his Liberal party appointed Jacinta Nampijinpa Price as shadow minister for government efficiency, not too dissimilar to the Doge. But when Senator Price recently started talking about wanting to ‘Make Australia Great Again’ on the campaign trail, Dutton avoided questions over the comments.

Albanese of course has to tread a careful line too. In a world that’s being turned upside down, he’s trying to reassure people he’s a safe pair of hands; that those alliances remain.

That may turn out to be in his favour.

Indeed, some analysts say that Trump’s conduct may be helping Albanese, with voters rushing to support the incumbent during a time of perceived crisis. Just a few months ago, Labor’s re-election was thought unlikely as it consistently polled behind the Coalition. But the final YouGov polling model of the election, published a few days ago, predicted that Labor will win 84 of the 150 seats in the House of Representatives – an increased majority.

For Professor Gordon Flake, CEO at Perth USAsia Centre, a think tank, it paints a stark parallel with this week’s election result in Canada – in which the Liberal Party won re-election by riding a backlash of anti-Trump sentiment.

“What we have seen in Canada has been a dramatic shift back towards the incumbent government and that is a rallying around the flag based on attacks on that country,” he says.

“The attacks on Australia haven’t been as severe so it’s not the same degree, but at the same time you’re also seeing a rallying around the current Labor government. Six months ago you thought their re-election would be unlikely; today on the cusp of the election here in Australia, it seems more likely than not – and one of the important factors in that has been developments in Washington DC. “

But whoever wins, they will have a big job on their hands to navigate Australia’s future with its allies.

“We have to make do with the hand we’ve been dealt,” says Andrews. “I expect that we are going to have to be much more ruthlessly self-interested and that’s not comfortable because our foreign policy has generally been based around cooperation, collaboration and multilateralism – so that shared sense of threat that middle powers have of working together to maximise their output.”

Back at the rodeo, the sun’s gone down, the cheerleaders are out and the audience gets ready to watch bucking broncos – the riders shortly afterwards holding on to their steer for as long as possible before being violently thrown to the ground.

Flying above the arena are the flags of Canada and the US, alongside Australia, New Zealand and Brazil. There may not be much of a team spirit among allies right now – but voters here will be keen to see how their next leader rides out the storm.

Follow the twists and turns of Trump’s second term with North America correspondent Anthony Zurcher’s weekly US Politics Unspun newsletter. Readers in the UK can sign up here. Those outside the UK can sign up here.

Buying or renting a home has become unaffordable for the average Australian, driven by a perfect storm of astronomical house prices, relentless rental increases and a lack of social housing.

With less than a month until the federal election, housing remains among the top issues for voters, and the country’s two major parties – the Labor Party and the Liberal-National Coalition – have both pledged to tackle the crisis in a range of ways.

Australians are already struggling under cost-of-living pressures and bracing for the effects of Donald Trump’s global tariff war. And it remains to be seen whether either party will sway voters with their promise of restoring the Australian dream.

Simply put, Australia has not been building enough homes to meet the demands of its rapidly growing population, creating a scarcity that makes any available home more expensive to buy or rent.

Compounding the issue are Australia’s restrictive planning laws, which prevent homes being built where most people want to live, such as in major cities.

Red tape means that popular metropolitan areas like Melbourne and Sydney are far less dense than comparably sized cities around the world.

The steady decline of public housing and ballooning waitlists have made matters worse, tipping people into homelessness or overcrowded living conditions.

Climate change has also made many areas increasingly unliveable, with natural disasters such as bushfires and severe storms destroying large swathes of properties.

Meanwhile, decades of government policies have commercialised property ownership. So the ideal of owning a home, once seen as a right in Australia, has turned into an investment opportunity.

In short: it depends where you live.

Sydney is currently the second least affordable city in the world to buy a property, according to a 2023 Demographia International Housing Affordability survey.

The latest data from property analytics company CoreLogic shows the average Sydney home costs almost A$1.2m (£570,294, $742,026).

Across the nation’s capital cities, the combined average house price sits at just over A$900,000.

House prices in Australia overall have also jumped 39.1% in the last five years – and wages have failed to keep up.

It now takes the average prospective homeowner around 10 years to save the 20% deposit usually required to buy an average home, according to a 2024 State of the Housing System report.

The rental market has provided little relief, with rents increasing by 36.1% nationally since the onset of Covid – an equivalent rise of A$171 per week.

Sydney topped the charts with a median weekly rent of A$773, according to CoreLogic’s latest rental review. Perth came in second with average rents at A$695 per week, followed by Canberra at A$667 per week.

Immigration and foreign property purchases are often cited as causes for Australia’s housing crisis. But experts say that they are not significant contributors statistically.

Many people who move to Australia are temporary migrants, such as international students who live in dedicated student accommodation rather than entering the housing market, according to Michael Fotheringham, head of the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute.

“The impact [of migrants] on the housing market is not as profound as some commentators have suggested,” Mr Fotheringham tells the BBC.

The federal government also recently sought to crack down on foreign homebuyers, by tripling fees.

However that is “a very small issue” with not much meaningful impact on housing strain, says Brendan Coates, from the Grattan Institute public policy think tank.

The latest data released by the Australian Taxation Office supports this, with homes purchased by foreign buyers in 2022-23 representing less than one percent of all sales.

“It’s already very difficult for foreigners to purchase homes under existing foreign investment rules. They are subject to a wide range of taxes, particularly in some states,” Mr Coates explains.

Labor and the Coalition have both promised to invest in building more homes – with Labor offering 1.2 million by 2029, and the Coalition vowing to unlock 500,000.

In their respective campaign launches, both parties promote housing initiatives aimed at first homebuyers.

Labor has pledged to expand an existing shared-equity scheme to allow all first homebuyers to purchase homes with a 5% deposit, an ease on the 20% deposit typically needed.

Albanese also promised 100,000 of the new homes his government creates will only be available to first homebuyers, in addition to building more social housing and introducing subsidies to help low-to-moderate-income earners.

The Coalition, if elected, will allow first-time buyers to use up to $50,000 from their superannuation retirement savings to fund a house purchase. They will make mortgage payments partially tax free for up to five years for all first homebuyers with newly built properties.

Central to the Coalition’s housing affordability policy is cutting migration, reducing the number of international students and implementing a two-year ban on foreign investment in existing properties.

Additionally, they have promised a A$5bn boost to infrastructure to support local councils by paying for water, power and sewerage at housing development sites.

The Greens’ policies, meanwhile, have focused on alleviating pressures on renters by calling for national rent freezes and caps.

They have also said that in the event of a minority government, they will be pushing to reform tax incentives for investors.

In short, experts say that while both Labor and the Coalition’s policies are steps in the right direction, neither are sufficient to solve the housing problem.

“A combination of both parties’ platforms would be better than what we’re seeing from either side individually,” Mr Coates tells the BBC.

A 2025 State of the Land report by the Urban Development Institute of Australia says the federal government will fail to meet its target of 1.2 million new homes by 2029 – falling short by almost 400,000.

The Coalition’s focus on reducing immigration, meanwhile, will only make housing marginally cheaper while making Australia poorer in the long-term, according to Mr Coates.

The cuts to migration will mean fewer skilled migrants, he explains, and the loss of revenue from those migrants will result in higher taxes for Australians.

Decades of underinvestment in social housing also means demand in that area is massively outstripping supply – which at 4% of housing stock is significantly lower than many other countries, according to Mr Fotheringham.

There’s also concern about grants for first homebuyers, which drive prices up further.

While commending the fact that these issues are finally being treated seriously, Mr Fotheringham believes it will take years to drag Australia out of a housing crisis that has been building for decades.

“We’ve been sleepwalking into this as a nation for quite some time,” he says. “[Now] the nation is paying attention, the political class is paying attention.”

From an office perched on the scalloped edge of the continent, Victoria Bradley jokes that she has the most beautiful doctor’s practice in Australia.

Outside her window, farmland rolls into rocky coastline, hemming a glasslike bay striped with turquoise and populated by showboating dolphins.

Home to about 3,000 people, a few shops, two roundabouts and a tiny hospital, Streaky Bay is an idyllic beach town.

For Dr Bradley, though, it is anything but. The area’s sole, permanent doctor, she spent years essentially on call 24/7.

Running the hospital and the general practitioner (GP) clinic, life was a never-ending game of catch up. She’d do rounds at the wards before, after and in between regular appointments. Even on good days, lunch breaks were often a pipe dream. On bad days, a hospital emergency would blow up her already punishing schedule.

Burnt out, two years ago she quit – and the thread holding together the remnants of the town’s healthcare system snapped.

Streaky Bay is at the forefront of a national crisis: inadequate government funding is exacerbating a shortage of critical healthcare workers like Dr Bradley; wait times are ballooning; doctors are beginning to write their own rules on fees, and costs to patients are skyrocketing.

A once-revered universal healthcare system is crumbling at every level, sometimes barely getting by on the sheer willpower of doctors and local communities.

As a result, more and more Australians, regardless of where they live, are delaying or going without the care they need.

Health has become a defining issue for voters ahead of the nation’s election on 3 May, with both of Australia’s major parties promising billions of dollars in additional funding.

But experts say the solutions being offered up are band-aid fixes, while what is needed are sweeping changes to the way the system is funded – reform for which there has so far been a lack of political will.

Australians tell the BBC the country is at a crossroads, and needs to decide if universal healthcare is worth saving.

Healthcare was the last thing on Renee Elliott’s mind when she moved to Streaky Bay – until the 40-year-old found a cancerous lump in her breast in 2019, and another one four years later.

Seeing a local GP was the least of her problems. With the expertise and treatment she needed only available in Adelaide, about 500km away, Mrs Elliott has spent hundreds of hours and tens of thousands of dollars accessing life-saving care, all while raising three boys and running a business.

Though she has since clawed back a chunk of the cost through government schemes, it made an already harrowing time that much more draining: financially, emotionally and physically.

“You’re trying to get better… but having to juggle all that as well. It was very tricky.”

When Australia’s modern health system was born four decades ago – underpinned by a public insurance scheme called Medicare – it was supposed to guarantee affordable and accessible high-quality care to people like Mrs Elliott as “a basic right”.

Health funding here is complex and shared between states and federal governments. But the scheme essentially meant Australians could present their bright green Medicare member card at a doctor’s office or hospital, and Canberra would be sent a bill. It paid through rebates funded by taxes.

Patients would either receive “bulk billed” – completely free – care, mostly through the emerging public system, or heavily subsidised treatment through a private healthcare sector offering more benefits and choice to those who wanted them.

Medicare became a national treasure almost instantly. It was hoped this set up would combine the best parts of the UK’s National Health Service and the best of the United States’ system.

Fast forward 40 years and many in the industry say we’re on track to end up with the worst of both.

There is no denying that healthcare in Australia is still miles ahead of much of the world, particularly when it comes to emergency care.

But the core of the crisis and key to this election is GP services, or primary care, largely offered by private clinics. There has historically been little need for public ones, with most GPs choosing to accept Medicare rebates as full payment.

That is increasingly uncommon though, with doctors saying those allowances haven’t kept up with the true cost of delivering care. At the same time, staff shortages, which persist despite efforts to recruit from overseas, create a scarcity that only drives up prices further.

According to government data, about 30% of patients must now pay a “gap fee” for a regular doctor’s appointment – on average A$40 (£19.25; $25.55) out of pocket.

But experts suspect the true figure is higher: it’s skewed by seniors and children, who tend to visit doctors more often and still enjoy mostly bulk-billed appointments. Plus there’s a growing cohort of patients not captured by statistics, who simply don’t go to the doctor because of escalating fees.

Brisbane electrician Callum Bailey is one of them.

“Mum or my partner will pester and pester and pester… [but] I’m such a big ‘I’ll just suffer in silence’ person because it’s very expensive.”

And every dollar counts right now, the 25-year-old says: “At my age, I probably should be in my prime looking for housing… [but] even grocery shopping is nuts.

“[I] just can’t keep up.”

This is a tale James Gillespie kept hearing.

So his startup Cleanbill began asking the question: if the average Australian adult walked into a GP clinic, could they get a free, standard appointment?

This year, they called almost all of the nation’s estimated 7,000 GP clinics – only a fifth of them would bulk bill a new adult patient. In the entire state of Tasmania, for example, they couldn’t find a single one.

The results resonate with many Australians, he says: “It really brought it home to them that, ‘Okay, it’s not just us. This is happening nationwide’.”

And that’s just primary care.

Public specialists are so rare and so overwhelmed – with wait times often far beyond safe levels – that most patients are funnelled toward exorbitantly expensive private care. The same goes for a lot of non-emergency hospital treatments or dental work.

There are currently no caps on how much private specialists, dentists or hospitals can charge and neither private health insurance nor slim Medicare rebates reliably offer substantial relief.

The BBC spoke to people across the country who say the increasing cost of healthcare had left them relying on charities for food, avoiding dental care for almost a decade, or emptying their retirement savings to fund treatment.

Others are borrowing from their parents, taking out pay-day loans to buy medication, remortgaging their houses, or selling their possessions.

Kimberley Grima regularly lies awake at night, calculating which of her three children – who, like her, all have chronic illnesses – can see their specialists. Her own overdue health checks and tests are barely an afterthought.

“They’re decisions that you really don’t want to have to make,” the Aboriginal woman from New South Wales tells the BBC.

“But when push comes to shove and you haven’t got the money… you’ve got no other option. It’s heart-breaking.”

Another woman tells the BBC that had she been able to afford timely appointments, her multiple sclerosis, a degenerative neurological disease, would have been identified, and slowed, quicker.

“I was so disabled by the time I got a diagnosis,” she says.

The people missing out tend to be the ones who need it the most, experts say.

“We have much more care in healthier, wealthier parts of Australia than in poorer, sicker parts of Australia,” Peter Breadon, from the Grattan Institute think tank says.

All of this creates a vicious cycle which feeds even more pressure back into an overwhelmed system, while entrenching disadvantage and fuelling distrust.

Every single one of those issues is more acute in the regions.

Streaky Bay has long farewelled the concept of affordable healthcare, fighting instead to preserve access to any at all.

It’s why Dr Bradley lasted only three months after quitting before “guilt” drove her back to the practice.

“There’s a connection that goes beyond just being the GP… You are part of the community.

“I felt that I’d let [them] down. Which was why I couldn’t just let go.”

She came back to a far more sustainable three-day week in the GP clinic, with Streaky Bay forced to wage a bidding war with other desperate regions for pricey, fly-in-fly-out doctors to fill in the gaps.

It’s yet another line on the tab for a town which has already invested so much of its own money into propping up a healthcare system supposed to be funded by state and private investment.

“We don’t want a gold service, but what we want is an equitable service,” says Penny Williams, who helps run the community body which owns the GP practice.

When the clinic was on the verge of closure, the town desperately rallied to buy it. When it was struggling again, the local council diverted funding from other areas to top up its coffers. And even still most standard patients – unless they are seniors or children – fork out about A$50 per appointment.

It means locals are paying for their care three times over, Ms Williams says: through their Medicare taxes, council rates, and then out-of-pocket gap fees.

“No-one would say this is the Australia that we want, surely,” Elizabeth Deveny, from the Consumers Health Forum of Australia, tells the BBC.

Like many wealthy countries, the nation is struggling to cope with a growing population which is, on average, getting older and sicker.

There’s a small but increasing cohort which says it is time to let go of the notion of universal healthcare, as we’ve known it.

Many doctors, a handful of economists, and some conservative politicians have sought to redefine Medicare as a “safety net” for the nation’s most vulnerable rather than as a scheme for all.

Health economist Yuting Zhang argues free healthcare and universal healthcare are different things.

The taxes the government collects for Medicare are already nowhere near enough to support the system, she says, and the country either needs to have some tough conversations about how it will find additional funds, or accept reasonable fees for those who can afford them.

“There’s always a trade-off… You have limited resources, you have to think about how to use them effectively and efficiently.”

The original promise of Medicare has been “undermined by decades of neglect”, the Australian Medical Association’s Danielle McMullen says, and most Australians now accept they need to contribute to their own care.

She says freezes to Medicare rebates – which were overseen by both parties between 2013 and 2017 and meant the payments didn’t even keep up with inflation – were the last straw. Since then, many doctors have been dipping into their own pockets to help those in need.

Both the Labor Party and the Liberal-National coalition accept there is a crisis, but blame each other for it.

Opposition leader Peter Dutton says his government will invest A$9bn in health, including funds for extra subsidised mental health appointments and for regional universities training key workers.

“Health has become another victim of Labor’s cost of living crisis… we know it has literally never been harder or more expensive to see a GP than it is right now,” health spokesperson Anne Ruston told the BBC in a statement.

On the other side, Albanese – whipping out his Medicare card almost daily – has sought to remind voters that Labor created the beloved system, while pointing out the Coalition’s previously mixed support of the universal scheme and the spending cuts Dutton proposed as Health Minister a decade ago.

“At this election, this little card here, your Medicare card, is what is at stake,” Albanese has said.

His government has started fixing things already, he argues, and has pledged an extra A$8.5bn for training more GPs, building additional public clinics, and subsidising more medicines.

But the headline of their rescue packages is an increase to Medicare rebates and bigger bonuses for doctors who bulk bill.

Proposed by Labor, then matched by the Coalition, the changes will make it possible for 9 out of 10 Australians to see a GP for free, the parties claim.

One Tasmanian doctor tells the BBC it is just a “good election sound bite”. He and many other clinicians say the extra money is still not enough, particularly for the longer consults more and more patients are seeking for complex issues.

Labor has little patience for those criticisms, citing research which they claim shows their proposal will leave the bulk of doctors better off and accusing them of wanting investment “without strings attached”.

But many of the patients the BBC spoke to are sceptical either parties’ proposals will make a huge difference.

There’s far more they need to be doing, they say, rattling off a wish list: more work on training and retaining rural doctors; effective regulation of private fees and more investment in public specialist clinics; universal bulk billing of children for all medical and dental expenses; more funding for allied health and prevention.

Experts like Mr Breadon say, above all else, the way Medicare pays clinicians needs to be overhauled to keep healthcare access genuinely universal.

That is, the government needs to stop paying doctors a set amount per appointment, and give them a budget based on how large and sick the populations they serve are – that is something several recent reviews have said.

And the longer governments wait to invest in these reforms, the more they’re going to cost.

“The stars may be aligning now… It is time for these changes, and delaying them would be really dangerous,” Mr Breadon says.

In Streaky Bay though, locals like Ms Williams wonder if it’s too late. Things are already dangerous here.

“Maybe that’s the cynic in me,” she says, shaking her head.

“The definition of universal is everyone gets the same, but we know that’s not true already.”

After weeks of campaigning, Australia’s 2025 federal election is here – and its looking to be a tight race between the incumbent Anthony Albanese and opposition leader Peter Dutton.

If you’re planning on staying up late to watch the results roll in tonight, here’s a quick look at what you need to know.

The two main candidates for the prime minister’s seat are the current premier Anthony Albanese and his opposition rival Peter Dutton.

Albanese, who heads the Labor party, enjoyed a period of broad popularity after coming to power but in recent years has come under pressure over his handling of divisive topics like housing, Indigenous affairs and both antisemitism and Islamophobia.

Dutton, who is head of the Liberal-National coalition, is known as a staunch conservative and has experience holding important ministerial portfolios, like defence and home affairs. However, he has been a controversial figure at times, particularly on social issues.

There are also the left-leaning Greens, Australia’s third largest political party, as well as a wave of “Teal candidates” – independent candidates who have been running on a strong climate platform.

Wherever you are in Australia, polls close at 18:00 – but the country’s three different time zones means there isn’t one standard time where all polls shut.

The eastern states of Australia – New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland which follow Australian Eastern Standard Time – will be among the first places to close at 18:00 AET, or 08:00 GMT.

Next will come South Australia, as well as the Northern Territory and the Australian Capital Territory, followed by the state of Western Australia.

The last polling booths- in the far flung Australian territory of the Cocos (Keeling) Islands – will close by 20:00 AET, or 10:00 GMT.

Unlike most countries including the US and UK, exit polls aren’t big in Australia, mostly because early voting – which opens two weeks before the election – is common, and because polling stations across the country close at different times.

But counting in each state begins straight after polls close. Results are updated in real time on the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) website – in what is known as an unofficial preliminary count, with Australians typically getting an unofficial result the same night.

The AEC also provides what’s known as an “indicative count”, which media commentators, election experts and sometimes even the parties and candidates themselves then base their calls on.

This sees counting officers conduct what is called a two-candidate-preferred count between the two leading candidates in each electoral district. This gives citizens a quick indication of who could form the government.

Australian pollsters also have a good track record of picking political winners, with a 96% success rate between 2007 and 2016, according to a report by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). The exception was in 2019, when polls showed Labor to be ahead – but the election was won by then Coalition prime minister Scott Morrison.

It is usually days or weeks before an official result is released by the AEC as they have to go through a rigorous counting process, tallying approximately 18 million ballot papers by hand, including postal and overseas ballot papers.

But citizens usually look to media outlets and election experts – like Australia’s national broadcaster ABC – to call the unofficial results on election night.

In the last election in 2022, the ABC announced the results at 9:30pm – just three and a half hours after polls closed on the east coast.

And as the night goes on, parties also come out to declare their win – or loss – so it might play out in the form of a victory speech, or in one conceding defeat.

There is no one specific time when the results are called, but 2022 gives a sense of how quickly we might be able see a winner. However if it proves to be a tight race, this process could take quite a while longer.

In the case of a hung parliament, it might take days or weeks before a result is called. In 2010, which is the last time Australia had a hung parliament, it took 17 days of post-election negotiations for a government to be formed – with both the Labor Party and the Coalition vying to win the support of six crossbenchers. In the end, Labor was able to form a minority government.

So depending on the scenario that plays out, Australians might have to hang on to their edge of their seats for a while longer before an official result emerges.

This BBC interview with Prince Harry will become one of those famous moments when television collides with the world of the royals.

It was like an emotional avalanche. It began with some stones being kicked over with questions about security and then the interview turned into a spectacular release of what seemed to be a rolling mountain of pent-up frustration and a poignant sense of separation.

The starting point was Prince Harry’s defeat in the courts as he sought to overturn a downgrading of his security in the UK. He seemed wounded. Had he decided it was time to have his say? And then really say some more?

A conversation about security was suddenly becoming about a whole range of insecurities.

Prince Harry looked upset, it seemed a cry from the heart when he said that his father “won’t speak to me because of this security stuff”, even though he didn’t know “how much longer my father has”.

This was a first-hand confirmation of the scale of the rift in the Royal Family. There was also the lack of contact between his children and their wider family in the UK. He was “gutted” and “devastated” and tired of only coming home for funerals and court cases.

And like all family rows, there was a balancing act between wanting to air grievances, to throw emotional punches, and then still want to get back together and hug and make friends.

So Prince Harry talked of the downgrading in his security in terms of this family dispute, suggesting that the Royal Household had influenced the decision, using security as leverage to keep him within the Royal Family.

Then he talked with great frankness, sounding like a slightly homesick son stuck overseas, when he spoke about wanting reconciliation. “There’s no point continuing to fight any more. Life is precious,” he said, holding out an olive branch the size of a small palace.

The “sticking point” for reconciliation is security when he visits the UK, said Prince Harry. And as well as calling on his father the King to help resolve this, he also called on the prime minister and home secretary to intervene.

At that point, it’s worth stepping away from the drama and taking a cold draught of unemotive legal air, from the judge who ruled against Prince Harry on Friday afternoon.

Sir Geoffrey Vos told the court that Prince Harry’s “sense of grievance” did not add up to the same thing as a legal argument. He upheld the decision that security arrangements had been changed because Prince Harry’s circumstances had changed, he was no longer a working royal and no longer living in the UK.

It might have annoyed Prince Harry, but the courts had again rejected his claim about unfair treatment.

There was also a response from Buckingham Palace that sounded like a weary parent.

“All of these issues have been examined repeatedly and meticulously by the courts, with the same conclusion reached on each occasion.”

It wouldn’t be right for the King to wade into issues being reviewed by the courts and considered by government departments, suggested the Palace.

While Prince Harry wore his frustration on his sleeve in this interview, you have to wonder how the rest of his family will privately respond to this outburst, with this story ricocheting around the world, on billions of mobile phones and TV screens.

These clips are going to be seen again and again. Netflix would have spun it out into a mini-series.

VE Day 80 is coming up next week, with the Royal Family prominent at commemorations. But the public might still be thinking of Prince Harry’s accusations about them. How will that work alongside messages of togetherness and unity?

Like in all families, arguments can go back a long way. And Prince Harry’s testimony was disarmingly candid, restlessly baring his feelings, and suggesting that his departure from the UK was still unresolved.

He was looking back with some uncertainty at home, and the question now will be how people at home look back at him.

Sign up here to get the latest royal stories and analysis every week with our Royal Watch newsletter. Those outside the UK can sign up here.

On Friday morning, a spokesperson for China’s ministry of commerce announced that Beijing was assessing the possibility of tariff negotiations with the United States.

It was news the rest of the world had been waiting to hear as astonishingly high tariffs – up to 245% on some Chinese exports to the US – throttle trade between the world’s two biggest economies, raising the spectre of a recession.

“US officials have repeatedly expressed their willingness to negotiate with China on tariffs,” the spokesperson told reporters.

“China’s position is consistent. If we fight, we will fight to the end; if we talk, the door is open… If the US wants to talk, it should show its sincerity and be prepared to correct its wrong practices and cancel unilateral tariffs.”

The statement comes a day after a Weibo account linked to Chinese state media said the US had been seeking to initiate discussions, and a week after Trump claimed discussions were already underway – a suggestion Beijing denied.

“China has no need to talk to the United States,” Yuyuantantian, a Weibo account affiliated with China Central Television (CCTV), said in Thursday’s post. “From the perspective of negotiations, the United States must be the more anxious party at present.”

Such comments follow a cycle of assertions and denials from both the US and China, as each side refuses to publicly initiate discussions.

The question is not whether those discussions will take place, but rather when, under what circumstances and at whose behest.

Experts characterise the tussle as a game of chicken between Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping, as both men attempt to save face while covertly pursuing a mutually beneficial outcome – namely, a de-escalation of the trade war.

“I expect some of this back-and-forth, because neither Washington nor Beijing wants to look like they are the side that’s giving in,” says Ja Ian Chong, assistant professor of political science at the National University of Singapore.

“[But] a de-escalation would be to the overall benefit of both sides, so there is some overarching incentive to do so.”

Wen-Ti Sung, an academic member of the Australian Centre on China in the World, puts it another way: “It’s like two race cars going at each other: whoever swerves first will be seen as the weaker of the two parties. And at this juncture, neither party wants to look soft.”

The leader who admits he was the first to initiate tariff talks would be seen as the one compromising his position in negotiations.

“Whoever seems desperate loses bargaining leverage,” Mr Sung says. “Both sides want to portray the other side as the more desperate one.”

This peculiar stalemate – where both parties seek the same outcome, but neither wants to be the first to suggest it – has resulted in a tactic of “constructive ambiguity”: the deliberate use of language so vague that each party could arguably claim to be in the right.

It is this tactic that Mr Sung points to as an explanation for Yuyuantantian’s Weibo post.

“This is Beijing trying to explore the possibility of using word games to create an off-ramp for both sides, so that they can gradually climb their way down from this escalation spiral,” he says.

One way to escape this game of chicken is when a third party mediates, offering both sides an off-ramp. The other option, Mr Sung explains, is a “much looser understanding of what ‘the other side has reached out’ means”.

That way, the side that does indeed come to the table first is still able to characterise it as a response rather than the first move.

In Trump and Xi’s case, it would also mean that tariff negotiations could begin with both leaders claiming to have achieved some kind of victory in the trade war.

The optics here are important. As Mr Chong points out, de-escalation is one thing – but another top priority for Trump and Xi is to “deliver a win for their domestic audiences”.

“Trump obviously wants to show that he has made Beijing capitulate. And on the People’s Republic of China side, Xi probably wants to show his own people and the world that he’s been able to make Trump become more reasonable and moderate and accommodating,” Mr Chong says.

On the domestic front, both leaders are facing tariff-induced headwinds. Trump this week struggled to quell fears of a recession as fresh data indicated the US economy contracted in its first quarter for the first time since 2022.

Meanwhile, Xi – who before the tariffs was already battling persistently low consumption, a property crisis and unemployment – must reassure China’s population that he can weather the trade war and protect an economy which has struggled to rebound post-pandemic.

“Both [Trump and Xi] recognise that at this point of the trade war, it’s not going to be a winner-takes-all outcome for either side anymore,” Mr Sung says.

“Trump recognises he’s not going to get anywhere near 100% of what he wants, so he’s trying to find a concession point where China can let him have just enough winning, especially for domestic purposes.”

While China is not unwilling, he adds, “they are very much stuck on what’s the right price point”.

For Xi, Mr Sung described the situation as a “two-level game”.

“The China side needs to manage US-China bilateral negotiations, while domestically Beijing needs to save enough face so that the Chinese leadership can hold on to this narrative of ‘the East is rising and the West is declining’,” he says.

“A kowtowing of the East towards the West is not a rising East.”

At the time of writing, the US has not denied China’s claims that it has been attempting to initiate talks. But the fact that both sides have now made that assertion indicates there is “some sort of contact”, according to Mr Chong.

“The two sides are talking,” he says. “And that is a sign that there is some possibility that some accommodation could be reached.”

But the start of negotiations does not mean that the US-China relationship – which was rocky even before Trump kicked off a trade war – is close to being steadied.

Mr Chong isn’t holding his breath. For one, he believes the “posturing” suggests the two sides have not reached the point “where they are both trying to seek a way out”.

“[Each party] may hope that there are concessions from the other side, so they’re going to have this standoff until they see which side blinks first.”

Follow the twists and turns of Trump’s second term with North America correspondent Anthony Zurcher’s weekly US Politics Unspun newsletter. Readers in the UK can sign up here. Those outside the UK can sign up here.

You might have seen the social media videos: the “five signs you’re autistic”. You may have heard about long waiting lists for autism diagnosis. You might know, or sense, that the numbers of people deemed autistic are going up, fast.

There’s a lot at stake. These numbers mean fiercely different things to different people. To some, autism is a fear (what if this happens to my child?); to others it’s an identity, maybe even a superpower.

So what’s the truth about the number of autistic people – and what does it mean?

To count something, you first need to say what it is you’re counting.

For someone to be diagnosed with autism, they need to have “persistent difficulties in social life and in social communication,” says Ginny Russell, an associate professor in psychiatry at University College London (UCL) and the author of The Rise of Autism. She’s using the criteria for autism from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, known as the DSM.

She says examples of this behaviour can range from a lack of turn-taking in conversation to being completely non-verbal.

Restricted interests and repetitive behaviours are part of a second group of traits required to meet the criteria, she says. So things like “hand flapping or rocking or skin picking, but also sticking to repeated routines, like eating the same food every day.”

But what evidence is there that the number of people meeting those criteria has risen?

Ms Russell led a study that looked at changes in rates of autism diagnosis in the UK over 20 years. It drew on a big sample of data from about nine million patients who were registered at GP surgeries.

They found eight times as many new autism diagnoses in 2018 as in 1998. “It was an enormous increase,” she says, “best described as exponential.”

And it’s not just happening in the UK. Though data is lacking in much of the world, Ms Russell says that “in the Anglophone and European countries where we do have data, there is compelling evidence to suggest that other countries have seen a similar sort of rise in diagnosis as in the UK”.

But – and this is a crucial point – a rise in the number of people is not the same thing as a rise in the number of people who .

Ms Russell’s study and others like it show there has been a huge rise in the number of people diagnosed with autism, so in that sense there is more autism around than there used to be. But could that rise in diagnosis be explained by changes to who we count as autistic rather than an increase in the number of autistic people?

The definition of autism has not been static. The first studies to describe autism appeared in the 1930s and 1940s, says Francesca Happé, a professor of cognitive neuroscience at King’s College London, who’s been researching autism since 1988.

“The original descriptions of autism are of children who have pretty high support needs, typically are very late to talk,” she says. “Some don’t talk at all. And the focus really was on children, of course, and largely on males.”

But the definition was broadened, Professor Happé says, when in the 1990s Asperger’s syndrome was added to diagnostic manuals. People with Asperger’s were seen as on the autistic spectrum because of social difficulties and repetitive behaviour, but had fluent language and good intelligence, she says.

The eightfold increase in new diagnoses that Ginny Russell found included Asperger’s syndrome, which was seen as a particular type of autism.

Another subset of autism added to the manuals was a “safety net diagnosis” called “pervasive developmental disorder not otherwise specified” (PDD-NOS) and that increased the numbers too.

Today, diagnostic manuals refer simply to autism spectrum disorder, or ASD, which includes people previously diagnosed with Asperger’s or PDD-NOS.

The autism net has been cast wider.

One group of people now falling under this net more often is women and girls.

Studies looking at the huge rise in autism diagnoses show that the rise has been considerably faster for females than for males.

It’s something Sarah Hendrickx has seen in her job as part of a team that diagnoses autism.

“I’ve been doing this maybe 15, 20 years or so,” she says. “In the early days, they were virtually all males that were coming forward for diagnosis. And now they’re nearly all females who I see.”

Ms Hendrickx was herself diagnosed with autism as an adult and is also the author of a book called Women and Girls on the Autism Spectrum.

She says the big growth in the number of people diagnosed with autism is because we’re ”playing catch-up for decades and decades of people like myself”.

Because autism was originally seen as something that affected mainly boys, she says autistic girls would instead be diagnosed with mental health conditions like social anxiety, obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), and borderline personality disorder (BPD).

Now we have a better understanding of how autism can present in girls and women, thanks to an increase in research and books like Ms Hendrickx’s, which was first published in 2014.

She says that one important gender difference is that girls may be better at masking, which means hiding their autistic traits so that they fit in socially, perhaps by copying others’ behaviour.

The rise in diagnosis has also been much faster among adults than children. Ms Hendrickx says this shows another way the autism net has been cast wider: it now includes more people with lower support needs.

“We are talking, I think, more about individuals with no intellectual disability,” she says. “I think people with delays in their development, in their speech, are much more likely to have been diagnosed much, much earlier because the signs were much clearer at a very young age.”

There’s data to back this up. One study shows that between 2000 and 2018, new autism diagnoses of those with intellectual disability rose about 20%, while autism diagnoses in those without intellectual disability rose 700%. Autism’s centre of gravity has shifted.

For Ellie Middleton, an autistic and ADHD content creator and author, that’s a good thing.

The 27-year-old says that sceptics questioning the increase in diagnoses should instead be asking: “how did all of these people spend so much of their life undiagnosed, unsupported and let down?”

She says she became very mentally unwell before being diagnosed with autism. “I was on the maximum dose of antidepressants that any fully grown adult could be on at the age of 17,” she says. “I couldn’t be left alone, I couldn’t go out.”

Her autism diagnosis three years ago helped her to change the way she lives her life and to keep her mental health in a better place.

But others worry that the version of autism people now see in the media and in their social media feeds is distorting public perceptions.

A focus on celebrities can “glamorise” autism, says Venessa Swaby, who is also autistic and runs support groups for autistic children and their parents through her organisation A2ndvoice. Meanwhile, she says, families with non-speaking autistic children feel they are “written off”.

As the number of people diagnosed with autism has risen, so then has the diversity of autistic people, which, in turn, has brought tensions over who owns the word – and what it means.

There’s also been a looping effect: as more people are diagnosed with autism, more people become aware of it and that fuels the rise in numbers further.

The internet and social media have played a big part in that – as well as speculation about the reasons behind the rapid rise in diagnoses.

Disproven theories linking the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccination to autism linger. Others say there must be something in what we eat, drink, or breathe that’s causing more autism.

But, as we’ve seen, the data suggest the rise in diagnoses can be explained by a broadening autism definition rather than an increase in the amount of underlying autism. And there’s solid research showing that autism is largely a product of the genes you inherit from your parents.

Is there any evidence that environmental causes could be playing some part in the rise, even if a small one?

Ginny Russell looked at research into different potential environmental factors and found only a few that were plausible to explain some of the rise.

“There is definitely a quite well established link between autism and the age of the parent,” she says. “If the parent is older you’re more likely to have an autistic child, but it’s not a huge effect.”

She also says that there’s some evidence around “preterm birth and infection during pregnancy and also some birth complications”.

But Ms Russell says it’s important to put those possible factors into perspective.

“I honestly believe that the vast majority of the increase is due to what I would call a diagnostic culture,” she says. “Our conception of the condition has changed, and that’s meant that there’s been an increase.”

In January a migrant boat was rescued off the north African coast after 14 harrowing days lost at sea. Some 50 people died on the voyage, many of whom were lied to by people smugglers promising safe and legal routes to Europe. BBC Verify has tracked one of the traffickers responsible – documenting his activities across three continents.

Punjabi rap music plays over a video showing three men at a beachside restaurant in Mauritania’s capital Nouakchott. One after the other, they smile at the camera before casually turning to talk and laugh together.

The three are clearly friends. Two of them, Sufian Ali and Atif Shahzad, are cousins from rural Pakistan.

But it’s the third man in particular who dominates the conversation. He’s Fadi Gujjar, a people smuggler.

The video – posted to Gujjar’s TikTok account – is one of more than 450 clips analysed by BBC Verify that reveal clues about his activities and his close relationship to the other men.

Within a month of this video being posted online, Ali and Shahzad were dead – beaten to death on the boat journey sold to them by Gujjar, who promised a safe route into Europe.

Meanwhile, Gujjar found himself on the run, wanted by Pakistan’s Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) for his role in the tragedy.

When BBC Verify contacted him on a phone number obtained from survivors, Gujjar said repeatedly in a series of voice notes his name had been “misused” by survivors in connection with the disaster and that he was leaving it all in the hands of Allah.

Fadi Gujjar is from Jaurah in Pakistan’s Punjab region. In his 30s, his real name is Khawar Hassan – though he also goes by Bishi Gujjar.

Pakistani smugglers the BBC has previously reported on have tended to boastfully advertise illegal routes to Europe online.

But Gujjar is careful. His online presence is limited to highly edited videos of his travels and almost all clients BBC Verify identified are local to Jaurah. Advertisements for his services seem to spread by word of mouth.

His current location on Facebook is set to Istanbul, Turkey – an oasis for smugglers looking to make a quick buck. Videos posted to TikTok place him in the city since July 2022, showing the smuggler outside the iconic Hagia Sophia and a Pakistani supermarket.

One other location stands out: Mauritania on West Africa’s Atlantic coast – the nerve-centre of his operation and the place from which the migrant boat started its perilous journey.

Since 2023, the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) says Mauritania has become a hub for people smuggling – spurred on by a crackdown on other routes.

The route is deadly. IOM data shows that 170 people – including 14 children – have died or gone missing on it this year.

Many Pakistanis seeking economic opportunities in Europe are willing to take the risk. Life there is glorified online by migrants already living on the continent. Smugglers like Gujjar, whose lucrative business is fuelled by people’s aspirations, take advantage of this.

These migrants are taking a gamble, using their families’ savings or selling up to make the journey. The survivors we spoke to, on average, say they paid Gujjar $13,000 (£10,000).

There are no direct flights from Pakistan to Mauritania, so some of the migrants transited through Ethiopia or the Middle East. From there, almost all of them went on to Senegal, before crossing into Mauritania, either by road or a short boat journey along the Senegal River.

Gujjar’s travel history – obtained by BBC Verify through a source – showed the smuggler followed a similar route, entering Dakar airport in Senegal on two occasions in 2024.

Multiple videos also place him in the Mauritanian capital Nouakchott from October 2024 – though the date of upload could differ to when they were filmed.

Further clips, posted to TikTok by Ali and Shahzad place Gujjar in Mauritania as early as August 2024. The trio are seen on the rooftops of Nouakchott’s sand-coloured buildings and in restaurants around the city – a luxury other migrants couldn’t afford.

Videos from their accounts reveal the men were close, hailing from the same village. Their uncle, Ahsan Shahzad Chaudhry, confirmed to BBC Verify that his nephew Sufian Ali was friends with Gujjar.

One survivor named Uzair Bhat said Gujjar falsely promised him safe and legal routes to Europe. He sent BBC Verify proof of funds transferred to a bank account under Gujjar’s real name, Khawar Hassan.

But when Uzair arrived in Mauritania, the smuggler backtracked.

“He said going by air will not work from here. I’ll send you by a big ship,” Uzair recalled. “Please cooperate, your visa [to Europe] won’t come through.”

Eventually Uzair relented.

• Listen: From a smuggler’s TikTok to tragedy

As well as Ali, Shahzad and Uzair, BBC Verify identified two other migrants who bought journeys from Gujjar.

Once they arrived in Nouakchott they say they were placed in “safe houses” – a term used for buildings tucked away in obscure alleys where migrants are held illegally by smugglers.

One person who used a different agent said he also stayed in safe houses run by Gujjar.

BBC Verify confirmed the location of one to an area near the port of Nouakchott, which survivors say Gujjar occasionally visited.

Survivors BBC Verify spoke to say they set off from Nouakchott in a small fishing boat in the early hours on 2 January. Most of those onboard bought passage from smugglers in their hometowns in Pakistan.

But the three day trip turned into a deadly two-week journey adrift at sea.

Uzair said that from the day they left port the migrants “were constantly scooping water out of the boat”. Another man, Bilalwal Iqbal, recalled that passengers soon began “drinking sea water and after drinking it, people became delirious”.

According to the survivors, the crew onboard – West Africans employed by the smugglers – starved the Pakistani migrants of food and water, and beat them daily.

“I tried to take one of their bottles of water so they hit me on the head with a rope and the impact just made me fall back,” Iqbal told BBC Verify. “Then they pummelled my thumbs with a hammer. I still have those wounds.”

Sufian Ali and Atif Shahzad died after being beaten to death by the crew, their uncle said. He was informed of the circumstances surrounding their deaths by survivors.

Others died of starvation, dehydration and hypothermia.

Those still alive, including the crew, had given up until they saw a much larger fishing vessel come into view. Uzair Bhat jumped into the ocean and swam towards it for help.

The coastguard instructed the vessel to take the migrant boat to Dakhla port – 60 miles away. According to the IOM, 15 dead bodies were found onboard while 35 people remain missing at sea and presumed dead.

Pakistani authorities have named Gujjar as one of ten smugglers involved in the tragedy. Some have been arrested, but not Gujjar.

BBC Verify geolocated his most recent TikTok posts to Baku, Azerbaijan – though we cannot say for certain if he is still there.

Since news of the rescue broke, his mother and one of his brothers have been detained in Pakistan, accused of collecting money on Gujjar’s behalf from people buying routes to Europe.

BBC Verify has also seen six police reports filed in Punjab by the families of those on the boat journey. They allege Gujjar collected $75,000 (£56,000) for his role in the January disaster. Three people paid in full, while the remaining three had only paid deposits, the police reports said.

We believe Gujjar was still facilitating journeys to Europe after the boat disaster in January.

Contacted by an undercover BBC reporter in March using a phone number obtained from survivors, Gujjar said he “knew someone” who would help arrange a journey, but did not directly offer to get involved himself.

What do you want BBC Verify to investigate?

Shabir Ahmad Dar, a resident of Indian-administered Kashmir, has been selling pashmina shawls for more than 20 years.

The intricately embroidered featherweight scarves are a favourite with his customers in Mussoorie, a hill town in the northern state of Uttarakhand, where he works.

For his buyers, the shawls are a sign of luxury. For Dar, they are a metaphor for home; its traditional patterns layered with history and a mark of his Kashmiri identity.

But lately, the same identity feels like a curse.

On Sunday, Dar, along with another salesman, was publicly harassed and assaulted by members of a Hindu right-wing group, who were reportedly incensed by the killing of 26 people at a popular tourist spot in Kashmir last week. India has blamed Pakistan for the attack – a charge Islamabad denies.

A video of the assault shows the men thrashing and hurling abuses at Dar and his friend as they ransack their stall, located on a busy boulevard.

“They blamed us for the attack, told us to leave town and never show our faces again,” said Dar.

He says his goods, worth thousands of dollars, are still lying there. “But we are too scared to go back.”

As outrage over the assault spread, police on Wednesday arrested the three men but released them a few hours later after charging a fine and asking them to “apologise” to Dar and his colleague.

But Dar had already left by then, along with dozens of other Kashmiri shawl sellers, who, after living in Mussoorie for decades, say they no longer feel safe there.

Many survivors of the Pahalgam attack – the deadliest targeting civilians in recent years – said the militants specifically targeted Hindu men, sparking an outpouring of anger and grief in India, with politicians across party lines demanding strict action.

Since then, there have been more than a dozen reports of Kashmiri vendors and students in Indian cities facing harassment, vilification and threats from right-wing groups – but also from their own classmates, customers and neighbours. Videos showing students being chased out of campus and beaten up on the streets have been cascading online.

On Thursday, one of the survivors, whose naval officer husband was killed in the militant attack, appealed to people to not go after Muslims and Kashmiris. “We want peace and only peace,” she said.

But safety concerns have forced many Kashmiris like Dar to return home.

Ummat Shabir, a nursing student at a university in Punjab state, said some women in her neighbourhood accused her of being a “terrorist who should be thrown out” last week.

“The same day, my classmate was forced out of a taxi by her driver after he found out she was a Kashmiri,” she said. “It took us three days to travel back to Kashmir but we had no option. We had to go.”

Ms Shabir is back in her hometown but for many others, even home does not feel safe anymore.

As the search for the perpetrators of last week’s attack continues, security forces in Kashmir have detained thousands of people, shut off more than 50 tourist destinations, sent in additional army and paramilitary troops, and blown up several homes belonging to families of suspected militants who they accuse of having “terrorist affiliations”.

The crackdown has sparked fear and unease among civilians, many of whom have called the actions a form of “collective punishment” against them.

Without mentioning the demolitions, Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah said the guilty must be punished without mercy, “but don’t let innocent people become collateral damage”. Former chief minister Mehbooba Mufti also criticised the demolitions, cautioning the government to distinguish between “terrorists and civilians”.

“Whenever tensions escalate, we are the first ones to bear the brunt of it. But we are still treated as suspects and expected to put our lives on hold,” another student, who wanted to remain anonymous, told the BBC.

Yet the backlash feels a lot worse this time, says Shafi Subhan, a shawl seller from the region’s Kupwara district, who also worked in Mussoorie.

In his 20 years of doing business there, Subhan said he had never faced any public threat – not even after the 2019 terror attack in Pulwama district, which killed 40 paramilitary police troopers.

To him, Mussoorie felt like home, a place where he found peace – despite being hundreds of kilometres away. He said he shared an emotional bond with his customers, who came from all parts of the country

“People were always kind to us, they wore our garments with so much joy,” Subhan recalled. “But on that day when our colleagues were attacked, no one came to help. The public just stood and watched. It hurt them physically – but emotionally, a lot more.”

Back home in Kashmir, peace has long been fragile. Both India and Pakistan claim the territory in full but administer separate parts, and an armed insurgency has simmered in the Indian-administered region for more than three decades, claiming thousands of lives.

Caught in between, are civilians who say they feel stuck in an endless limbo that feels especially suffocating, whenever ties between India and Pakistan come under strain.

Many allege that in the past, military confrontations between the nations have been followed by waves of harassment and violence against Kashmiris, along with a significant security and communication clampdown in the region.

In recent years, violence has declined, and officials point to improved infrastructure, tourism, and investment as signs of greater stability, particularly since 2019, when the region’s special constitutional status was revoked under Article 370.

But arrests and security operations continue, and critics argue that calm has come at the cost of civil liberties and political freedoms.

“The needle of suspicion is always on locals, even as militancy has declined in the last one-and-a-half decades,” says Anuradha Bhasin, the managing editor of the Kashmir Times newspapers. “They always have to prove their innocence.”

As the news of the killings spread last week, Kashmiris poured onto the streets, holding candlelight vigils and protest marches. A complete shutdown was observed a day after the attack and newspapers printed black front pages. Omar Abdullah publicly apologised, saying he had “failed his guests”.

Ms Bhasin says Kashmiri backlash against such attacks is not new; there has been similar condemnation in the past as well, although at a smaller scale. “No one there condones civilian killings – they know the pain of losing loved ones too well.”

But she adds that it’s unfair to place the burden of proving innocence on Kashmiris, when they have themselves become targets of hate and violence. “This would just instil more fear and further alienate people, many of whom already feel isolated from the rest of the country.”

Mirza Waheed, a Kashmiri novelist, believes Kashmiris are “particularly vulnerable as they are seen through a different lens”, being part of India’s Muslim population.

“The saddest part is many of them will suffer the indignity and humiliation, lay low for some time, and wait for this to tide over because they have a life to live.”

No one knows this better Mohammad Shafi Dar, a daily wage worker in Kashmir’s Shopian, whose house was blown up by security forces last week.

Five days on, he is still picking the up the pieces.

“We lost everything,” said Dar, who is now living under the open sky with his wife, three daughters and son. “We don’t even have utensils to cook food.”

He says his family has no idea where their other 20-year-old son is, whether he joined militancy, or is even dead or alive. His parents say the college student left home last October and never returned. They haven’t spoken since.

“Yet, we have been punished for his alleged crimes. Why?”

Australia’s 2025 election began with a false start.

Everyone was poised and ready to go when a cyclone blew the government’s preferred date – for April 12 – off course.

Instead, Albanese settled for a May 3 polling date with the firing gun finally fired in late March.

There have been announcements about health, vows to cut fuel tax and proposals from each side to fix the country’s housing crisis – but as the campaign dragged on, both leaders struggled to compete for Australia’s attention.

They had to contend with Donald Trump and his sweeping tariffs scheme for headlines, weave their campaigns around Easter, suspend them briefly to mark the Pope’s death, only to revive them ahead of a long weekend most Australians would not have spent thinking about politics.

“It has been hard to cut through… but the major parties have lost the trust of the voters which has amplified their problems of communications,” says John Warhurst, an Emeritus Professor at the Australian National University’s School of Politics.

“The government has been timid and the opposition has been shambolic.”

So now, after five weeks of campaigning, Australia’s 18 million citizens are facing a choice between Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and his rival Peter Dutton, both of whom may need to form the next government by securing the support of independent MPs or minor parties.

Here’s everything you need to know about Australia’s 2025 vote.

Australia has two major parties: the left-leaning Australian Labor Party and the conservative Liberal-National coalition.

The Labor Party’s Anthony Albanese who has been the prime minister since 2022, is running for re-election.

A stalwart of parliament for almost 30 years, he enjoyed a period of broad popularity after coming to power. However, in recent times he has come under pressure over his handling of divisive topics like housing, Indigenous affairs, antisemitism and Islamophobia.

Albanese is being challenged by Peter Dutton, who became head of the Liberal-National coalition after their 2022 defeat. He is contesting his first election as opposition leader.

Known as a staunch conservative, Dutton has years of experience in important ministerial portfolios – like defence and home affairs – but has been a controversial figure at times, particularly on social issues.

Australians do not get to vote for the PM candidates themselves as there is no separate leadership ballot. The leader of the party that receives the most seats in the House of Representatives becomes prime minister.

The cost of living is the biggest concern for many voters.

Since the 2022 election, inflation – which is now slowing – has pushed up the prices of everyday essentials such as food and utilities, leaving many households feeling stretched.

The Albanese government has implemented a string of policies that it says are aimed at providing relief, such as keeping the cost of medications down, and offering tax cuts, energy rebates and rental assistance to those eligible.

However, Australia has raised interest rates 12 times since Albanese was elected in May 2022 – something that is done independently of government but seen to reflect their economic management. That has put additional pressure on borrowers and those with mortgages.

Housing affordability will also be a key issue, with several Australian cities among the most expensive in the world for homebuyers.

Australia’s universal healthcare system, now struggling because of staff shortages and soaring costs, is another major concern for voters. Politicians across the spectrum admit there’s a crisis, with many Australians delaying or skipping care – and both parties have promised billions in additional funding to fix it.

There are also global issues voters will consider, including the US President Donald Trump’s tariffs, and his trade war with China.

Like many other nations, Australia has a close strategic alliance with the US while also maintaining a strong trading relationship with China. The country’s new government will find itself dealing with a very different – and much more unpredictable – world order.

Australia famously has a unique electoral system – and some quirky polling day traditions.

Voting is mandatory for all citizens over 18 and picking up a “democracy sausage” – a barbecued sausage typically served on bread and sold at polling booths – is an election day custom.

Australia uses a preferential voting system, where candidates are ranked in order of preference.

If no candidate wins more than 50% of the vote in the first tally, the votes from the least popular candidates are redistributed, and that process is repeated until someone secures a majority.

In races for the House of Representatives, voters are required to mark a preference down for every single candidate listed on the ballot in their area.

However, in Senate races, voters only need to mark down a designated number of preferences.

In this election, all 150 seats in the House of Representatives will be up for grabs, as well as 40 of the 76 seats in the Senate.

One party needs to win at least 76 seats in the House to form a majority government.

If it cannot do that, it must try to win support from minor parties or independent MPs.

Labor formed a majority government after winning the 2022 election, which delivered the biggest loss for the Liberal Party since its inception.

As it stands, Labor has 78 seats in the House of Representatives, while the coalition has 57, with minor parties and independents splitting the remainder.

But with one House seat abolished, Labor will be stripped of its majority in parliament if it loses just two seats.

In order to form a government in its own right, the coalition will need to win 19 seats, likely including many of those it lost to independent candidates during the 2022 vote.

In both state and federal elections, the vote share for minor parties and independents has been steadily increasing in Australia for decades.

That reached record levels in the 2022 federal election, with one in three Australians casting votes for candidates outside the two major parties.

Once polls close, counting begins right away and results are updated in real time on the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) website – in what is known as an unofficial preliminary counting.

Historically, Australians will know who forms government on election night based off this – and the result will usually be called by media commentators, election experts or even the candidates themselves.

Official results can take days or even weeks to come, as the AEC has to go through a rigorous counting process, counting approximately 18 million ballot papers by hand, including postal and overseas ballot papers.

The tree at Sycamore Gap took well over a century to grow and just minutes to cut down.

It was globally renowned, standing as it did at the edge of the Roman frontier in northern England, and had been depicted countless times in photographs, paintings and films.

Overnight on 27 September 2023, under the cover of darkness, someone chopped it down, sparking international outrage and condemnation.

Over the last week, Newcastle Crown Court has been hearing the trial of the two men who deny felling the tree.

Here’s some of what jurors have been told so far.

• For a blow-by-blow account of what’s been heard in court over the last few days, click here

Prosecutors allege Daniel Graham, 39, and Adam Carruthers, 32, carried out the “moronic mission”.

The prosecution say that while one felled the tree with a chainsaw, the other filmed it on Mr Graham’s phone – something they both deny.

Police discovered a two minute and 41 second-long video a month later when they arrested Mr Graham and seized his phone.

The original video is dark, just the sounds of a chainsaw followed by the crashing fall of a tree and then silence, broken only by the wind blowing at the remote spot.

An enhanced version was shown to jurors, with the video’s metadata showing it was filmed at about 00:30 BST at the exact coordinates of the much-loved tree.

When quizzed by police about how the video got on his phone, Mr Graham repeatedly answered “no comment”.

The tree was felled using a “hinge-and-wedge” technique, the court heard.

A forestry expert said it would have been “unequivocally obvious” it would topple northwards, with the bottom of its severed trunk falling on the Roman wall and causing £1,144 worth of damage.

To facilitate the fall, a large wedge had to be cut out of the trunk, which prosecutors say the defendants took away with them as a “trophy”.

A picture was taken a couple of hours later on Mr Graham’s phone, showing a large chunk of wood and chainsaw in the back of his Range Rover.

A forensic botanist said there was “very strong evidence” the wedge had come from the Sycamore Gap tree.

Neither the wedge nor the chainsaw have been found by police.

Cell site analysis, which tracks the movements of a mobile phone, and automatic number plate recognition cameras, which follow the progress of a car, have been repeatedly referred to.

In short, Mr Graham’s phone and car were both monitored travelling towards Sycamore Gap from his home in Carlisle before the felling, then returning westward afterwards, the court heard.

A pair of headlights were also captured on CCTV from the nearby Twice Brewed Inn heading towards Steel Rigg, the closest public car park to the tree, just before midnight, returning about an hour later.

Prosecutors say Mr Graham and his good friend Mr Carruthers, from Wigton in Cumbria, had been in regular phone contact during the day but that stopped at 22:23, strongly suggesting they were together from then on.

Messages exchanged between Mr Carruthers and his partner also showed he was not at home that night, the court heard.

On 28 September 2023, the world awoke to find the tree had been felled.

Initial speculation was that it had come down in Storm Agnes, which had blown through that night, but it quickly became apparent the tree had been deliberately and illegally felled, jurors heard.

The two defendants rapidly began swapping screenshots of social media posts and press reports on their phones, the court heard.

“Here we go,” Mr Graham wrote to his co-accused.

One person had commented on Facebook that there were “some weak people that walk this earth, disgusting behaviour”.

Mr Graham sent a voice note to Mr Carruthers saying: “Weak? Does he realise how heavy [stuff] is?”

Mr Carruthers replied: “I’d like to see [the man] launch an operation like we did last night, I don’t think he’s got the minerals.”

He said it was being reported on multiple news channels, adding: “It’s going to go wild.”

Mr Graham replied: “It’s gone viral, it is worldwide.”

Prosecutors said the men were “revelling in” the outrage, but their close friendship would unravel as the “public revulsion became clear to them”.

So far, the jury has only heard from Daniel Graham.

He spent more than three hours in the witness box, during which he said his once “best pal” Carruthers had felled the tree.

Mr Graham claimed he had been asleep in his caravan the whole night while Mr Carruthers and an associate took his Range Rover, which also contained his phone, over to Sycamore Gap and back, without his knowledge.

He said Mr Carruthers was fascinated with the tree and had previously mentioned felling it, with Mr Graham claiming he had in fact never heard of the world famous tree until his co-accused told him about it.

In the aftermath, he claimed his friend asked him to “take the blame” as police would be more lenient on him because of his “mental health issue”, a claim which was labelled “not true” by Mr Carruthers’ barrister.

Mr Graham also admitted making an anonymous call to police to point the finger at Mr Carruthers, claiming he had to as detectives had not listened to him before.

Jurors have also heard the two men’s police interviews.

In his, Mr Graham said he was the victim of a smear campaign on Facebook, the accusations being the latest exchange in a feud with others in which he and Mr Carruthers were embroiled.

Mr Carruthers said he had used chainsaws but never been trained, adding they were “nasty things” and he could not recall ever felling a tree.

Both men deny causing criminal damage to the tree and Roman wall.

The trial continues.

The White House has confirmed a military parade will be held to mark the US Army’s 250th anniversary on 14 June, which falls on the same day as President Donald Trump’s birthday.

A “day-long festival” will be held on the National Mall in Washington DC, an army spokesperson said, adding that the event would feature 6,600 soldiers, 150 vehicles and 50 aircraft.

Trump first floated a military parade during his first term, but he scrapped the idea after reports it would have cost about $90 million (£71m).

Earlier on Friday, Trump announced plans to rename Veterans Day – known as Remembrance Day in the UK – as “Victory Day for World War I” to celebrate American contributions to the conflict.

The army said planning for the military parade was “actively underway”, and it was exploring “options to make the celebration even bigger, with more capability demonstrations, additional displays of equipment, and more engagement with the community.” Trump turns 79 that day.

He first proposed a military parade for Veterans Day in 2018.

He said he wanted the US to “top” France’s Bastille Day parade, which he attended on a visit to Paris in 2017.

Local politicians asked for a “ridiculously high” price, he said, and the idea was abandoned.

Meanwhile, in addition to renaming Veterans Day, Trump has said he wants to name VE Day on 8 May as “Victory Day for World War II”.

The announcement was not accompanied by an executive order, and it is unclear whether he intends for 8 May to become a federal holiday – a power that rests with the US Congress.

The days mark the end of World War I in 1918 and Germany’s surrender to the allies in 1945, respectively.

In his late-night post, Trump said that “many of our allies and friends are celebrating May 8th as Victory Day, but we did more than any other country, by far, in producing a victorious result” in the Second World War.

“We won both wars, nobody was close to us in terms of strength, bravery or military brilliance, but we never celebrate anything,” he added. “That’s because we don’t have leaders anymore, that know how to do so! So we are going to start celebrating our victories again!”

Later on Friday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt appeared to deny reports the name of Veterans Day would be changing, writing on X: “We will always honor Veterans Day AND we should commemorate the end of WWI and WWII as VICTORY DAYS!”

VE Day celebrations being held in the UK, France, Canada and other parts of the world this year mark 80 years since World War Two formally ended in Europe with Germany’s unconditional surrender shortly after Berlin fell to Soviet forces.

Russia commemorates the occasion as the end of what it calls the “Great Patriotic War”. It is one of the most important holidays in the country and is marked by a massive parade.

About 27 million of its citizens died during the war, which in the Soviet Union’s case began when Germany invaded in July 1941.

According to statistics published online by the US National WWII Museum in New Orleans, about 418,500 Americans were killed in both the European and Pacific theatres of the conflict. Of the total, about 416,000 were military casualties.

The US has not historically recognised VE Day. The country was still at war with Japan on the Pacific front for several more months after conflict ended in Europe.

Veterans Day, known as Remembrance Day in the UK, was formerly known as Armistice Day in the US to mark the end of fighting in Europe on 11 November 1918.

After World War Two and the Korean War, it was renamed to honour all US military veterans. Memorial Day, which always falls on the last Monday in May, honours Americans who were killed in battle.

One of Harvey Weinstein’s accusers has broken down in tears and left the courtroom as she testified in the former Hollywood mogul’s sex crimes retrial.

Production assistant Miriam Haley was being cross examined by Weinstein’s lawyer, Jennifer Bonjean, on her claims the disgraced producer sexually assaulted her in 2006.

In his third trial in five years, Weinstein is accused of sexually abusing Ms Haley, a former television production assistant, as well as an aspiring actress and a model.

Weinstein has pleaded not guilty, and in court his lawyer has sought to cast doubt on his accusers’ claims and credibility.

Earlier this week, Ms Haley testified that Weinstein sexually assaulted her in July 2006 after inviting her to his apartment to “just stop by and say hi”.

She alleges that he backed her into a bedroom and held her down on the bed as she pleaded “no, no – it’s not going to happen”, according to the BBC’s US partner CBS News.

During Friday’s exchange, Weinstein’s lawyer Ms Bonjean questioned what Ms Haley was wearing during the incident, and whether she took her own clothes off or whether Weinstein removed them.

“He took my clothes off…I didn’t take my clothes off,” Ms Haley testified. “He was the one who raped me, not the other way around.”

“That is for the jury to decide,” Weinstein’s lawyer replied.

“No, it’s not for the jury to decide. It’s my experience. And he did that to me,” Ms Haley argued, using expletives as tears streamed down her face.

Judge Curtis Farber then paused proceedings to give Ms Haley a chance to compose herself.

She was composed when cross-examination continued after the break.

Miriam Haley, who worked as a production assistant on the Weinstein-produced television show ‘Project Runway’, is the first accuser to testify at his retrial.

Weinstein is charged with sexually assaulting Haley and another woman and raping a third.

He denies the allegations and his lawyers argue that his accusers had consensual encounters with a then-powerful movie producer who could advance their careers.

An appeals court overturned Weinstein’s conviction in 2020.

A Peruvian navy vessel has collided with an oil platform in the Amazon River, killing at least two people and leaving one missing.

The collision happened in the early hours of Friday morning at the junction of the Napo and Amazon rivers, causing “severe damage”, Peru’s defence ministry said.

Thirty crew members were rescued from the vessel, with specialised diving teams and helicopters deployed as part of the search operation, the statement added.

It is not clear if the platform, owned by Anglo-French company Perenco, was damaged or whether oil has leaked into the river. The Peruvian defence ministry said it was investigating the cause of the collision.

“Peru’s Navy deeply regrets the irreparable loss of our crew members,” the defence ministry said, adding that it would provide assistance to their loved ones.

The ministry said the vessel, called Ucayali, hit the platform while it was navigating near the mouth of the Napo River in northern Peru. BBC News has approached Perenco for comment.

There are hundreds of gas and oil blocks in areas of Peru, Brazil, Colombia and Ecuador covered by the Amazon rainforest. Spills in the region have had a devastating impact on indigenous communities and local wildlife.

In 2022, the Peruvian government said that almost 12,000 barrels of oil had leaked into the sea after a tanker was hit by waves linked to a volcanic eruption on Tonga.

Cyber criminals have told BBC News their hack against Co-op is far more serious than the company previously admitted.

Hackers contacted the BBC with proof they had infiltrated IT networks and stolen huge amounts of customer and employee data.

After being approached on Friday, a Co-op spokesperson said the hackers “accessed data relating to a significant number of our current and past members”.

Co-op had previously said that it had taken “proactive measures” to fend off hackers and that it was only having a “small impact” on its operations.

It also assured the public that there was “no evidence that customer data was compromised”.

The cyber criminals claim to have the private information of 20 million people who signed up to Co-op’s membership scheme, but the firm would not confirm that number.

The criminals, who are using the name DragonForce, say they are also responsible for the ongoing attack on M&S and an attempted hack of Harrods.

The attacks have led government minister Pat McFadden to warn companies to “treat cyber security as an absolute priority”.

The anonymous hackers showed the BBC screenshots of the first extortion message they sent to Co-op’s head of cyber security in an internal Microsoft Teams chat on 25 April.

“Hello, we exfiltrated the data from your company,” the chat says.

“We have customer database, and Co-op member card data.”

• Co-op staff told to keep cameras on in meetings

They also showed screenshots of a call with the head of security which took place around a week ago.

The hackers say they messaged other members of the executive committee too as part of their scheme to blackmail the firm.

Co-op has more than 2,500 supermarkets as well as 800 funeral homes and an insurance business.

It employs around 70,000 staff nationwide.

The cyber attack was announced by the company on Wednesday.

On Thursday, it was revealed Co-op staff were being urged to keep their cameras on during Teams meetings, ordered not to record or transcribe calls, and to verify that all participants were genuine Co-op staff.

The security measure now appears to be a direct result of the hackers having access to internal Teams chats and calls.

DragonForce shared databases with the BBC that includes usernames and passwords of all employees.

They also sent a sample of 10,000 customers data including Co-op membership card numbers, names, home addresses, emails and phone numbers.

The BBC has destroyed the data it received, and is not publishing or sharing these documents.

The Co-op membership database is thought to be highly valuable to the company.

Since the BBC contacted Co-op about the hackers’ evidence, the firm has disclosed the full extent of the breach to its staff and the stock market.

“This data includes Co-op Group members’ personal data such as names and contact details, and did not include members’ passwords, bank or credit card details, transactions or information relating to any members’ or customers’ products or services with the Co-op Group,” a spokesperson said.

DragonForce want the BBC to report the hack – they are apparently trying to extort the company for money.

But the criminals wouldn’t say what they plan to do with the data if they don’t get paid.

They refused to talk about M&S or Harrods and when asked about how they feel about causing so much distress and damage to business and customers, they refused to answer.

DragonForce is a ransomware group known for scrambling victims’ data and demanding a ransom is paid to get the key to unscramble it. They are also known to have stolen data as part of their extortion tactics.

DragonForce operates an affiliate cyber crime service so anyone can use their malicious software and website to carry out attacks and extortions.

It’s not known who is ultimately using the DragonForce service to attack the retailers, but some security experts say the tactics seen are similar to that of a loosely coordinated group of hackers who have been called Scattered Spider or Octo Tempest.

The gang operates on Telegram and Discord channels and is English-speaking and young – in some cases only teenagers.

Conversations with the Co-op hackers were carried out in text form – but it is clear the hacker, who called himself a spokesperson, was a fluent English speaker.

They say two of the hackers want to be known as “Raymond Reddington” and “Dembe Zuma” after characters from US crime thriller Blacklist which involves a wanted criminal helping police take down other criminals on a ‘blacklist’.

The hackers say “we’re putting UK retailers on the Blacklist”.

Co-op says it is working with the NCSC and the NCA and said in a statement it is very sorry this situation has arisen.

UK government officials have met over the cyber attacks, with national security staff and the chief executive of the National Cyber Security Centre discussing support for retailers.

In a keynote speech next week setting out government action, minister Pat McFadden – who has responsibility for cyber security – will say the attacks need to be a “wake-up call” for every UK business.

“In a world where the cybercriminals targeting us are relentless in their pursuit of profit – with attempts being made every hour of every day – companies must treat cyber security as an absolute priority.

“We’ve watched in real-time the disruption these attacks have caused – including to working families going about their everyday lives.

“It serves as a powerful reminder that just as you would never leave your car or your house unlocked on your way to work. We have to treat our digital shop fronts the same way.”

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Thai prosecutors have said they will not pursue charges against an American academic who was arrested last month under a strict law against defaming the monarchy.

Paul Chambers, a lecturer at Naresuan University, was arrested after the army filed a complaint against him.

On Thursday, prosecutors said they would request for charges against him to be dropped, though this has to be reviewed by the police. If they disagree, the decision will fall to the attorney-general.

Mr Chambers’ arrest marked a rare instance of a foreigner being charged under the lese-majeste law, which the government says is necessary to protect the monarchy but critics say is used to clamp down on free speech.

“The director-general had decided not to indict the suspect,” said the Office of the Attorney-General, adding that prosecutors would seek to dismiss the case in court and coordinate with police.

Mr Chambers first lived and worked in Thailand 30 years ago, and in recent years has been lecturing and researching at Naresuan University in northern Thailand. He is one of the world’s foremost experts on the Thai military.

The complaint against him centres on a notice for an academic webinar organised by a Singapore research institute about Thailand’s military and police reshuffles. Mr Chambers was one of the webinar’s speakers.

The army had accused Mr Chambers of “defamation, contempt or malice” towards the royal family, “importing false computer data” in a way “likely to damage national security or cause public panic”, and disseminating computer data “that may affect national security”, according to a letter from police that was received by the university’s social sciences faculty.

Mr Chambers stated that he did not write or publish the notice for the webinar. The army based its complaint on a Facebook post by a Thai royalist, who translated the webinar notice into Thai.

Thailand’s lese-majeste law has been in place since the creation of the country’s first criminal code in 1908, although the penalty was toughened in 1976.

Since late 2020, the legal aid group Thai Lawyers for Human Rights (TLHR) has seen more than 300 cases of lese-majeste involving more than 270 people, including 20 children under the age of 18, said Akarachai Chaimaneekarakate, the group’s advocacy lead.

Last year, a reformist political party was dissolved by court order after the court ruled the party’s campaign promise to change lese-majeste was unconstitutional.

The European Parliament called on Thailand last month to reform the law, which it said was “among the strictest in the world”, and grant amnesty to those prosecuted and imprisoned under it.

Police in Hong Kong have arrested the father and brother of US-based pro-democracy activist Anna Kwok for allegedly helping with her finances, according to media reports.

It is the first time the relatives of an “absconder” have been charged under the territory’s security law, Reuters news agency said.

The authorities accused Ms Kwok, 26, of breaching Hong Kong’s national security laws after participating in pro-democracy protests in 2019.

She fled the territory in 2020 and now serves as the Executive Director of the Hong Kong Democracy Council (HKDC), an organisation based in Washington DC.

Police said they had arrested two men aged 35 and 68 on suspicion of handling “funds or other financial assets” belonging to Kwok, Reuters said.

Local media later identified the two men as relatives of Ms Kwok, citing police sources.

According to a report by the South China Morning Post (SCMP), police launched an investigation into the pair after observing they had met Ms Kwok overseas.

The 68-year-old, identified by local media as Ms Kwok’s father Kwok Yin-sang, is accused of helping his daughter handle her insurance policy upon his return to Hong Kong.

According to a charge sheet seen by Reuters, Kwok Yin-sang had been trying to access Ms Kwok’s life and personal accident insurance policy which could be used to obtain funds on her behalf.

He has been denied bail by national security judge Victor So at the West Kowloon Magistrates’ Courts, Reuters reported.

The 35-year-old man, identified by local media as Ms Kwok’s brother, is accused of supporting their father’s attempts to retrieve the money, Reuters said.

He has reportedly been released on bail pending further investigation.

Under Hong Kong’s Safeguarding National Security Bill, it is illegal to “make available, directly or indirectly, any funds or other financial assets or economic resources to, or for the benefit of, a relevant absconder”.

In 2023, Hong Kong placed a bounty on the heads of several pro-democracy activists – including Ms Kwok – who had fled the territory.

The eight activists targeted were accused of colluding with foreign forces – a crime that can carry a sentence of life in prison.

At the time, Ms Kwok said the bounty was aimed at intimidating her and her fellow activists.

“That’s exactly the kind of thing the Hong Kong government and the Chinese Communist party would do – which is to intimidate people into not doing anything, silencing them,” she told BBC’s Newshour at the time.

The former British colony became a special administrative region of China in 1997, when Britain’s 99-year lease of the New Territories, north of Hong Kong island, expired.

Hong Kong still enjoys freedoms not seen in mainland China, but they are widely thought to be on the decline.

Activists who were planning to sail a ship to Gaza say it was struck by drones in international waters off the coast of Malta – appearing to accuse Israel of being behind the attack.

The Freedom Flotilla Coalition said its ship The Conscience was targeted at 00:23 local time on Friday and issued an SOS signal right after the attack.

The BBC was sent a recording of the distress call from the flotilla ship, recorded by a crew member on a nearby oil tanker. The captain of the flotilla ship can clearly be heard reporting drone strikes and a fire onboard.

The Maltese government said everyone aboard the ship was “confirmed safe” and that a fire onboard the ship was “brought under control overnight”.

The Freedom Flotilla Coalition said it had planned to sail to Gaza with people including climate activist Greta Thunberg on board and “challenge Israel’s illegal siege and blockade”.

The NGO called for Israeli ambassadors to be summoned to answer for “violation of international law, including the ongoing blockade and the bombing of our civilian vessel”.

The Israeli military said it was looking into reports of the attack.

Organisers told the BBC that the group had been “operating in total secrecy with a complete media blackout” to prevent “sabotage” as they prepared to sail towards Gaza – where about two million Palestinians have been under a complete blockade by the Israeli military for two months.

Volunteer Surya McEwen said he and others had lost contact with the ship after the incident, which he said caused a fire on board and damaged the hull. They had since been told there were no major injuries.

“It’s a full-on situation for them but they’re recovering,” he told the BBC, adding that the incident had been an “unprovoked attack on a civilian vessel in international waters, trying to do a humanitarian mission”.

Climate activist Greta Thunberg was among those who had planned to board the ship once it departed for Gaza on Friday.

Speaking to journalists in Valetta, she said: “I was part of the group who was supposed to board that boat today to continue the voyage towards Gaza, which is one of many attempts to open up a humanitarian corridor and to do our part to keep trying to break Israel’s illegal siege on Gaza.”

Thunberg added that as far as she’s aware, the ship is still at the location of the attack because moving it would let too much water in.

“What is certain is that we human rights activists will continue to do everything in our power to do our part, to demand a free Palestine and demand the opening of a humanitarian corridor,” she said.

The Maltese government said that 12 crew and four activists were on board the boat, while the NGO said 30 activists had been on board.

The Freedom Flotilla Coalition uploaded a video showing a fire on the ship. It said the attack appeared to have targeted the generator, which left the ship without power and at risk of sinking.

The Maltese government said a tugboat was sent to the scene to extinguish the fire, which they say was under control by 01:28 local time.

“By 2:13, all crew were confirmed safe but refused to board the tug,” the statement said, adding the ship remains outside territorial waters.

Cyprus responded to the SOS signal by dispatching a vessel, the activists said, but that it did not “provide the critical electrical support needed”.

Marine tracking software shows that the Conscience left Tunisia on Tuesday evening and is currently around 12-14 nautical miles off Malta.

The coalition is campaigning to end Israel’s blockade of Gaza, which is also facing mounting international condemnation. Last month the UK, French and German foreign ministers described the Israeli decision to block aid as “intolerable”.

• Gaza kitchens warn food will run out in days after two months of Israeli blockade

Two months ago, Israel shut all crossings to Gaza – preventing all goods, including food, fuel and medicines from entering – and later resumed its military offensive, ending a two-month ceasefire with Hamas.

Some humanitarian organisations such as the World Food Programme say they have already run out of food while community kitchens say their stocks are dwindling fast. On Friday the Red Cross said the humanitarian response in Gaza was on the verge of “total collapse”.

The Israeli military launched a campaign to destroy Hamas in response to an unprecedented cross-border attack on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage.

At least 52,418 people have been killed in Gaza during the ensuing war, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.

The Duke of Sussex has told the BBC he “would love a reconciliation” with the Royal Family, in an emotional interview in which he said he was “devastated” at losing a legal challenge over his security in the UK.

Prince Harry said the King “won’t speak to me because of this security stuff”, but that he did not want to fight anymore and did “not know how much longer my father has”.

The prince spoke to BBC News in California after losing an appeal over the levels of security he and his family are entitled to while in the UK.

Buckingham Palace said: “All of these issues have been examined repeatedly and meticulously by the courts, with the same conclusion reached on each occasion.”

After Friday’s court ruling, the prince said: “I can’t see a world in which I would bring my wife and children back to the UK at this point.”

“There have been so many disagreements between myself and some of my family,” he added, but had now “forgiven” them.

“I would love reconciliation with my family. There’s no point continuing to fight any more, life is precious,” said Prince Harry, who said the dispute over his security had “always been the sticking point”.

The prince had wanted to overturn changes to his security that were introduced in 2020 as he stepped down as a working royal and moved to the United States.

Saying that he felt “let down”, he described his court defeat as a “good old fashioned establishment stitch up” and blamed the Royal Household for influencing the decision to reduce his security.

Asked whether he had asked the King to intervene in the dispute over security, Prince Harry said: “I never asked him to intervene – I asked him to step out of the way and let the experts do their jobs.”

The prince said his treatment during the process of deciding his security had “uncovered my worst fears”.

He said of the decision: “I’m devastated – not so much as devastated with the loss that I am about the people behind the decision, feeling as though this is okay. Is it a win for them?”

He continued: “I’m sure there are some people out there, probably most likely the people that wish me harm, [who] consider this a huge win.”

Prince Harry said the decision to remove his automatic security entitlement impacts him “every single day”, and has left him in a position where he can only safely return to the UK if invited by the Royal Family – as he would get sufficient security in those circumstances.

The prince said changes to his security status in 2020 had impacted not just him, but his wife and, later, his children too.

He went on to say: “Everybody knew that they were putting us at risk in 2020 and they hoped that me knowing that risk would force us to come back.

“But then when you realise that didn’t work, do you not want to keep us safe?

“Whether you’re the government, the Royal Household, whether you’re my dad, my family – despite all of our differences, do you not want to just ensure our safety?”

Asked whether he missed the UK, he added: “I love my country, I always have done, despite what some people in that country have done… and I think that it’s really quite sad that I won’t be able to show my children my homeland.”

Prince Harry said he would not be seeking a further legal challenge, saying Friday’s ruling had “proven that there was no way to win this through the courts”.

“I wish someone had told me that beforehand,” he said, adding that the ruling had been a “surprise”.

He continued: “This, at the heart of it, is a family dispute, and it makes me really, really sad that we’re sitting here today, five years later, where a decision that was made most likely, in fact I know, to keep us under the roof.”

Prince Harry spoke to the BBC shortly after losing his latest legal challenge against the UK government over the level of security he and his family are entitled to when visiting.

The Court of Appeal dismissed the prince’s case, which hinged on how an official committee made the decision to remove his eligibility for automatic, full-scale protection in line with what other senior royals receive.

On Friday, the court ruled that Prince Harry had made “powerful” arguments about the level of threat he and his family face, but said his “sense of grievance” did not “translate into a legal argument”.

His legal complaint centred around a committee called the Protection of Royalty and Public Figures (Ravec), which authorises security for senior royals on behalf of the Home Office, and was chaired at the time by Sir Richard Mottram.

Under the committee’s regulations, Prince Harry argued, his case should have been put before Ravec’s Risk Management Board (RMB), which would have assessed the threats to his and family’s security – but that did not happen.

On Friday, senior judges said the committee had diverged from policy when making its 2020 decision over the prince’s security, but concluded it had been “sensible” to do so because of the complexity of his circumstances.

Prince Harry said his “jaw hit the floor” when he found out a representative of the Royal Household sat on the Ravec committee, and claimed Friday’s ruling had proved its decision-making process was more influenced by the Royal Household than by legal constraints.

He claimed there had been “interference” by the Royal Household in the 2020 decision, which he said resulted in his status as the most at-risk royal being downgraded to the least at risk “overnight”.

“So one does question how that is even possible and also the motive behind that at the time,” he added.

Prince Harry called on UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and Home Secretary Yvette Cooper to intervene in his security case, and to overhaul how the Ravec committee operates.

In a statement released later on Friday, the prince said he would write to Cooper to “ask her to urgently examine the matter and review the Ravec process”.

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The blood of a US man who deliberately injected himself with snake venom for nearly two decades has led to an “unparalleled” antivenom, say scientists.

Antibodies found in Tim Friede’s blood have been shown to protect against fatal doses from a wide range of species in animal tests.

Current therapies have to match the specific species of venomous snake anyone has been bitten by.

But Mr Friede’s 18-year mission could be a significant step in finding a universal antivenom against all snakebites – which kill up to 14,000 people a year and leave three times as many needing amputations or facing permanent disability.

In total, Mr Friede has endured more than 200 bites and more than 700 injections of venom he prepared from some of the world’s deadliest snakes, including multiple species of mambas, cobras, taipans and kraits.

He initially wanted to build up his immunity to protect himself when handling snakes, documenting his exploits on YouTube.

But the former truck mechanic said that he had “completely screwed up” early on when two cobra bites in quick succession left him in a coma.

“I didn’t want to die. I didn’t want to lose a finger. I didn’t want to miss work,” he told the BBC.

Mr Friede’s motivation was to develop better therapies for the rest of the world, explaining: “It just became a lifestyle and I just kept pushing and pushing and pushing as hard as I could push – for the people who are 8,000 miles away from me who die from snakebite”.

Antivenom is currently made by injecting small doses of snake venom into animals, such as horses. Their immune system fights the venom by producing antibodies and these are harvested to be used as a therapy.

But venom and antivenom have to be closely matched because the toxins in a venomous bite vary from one species to another.

There is even wide variety within the same species – antivenom made from snakes in India is less effective against the same species in Sri Lanka.

A team of researchers began searching for a type of immune defence called broadly neutralising antibodies. Instead of targeting the part of a toxin that makes it unique, they target the parts that are common to entire classes of toxin.

That’s when Dr Jacob Glanville, chief executive of biotech company Centivax, came across Tim Friede.

“Immediately I was like ‘if anybody in the world has developed these broadly neutralising antibodies, it’s going to be him’ and so I reached out,” he said.

“The first call, I was like ‘this might be awkward, but I’d love to get my hands on some of your blood’.”

Mr Friede agreed and the work was given ethical approval because the study would only take blood, rather than giving him more venom.

The research focused on elapids – one of the two families of venomous snakes – such as coral snakes, mambas, cobras, taipans and kraits.

Elapids primarily use neurotoxins in their venom, which paralyses their victim and is fatal when it stops the muscles needed to breathe.

Researchers picked 19 elapids identified by the World Health Organization as being among the deadliest snakes on the planet. They then began scouring Mr Friede’s blood for protective defences.

Their work, detailed in the journal Cell, identified two broadly neutralising antibodies that could target two classes of neurotoxin. They added in a drug that targets a third to make their antivenom cocktail.

In experiments on mice, the cocktail meant the animals survived fatal doses from 13 of the 19 species of venomous snake. They had partial protection against the remaining six.

This is “unparalleled” breadth of protection, according to Dr Glanville, who said it “likely covers a whole bunch of elapids for which there is no current antivenom”.

The team is trying to refine the antibodies further and see if adding a fourth component could lead to total protection against elapid snake venom.

The other class of snake – the vipers – rely more on haemotoxins, which attack the blood, rather than neurotoxins. In total there are around a dozen broad classes of toxin in snake venom, which also includes cytotoxins that directly kill cells.

“I think in the next 10 or 15 years we’ll have something effective against each one of those toxin classes,” said Prof Peter Kwong, one of the researchers at Columbia University.

And the hunt continues inside Mr Friede’s blood samples.

“Tim’s antibodies are really quite extraordinary – he taught his immune system to get this very, very broad recognition,” said Prof Kwong.

The ultimate hope is to have either a single antivenom that can do everything, or one injection for elapids and one for vipers.

Prof Nick Casewell, who is the head of the centre for snakebite research and interventions at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, said the breadth of protection reported was “certainly novel” and provided “a strong piece of evidence” that this was a feasible approach.

“There is no doubt that this work moves the field forwards in an exciting direction.”

But he cautioned there was “much work to do” and that the antivenom still needed extensive testing before it could be used in people.

But for Mr Friede, reaching this stage “makes me feel good”.

“I’m doing something good for humanity and that was very important to me. I’m proud of it. It’s pretty cool.”

This BBC interview with Prince Harry will become one of those famous moments when television collides with the world of the royals.

It was like an emotional avalanche. It began with some stones being kicked over with questions about security and then the interview turned into a spectacular release of what seemed to be a rolling mountain of pent-up frustration and a poignant sense of separation.

The starting point was Prince Harry’s defeat in the courts as he sought to overturn a downgrading of his security in the UK. He seemed wounded. Had he decided it was time to have his say? And then really say some more?

A conversation about security was suddenly becoming about a whole range of insecurities.

Prince Harry looked upset, it seemed a cry from the heart when he said that his father “won’t speak to me because of this security stuff”, even though he didn’t know “how much longer my father has”.

This was a first-hand confirmation of the scale of the rift in the Royal Family. There was also the lack of contact between his children and their wider family in the UK. He was “gutted” and “devastated” and tired of only coming home for funerals and court cases.

And like all family rows, there was a balancing act between wanting to air grievances, to throw emotional punches, and then still want to get back together and hug and make friends.

So Prince Harry talked of the downgrading in his security in terms of this family dispute, suggesting that the Royal Household had influenced the decision, using security as leverage to keep him within the Royal Family.

Then he talked with great frankness, sounding like a slightly homesick son stuck overseas, when he spoke about wanting reconciliation. “There’s no point continuing to fight any more. Life is precious,” he said, holding out an olive branch the size of a small palace.

The “sticking point” for reconciliation is security when he visits the UK, said Prince Harry. And as well as calling on his father the King to help resolve this, he also called on the prime minister and home secretary to intervene.

At that point, it’s worth stepping away from the drama and taking a cold draught of unemotive legal air, from the judge who ruled against Prince Harry on Friday afternoon.

Sir Geoffrey Vos told the court that Prince Harry’s “sense of grievance” did not add up to the same thing as a legal argument. He upheld the decision that security arrangements had been changed because Prince Harry’s circumstances had changed, he was no longer a working royal and no longer living in the UK.

It might have annoyed Prince Harry, but the courts had again rejected his claim about unfair treatment.

There was also a response from Buckingham Palace that sounded like a weary parent.

“All of these issues have been examined repeatedly and meticulously by the courts, with the same conclusion reached on each occasion.”

It wouldn’t be right for the King to wade into issues being reviewed by the courts and considered by government departments, suggested the Palace.

While Prince Harry wore his frustration on his sleeve in this interview, you have to wonder how the rest of his family will privately respond to this outburst, with this story ricocheting around the world, on billions of mobile phones and TV screens.

These clips are going to be seen again and again. Netflix would have spun it out into a mini-series.

VE Day 80 is coming up next week, with the Royal Family prominent at commemorations. But the public might still be thinking of Prince Harry’s accusations about them. How will that work alongside messages of togetherness and unity?

Like in all families, arguments can go back a long way. And Prince Harry’s testimony was disarmingly candid, restlessly baring his feelings, and suggesting that his departure from the UK was still unresolved.

He was looking back with some uncertainty at home, and the question now will be how people at home look back at him.

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Nigel Farage’s Reform UK has made big gains in English local elections, cementing it as a prime challenger to Britain’s traditional main parties.

It won 677 of around 1,600 seats contested on Thursday across a clutch of mainly Tory-held councils last contested in 2021.

Reform seized control of eight authorities from the Conservatives, including former strongholds Kent and Staffordshire.

The party has also won control of Doncaster, the only council Labour was defending, and Durham, where Labour was previously the largest party.

Reform also displaced Labour in Runcorn and Helsby, where it won a tightly-fought Westminster by-election to make Sarah Pochin its fifth MP.

As well as winning control of its first-ever councils, Reform has also won its first mayoral contests in the newly-created combined authorities of Greater Lincolnshire, and Hull and East Yorkshire.

A jubilant Farage said the results meant Reform had overtaken the Tories as the main opposition party to Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour government.

The elections in 23 councils, across mainly rural and suburban areas of England, marked the first major electoral test since Labour’s landslide general election victory last year.

The Tories, who were defending the most seats, had been braced for big losses since the councils up for re-election were last contested in 2021, when the party was riding high under Boris Johnson during the Covid vaccine rollout.

But their results have been even worse than expected, with the party losing over 676 seats and control of all the 16 authorities it was defending.

It captured the Cambridgeshire & Peterborough mayoralty from Labour – a silver lining for the party in an otherwise dismal set of results.

Reacting to the results in the Times on Saturday, Sir Keir said simply: “I get it”.

The prime minister said he shared in the “sharp edge of fury” felt by voters leaning away from the major parties, arguing that it spurs him on to “go further and faster” in delivering Labour’s promised changes to public services, immigration and cost of living pressures.

• Live: Follow latest on local elections
• Who won the local election in my area?
• Sir John Curtice: Reform challenging traditional party dominance
• Henry Zeffman: Seven things we learnt from the elections

Tory leader Kemi Badenoch acknowledged that her party was facing a “long journey” to rebuild after its long spell in government, adding that “protest is in the air” in a “very competitive political environment”.

Writing for the Telegraph, she acknowledged the results had been a “bloodbath” for her party, but argued it had been “making progress” under her leadership, including on party unity and holding Labour ministers to account.

Labour, which was defending far fewer seats this year, was down by 186 seats.

It held a trio of mayoralties in Doncaster, North Tyneside and the West of England, but saw its share of the vote significantly dented by Reform in all of them.

Sir Keir said the results showed the need for his party to go “further and faster” to deliver on voters’ priorities in government, adding: “I get it.”

Lib Dem leader Sir Ed Davey said the party had supplanted the Conservatives as the “party of Middle England” after gaining 163 seats.

The party seized Shropshire from the Tories, and gained control of Oxfordshire and Cambridgeshire, two county councils where previously no party was in overall control.

They have also become the biggest party in Hertfordshire and Wiltshire, as well as in Gloucestershire and Devon, where they narrowly fell short of overall majorities.

The Greens gained over 40 seats, but will have been disappointed not to snatch the West of England mayoral contest from Labour, where they came a narrow third to Reform.

The BBC is estimating that, if elections had taken place across Britain on Thursday, the Conservatives would have slumped to just 15% of the national vote, its worst-ever share of such a projection, behind the Liberal Democrats on 17%.

Labour would have won 20% of the vote, according to the projection, equalling its lowest previous recorded performance in 2009.

It is the first time the combined projected share of the vote for the Conservatives and Labour has fallen below 50%, underlining the continuing fragmentation of the British political landscape.

Farage has made gaining a foothold in town halls a key staging post ahead of the next UK general election, which is expected in 2029.

Before Thursday’s elections it only had around 100 councillors, mainly as a result of defections from other parties.

However, the results will also increase scrutiny of how his party performs in office and how it intends to wield its newly-acquired local powers.

During the campaign, both the Reform UK and Tory leaders were repeatedly questioned during media interviews about how their local councillors might co-operate with each other after the elections.

Farage ruled out striking formal coalitions with other parties to share power, but left the door open to more informal forms of co-operation, including the Conservatives.

That position could soon be put to the test in councils including Leicestershire and Worcestershire, where it fell short of a majority despite becoming the largest party.

Speaking to supporters on Friday, Farage said his party would seek to “reduce excessive expenditure” in local government, and suggested his councillors would scale back local diversity and climate policies.

He added his party would also look to push back on asylum seekers being housed in hotels, saying he was opposed to the government “plonking scores of young men” in counties where his party now has control.

Coastal areas of Chile and Argentina were evacuated after Chilean authorities issued a tsunami warning following a 7.4 magnitude earthquake off the country’s southern coast.

Thousands of people made their way to higher ground after the earthquake struck in the Drake Passage between Cape Horn, on the southern tip of South America, and Antarctica on Friday at 09:58 local time (12:58 GMT).

The US Geological Survey said its epicentre was 219km (136 miles) from Ushuaia, Argentina – the world’s most southerly city.

The tsunami warning was issued for Chile’s remote Magallanes region and the Chilean Antarctic Territory, with precautionary measures also taken in Argentina’s Tierro del Fuego region.

The earthquake struck at a shallow depth of 10km (6 miles), the US Geological Survey said. There were no immediate reports of damage or injuries.

Residents in affected areas were advised to act calmly and follow the instructions of the authorities.

In a post on X, Chilean President Gabriel Boric said: “We call for evacuation of the coastline throughout the Magallanes region.”

More than 1,700 people moved to higher ground in the sparsely-populated area, including 1,000 from the town of Puerto Williams and 500 from Puerto Natales, , according to Chile’s disaster agency (Senapred).

Some 32 people also followed evacuation procedures in Chile’s Antarctic research bases, Senapred added. The agency has issued its highest level of alert for disasters, meaning all resources can be mobilised to respond.

Footage posted on social media showed people calmly heading for higher ground in the remote town of Puerto Williams, with sirens blaring in the background.

Chile’s police force also posted a video showing an officer pushing a person in a wheelchair up a hill in the town, home to around 2,800 people.

In Argentina, the earthquake was felt primarily in Ushuaia, with other towns affected “to a lesser extent”, the office for the governor of the region said.

An official from the region’s civil protection agency told local media that around 2,000 people had been evacuated away from the Argentine coastline.

Chile is often affected by earthquakes, with three tectonic plates converging within its territory.

In his first news conference since the federal election, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney laid out his priorities, including how he will approach upcoming talks with US President Donald Trump.

His election campaign focused on standing up to Trump’s tariff plans and threats to make Canada the 51st US state, which Carney has said will “never ever” happen.

The Liberals won 168 seats out of 343 in Canada’s House of Commons in Monday’s election, enough to form a minority government but falling short of the 172 necessary for a majority.

Carney’s new cabinet will be sworn in the week of 12 May.

Here are three things we learned from Carney’s comments:

Off the top, Carney announced an upcoming visit from King Charles III and Queen Camilla, who will visit Canada later this month.

“This is a historic honour that matches the weight of our times,” he told reporters gathered in Ottawa.

Carney says he had invited the King to formally open Canada’s 45th Parliament on 27 May.

That request is certainly strategic.

Carney said the King’s visit “clearly underscores the sovereignty of our country” – a nod to Trump’s 51st state remarks.

Trump also has a well-known admiration for the Royal family. In February, UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer used his trip to the White House to present Trump with a letter from King Charles offering to host a second state visit.

The King is Canada’s head of state and is represented in Canada by Governor General Mary Simon.

After an election, the new parliamentary session is usually opened by the governor general, who reads the Speech from the Throne on behalf of the prime minister. The speech, read in Canada’s Senate, sets out the government’s agenda.

While it is not unprecedented for the Throne speech to be read by the head of state, the last time this happened was in October 1977 when Queen Elizabeth II read the speech for the second time. The first was in 1957.

Carney will visit the White House on Tuesday, barely a week after the federal election.

His first official visit to the White House as prime minister comes amid frayed ties between the close allies in the wake of Trump’s threatened and imposed tariffs, as well as the president’s repeated comments about making Canada the 51st US state.

Carney said there are two sets of issues to discuss: the immediate tariffs and the broader relationship.

• Trump disliked Trudeau – why Carney may fare better
• Faisal Islam: Carney wants to lead a G7 fightback on Trump tariffs

“My government will fight to get the best deal for Canada,” Carney said, making it clear there would be no rush to secure an agreement.

He added that the high-level dialogue indicates seriousness of the conversation between the leaders.

He said he expects “difficult but constructive” discussions with the president.

He also said he would strengthen relationship with “reliable” trading partners, pointing to recent conversations he has had with world leaders in Europe and Asia.

Canada’s election highlighted divisions within Canada, along regional, demographic and political lines.

On Friday, Carney said Canada must be united in this “once in a lifetime crisis”.

“It’s time to come together put on our Team Canada sweaters and win big,” he said.

He offered olive branches both to Canadians who did not vote for his Liberal Party and to his political rivals.

• Why young voters flocked to Canada’s Conservatives

While Canadians voted for a robust response to Trump, they also sent “a clear message that their cost of living must come down and their communities need to be safe”, Carney said.

“As prime minister I’ve heard these messages loud and clear and I will act on them with focus and determination.”

He said he is committed to working with others, including those across the aisle.

Under leader Pierre Poilievre, the Conservative campaign focused heavily on cost of living issues and crime.

The Conservatives came in second, forming Official Opposition but Poilievre lost his own Ottawa-area seat.

Carney said he is open to calling a special election that would allow Poilievre to seek another seat if that is the path the Conservatives wanted to take.

“No games,” he said.

On Friday, an MP-elect in Alberta announced he would resign his safe Conservative seat to allow Poilievre to run. Poilievre later confirmed he will run in that constituency “to hold the Liberal minority government to account”.

Germany’s Foreign Office has defended a decision to classify the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party as right-wing extremist, after sharp criticism from the White House.

US Vice-President JD Vance accused “bureaucrats” of rebuilding the Berlin Wall, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio slammed the designation as “tyranny in disguise”.

In an unusual move, the foreign office directly replied to Rubio on X, writing: “We have learnt from our history that right-wing extremism needs to be stopped.”

The intelligence agency that made the classification found AfD’s “prevailing understanding of people based on ethnicity and descent” goes against Germany’s “free democratic order”.

The AfD came second in federal elections in February, winning a record 152 seats in the 630-seat parliament with 20.8% of the vote.

The agency, Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz (BfV), had already classed the AfD as right-wing extremist in three eastern states where its popularity is highest. Now, that designation has been extended to the entire party.

The AfD “aims to exclude certain population groups from equal participation in society”, it said in a statement. The agency said specifically that the party did not consider citizens “from predominantly Muslim countries” as equal members of the German people.

Joint party leaders Alice Weidel and Tino Chrupalla said the decision was “clearly politically motivated” and a “severe blow to German democracy”.

Beatrix von Storch, the party’s deputy parliamentary leader, told the BBC’s Newshour programme that the designation was “the way an authoritarian state, a dictatorship, would treat their parties”.

• AfD classified as extreme-right by German intelligence

The new classification gives authorities greater powers to monitor the AfD using tactics like phone interception and undercover agents.

“That’s not democracy – it’s tyranny in disguise,” wrote Marco Rubio on X.

But the German Foreign Office hit back.

“This is democracy,” it wrote, directly replying to the politician’s X account.

The post said the decision had been made after a “thorough and independent investigation” and could be appealed.

“We have learnt from our history that right-wing extremism needs to be stopped,” the statement concluded – a reference to Hitler’s Nazi party and the Holocaust.

JD Vance, who met Weidel in Munich nine days before the election and used a speech to the Munich Security Conference to show support for the AfD, said that “bureaucrats” were trying to destroy the party.

“The West tore down the Berlin Wall together. And it has been rebuilt – not by the Soviets or the Russians, but by the German establishment,” he wrote on X.

The Berlin Wall, built in 1961, separated East and West Berlin for nearly 30 years during the Cold War.

The new designation has reignited calls to ban the AfD ahead of a vote next week in the parliament, or Bundestag, to confirm conservative leader Friedrich Merz as chancellor. He will be leading a coalition with the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD).

Lars Klingbeil, the SPD leader who is expected to become vice-chancellor and finance minister, said that while no hasty decision would be made, the government would consider banning the AfD.

“They want a different country, they want to destroy our democracy. And we must take that very seriously,” he told Bild newspaper.

The White House has confirmed a military parade will be held to mark the US Army’s 250th anniversary on 14 June, which falls on the same day as President Donald Trump’s birthday.

A “day-long festival” will be held on the National Mall in Washington DC, an army spokesperson said, adding that the event would feature 6,600 soldiers, 150 vehicles and 50 aircraft.

Trump first floated a military parade during his first term, but he scrapped the idea after reports it would have cost about $90 million (£71m).

Earlier on Friday, Trump announced plans to rename Veterans Day – known as Remembrance Day in the UK – as “Victory Day for World War I” to celebrate American contributions to the conflict.

The army said planning for the military parade was “actively underway”, and it was exploring “options to make the celebration even bigger, with more capability demonstrations, additional displays of equipment, and more engagement with the community.” Trump turns 79 that day.

He first proposed a military parade for Veterans Day in 2018.

He said he wanted the US to “top” France’s Bastille Day parade, which he attended on a visit to Paris in 2017.

Local politicians asked for a “ridiculously high” price, he said, and the idea was abandoned.

Meanwhile, in addition to renaming Veterans Day, Trump has said he wants to name VE Day on 8 May as “Victory Day for World War II”.

The announcement was not accompanied by an executive order, and it is unclear whether he intends for 8 May to become a federal holiday – a power that rests with the US Congress.

The days mark the end of World War I in 1918 and Germany’s surrender to the allies in 1945, respectively.

In his late-night post, Trump said that “many of our allies and friends are celebrating May 8th as Victory Day, but we did more than any other country, by far, in producing a victorious result” in the Second World War.

“We won both wars, nobody was close to us in terms of strength, bravery or military brilliance, but we never celebrate anything,” he added. “That’s because we don’t have leaders anymore, that know how to do so! So we are going to start celebrating our victories again!”

Later on Friday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt appeared to deny reports the name of Veterans Day would be changing, writing on X: “We will always honor Veterans Day AND we should commemorate the end of WWI and WWII as VICTORY DAYS!”

VE Day celebrations being held in the UK, France, Canada and other parts of the world this year mark 80 years since World War Two formally ended in Europe with Germany’s unconditional surrender shortly after Berlin fell to Soviet forces.

Russia commemorates the occasion as the end of what it calls the “Great Patriotic War”. It is one of the most important holidays in the country and is marked by a massive parade.

About 27 million Soviet citizens died during the war, which started in 1939 when Germany, alongside the Soviets, invaded Poland.

According to statistics published online by the US National WWII Museum in New Orleans, about 418,500 Americans were killed in both the European and Pacific theatres of the conflict. Of the total, about 416,000 were military casualties.

The US has not historically recognised VE Day. The country was still at war with Japan on the Pacific front for several more months after conflict ended in Europe.

Veterans Day, known as Remembrance Day in the UK, was formerly known as Armistice Day in the US to mark the end of fighting in Europe on 11 November 1918.

After World War Two and the Korean War, it was renamed to honour all US military veterans. Memorial Day, which always falls on the last Monday in May, honours Americans who were killed in battle.

Wall Street has clawed back losses incurred after President Donald Trump imposed global tariffs a month ago, capping the longest winning streak in two decades for US stocks.

Shares saw gains for the ninth day in a row for the first time since 2004 after a better-than-expected jobs report and rising hope of US-China trade talks.

Major US indexes were all up when the market closed on Friday – the S&P 500 and Nasdaq had both risen 1.5% while the Dow Jones Industrial Average increased 1.4%.

The tech sector made the biggest gains, with Microsoft and Nvidia growing by more than 2%.

It came as the Department of Labor said on Friday that US employers had added 177,000 new jobs in April.

The report outpaced analysts’ predictions, although it was still a slowdown in hiring from the month beforehand. Meanwhile, the unemployment rate held steady at 4.2%.

Another sign of encouragement for investors was Beijing’s announcement on Friday that it was considering an offer from Washington to hold trade talks with the US.

At 145%, China faces the highest import taxes by far.

For some analysts the jobs figures tamped down recession fears in the wake of commerce department data this week showing a contraction in the US economy for the first time in three years.

“There is nothing to complain about here,” Carl Weinberg, chief economist at High Frequency Economics, said in a research note.

“You cannot find any evidence of a nascent recession in these figures.”

Seema Shah, chief global strategist at Principal Asset Management, also saw cause for optimism.

“The economy will weaken in the coming months but, with this underlying momentum, the US has a decent chance of averting recession if it can step back from the tariff brink in time,” she said.

But other experts said it would take time to see the full effect of Trump’s tariffs.

While the jobs report is strong, “the outlook remains very uncertain,” Olu Sonola, head of US economic research at Fitch Ratings, told the BBC on Friday.

Australians will head to the polls tomorrow to elect a new government.

But the country’s 18 million eligible voters won’t just be going to pick their preferred candidate – they’ll also be fulfilling a legal obligation.

Since 1924, voting has been compulsory for all Australian citizens over the age of 18, with failure to vote carrying a fine of A$20 ($13; £10).

Today, while many countries are struggling to get people to the ballot box, Australia boasts one of the highest voter turnouts in the world.

The country’s last federal election in 2022 saw ballots counted from around 90% of eligible voters, according to official statistics.

For comparison, the voter turnout for the UK general election in 2024 was 60%, while the figure for the US presidential election in the same year was 64%.

Compulsory voting has broad popular support in Australia, and is seen as a way to capture representation from the majority of society – not just the majority of people who choose to vote.

Here’s what you need to know about compulsory voting in Australia.

You can be exempted from voting with a valid reason, but Australian authorities have put in place a variety of policies to reduce barriers to voting. For one, elections are held on Saturdays, when more workers will be free to go down to polling stations.

Employers are also required to give workers paid leave on election day to ensure that people have enough time to go vote.

An added incentive for people to perform their democratic duty are “democracy sausages”, grilled on barbeques near polling booths. These snacks have become icons of Australian elections, often making them the largest fundraising events of the year for local schools and community groups.

Voting became compulsory for federal elections when the Electoral Act was amended in 1924, and the effect was swift and stark: voter turnout surged from less than 60% in the 1922 election to more than 91% in 1925.

A big argument for compulsory voting in Australia is the legitimacy it grants the election winner.

“Proponents of compulsory voting argue that a parliament elected by a compulsory vote more accurately reflects the will of the electorate,” reads a guide published by the Australian Election Commission.

“Compulsory voting is claimed to encourage policies which collectively address the full spectrum of elector values,” said the commission. On the flipside, it notes, compulsory voting also runs the risk of “pork barrelling” – the use of government funds for projects that will curry favour with voters – as parties focus on winning over voters on the margins.

While there is no scientific consensus on how compulsory voting affects the policy issues championed by political parties, many believe it counters political polarisation by drawing out more moderate voters.

Conversely, places without compulsory voting may see parties appealing to more extreme voter bases.

“That means they can be tempted towards much more extreme political issues,” historian Judith Brett told the BBC in 2022, when the last Australian federal election was held. “Whereas because everybody has to vote, in a way it pulls politics towards the centre.”

Compulsory voting also helps ensure that marginalised people are better represented, said Ms Brett. Research shows that people who are less affluent are also less likely to vote.

“Now that means that politicians, when they’re touting for votes, know that all of the groups, including the poor, are going to have a vote,” Brett said. “And I think that makes for a more egalitarian public policy.”

Compulsory voting is fairly uncontroversial in Australia.

National surveys since 1967 show public support for the laws have consistently hovered around 70%.

Over the decades there have been individuals campaigning to end compulsory voting, arguing that citizens should have the right to choose whether to vote at all – but such calls have gained little traction among the wider population.

In 2022, 77% of Australians said they would have still voted if it was voluntary.