Labor’s Anthony Albanese has defied the so-called “incumbency curse” to be re-elected Australia’s prime minister in a landslide.

Official vote counting won’t finish for days, but Albanese’s centre-left government will dramatically increase its majority after the conservative Liberal-National coalition suffered a thumping defeat nationwide.

“Today, the Australian people have voted for Australian values: for fairness, aspiration and opportunity for all; for the strength to show courage in adversity and kindness to those in need,” Albanese said.

Coalition leader Peter Dutton, who lost his own seat of 24 years, said he accepted “full responsibility” for his party’s loss and apologised to his MPs.

Following the result, UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio both said they looked forward to deepening their bilateral relationships with Australia.

Labor has seen swings towards them right across the country – a rare feat for a second-term government in Australia – and Albanese becomes the first prime minister to win back-to-back elections in over 20 years.

The party’s success has also tempered a trend of voters abandoning the two major parties, which was the big story of the last election in 2022.

Labor is on track to finish with 85 seats, the Coalition about 40, and the Greens Party with one or two, according to projections by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). Other minor parties and independents are ahead in nine seats.

That represents an increase of nine for Labor and a significant drop in support for the Greens. However most “teal” independents have been returned in their more conservative, inner-city electorates.

It’s a remarkable turnaround from the start of the year, when polling put Albanese’s popularity at record lows after three years of global economic pain, tense national debate, and growing government dissatisfaction.

The five-week campaign was dominated by cost-of-living concerns – particularly the affordability of healthcare and housing – with issues like energy and climate change, international relations, and migration also rearing their heads.

Albanese touched on most of them on Saturday night. He reiterated his promises to make healthcare – most critically GP appointments – more affordable, put buying a house in reach for more Australians, and do more to address climate change and protect the environment.

Notably, he also vowed to advance reconciliation for First Nations people: “We will be a stronger nation when we Close the Gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians.”

It’s a veiled referenced to the biggest moment of Albanese’s tenure, the failed Voice referendum of October 2023, which sought to recognise Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the constitution, and simultaneously establish a parliamentary advisory body for them.

Australia remains the only Commonwealth country to have never signed a treaty with its Indigenous people.

The Voice was one of Albanese’s most defining policies, and his most striking setback – it was overwhelmingly rejected after months of often toxic and divisive national debate.

Indigenous Australians have told the BBC they feel like they’ve been forgotten by policymakers since.

The prime minister also found difficulty trying to walk a middle path on the Israel-Gaza war, raised eyebrows after buying a multi-million dollar beach pad as voters grappled with a housing crisis and, like other leaders globally, grappled with tough economic conditions.

With tanking poll numbers, Albanese was broadly seen as the underdog coming into the election, and was poised to be the next victim of the “incumbency curse” – a term to explain a global trend where struggling constituents were turfing out governments after a single term.

Dutton, on the other hand, looked like he was writing a great political comeback – he was on the edge of bringing his party from its worst loss in 70 years back into office in a single term.

It has been almost a century since a first-term government has failed to win re-election, but as Australian National University Emeritus Professor John Warhurst said: “Dutton entered the campaign [year] in front. It was his to lose.”

Instead tonight Dutton has overseen a party loss so emphatic he has lost his own electorate of Dickson, to Labor’s Ali France.

“I love this country and have fought hard for it,” he told supporters in Brisbane, conceding defeat.

“We have been defined by our opponents in this election which is not a true story of who we are, but we will rebuild from here and we will do that because we know our values, we know our beliefs, and we will always stick to them.”

His campaign was marred by unforced errors: including a series of policy backflips which caused confusion, awkward mistakes on important issues like cost of living and, perhaps most memorably, accidentally booting an AFL ball into a cameraman’s head.

“The opposition has been shambolic,” Prof Warhurst says.

But the government – while resolute and disciplined in its campaign – was timid. It’s strategy was largely allowing voters to judge Dutton and his party, rather than advancing bold or convincing policies, analysts say.

And that’s something we heard from voters throughout the campaign too.

While the Coalition turns to licking its wounds and choosing its next leader, it will again have to reckon with its direction.

Last election, analysts and some of the party’s own MPs cautioned against a move towards the right. They questioned whether Dutton – a polarising figure considered by many to be a conservative hard man – was the right person to rebuild support, particularly in the moderate areas where they lost a lot of it.

After a campaign which in its dying days ventured into culture war territory and what some say are “Trumpian” politics, the Coalition is going to have to ask those questions again – and if they want to be competitive, perhaps find different answers.

“We have to stop drinking the Kool-Aid from the fire hose and we need to have a serious review… we delude ourselves that we are just a few tactical devices away from winning an election,” former Liberal strategist Tony Barry told the ABC.

But meanwhile Labor has to decide what it wants to achieve with the large mandate Australia has handed them.

Albanese’s “incumbency curse” turned out to be a gift, with international uncertainty appearing to have swayed voters in countries like Canada away from change. Likewise, Australia voted for stability.

Labor struck a “middle-of-the-road path” with its a policy platform, but can now afford to be braver, says Amy Remeikis, chief politicial analyst at the Australia Institute think tank.

“That was the path that they took to the election, and that is what they are seeing has paid dividends for them. But the question now is: ‘Will Labor actually do something with power?'”

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.

Five people have been rescued after spending 36 hours atop a plane in an alligator-infested swamp in the Amazon after it was forced to make an emergency landing, local authorities said.

The small plane was found by local fishermen in Bolivia’s Amazonas region on Friday having been missing for 48 hours.

The survivors – three women, a child and the 29-year-old pilot – were rescued in “excellent condition”, Wilson Avila, director of the Beni Department’s emergency operations centre, said.

A search and rescue mission was launched on Thursday after the plane disappeared from the radar of the Beni Department in central Bolivia.

The pilot told local media that an engine failure had prompted an emergency landing near the Itanomas River during a flight from Baures in northern Bolivia to the city of Trinidad.

Andres Velarde said that the plane had suddenly started to lose altitude and he had been forced to land the craft in a swamp near a lagoon.

The five that had been on board stood on top of the plane and were “surrounded by alligators that came within three metres of us”.

Velarde added that he believed petrol leaking from the plane had kept the predators at bay. They also saw an anaconda in the water, he said.

While awaiting rescue, they ate local cassava flour one of the passengers had brought.

“We couldn’t drink water and we couldn’t go anywhere else because of the alligators,” Velarde said.

Central and South America are home to caimans, a relative of alligators.

After fishermen discovered the craft, a helicopter was sent to transport the survivors to hospital.

Ruben Torres, Director of the Beni Region Health Department, said that there had been “a lot of speculation about the case” and “many theories” after the plane went missing.

“I am really happy because in the end all the institutions joined together to be able to find the missing people and save those lives,” he told Reuters.

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s chief elections analyst, Antony Green, has appeared on air for the last poll of his 36-year presenting career.

He signed off by providing his expertise for the 2025 Australian federal election.

Since 1991 he has been involved with around 90 Australian elections as well as polls in the UK, New Zealand and Canada.

The ABC’s federal election night coverage recognised his exit with a special send-off.

Speaking on the eve of the federal election, he said it was the right time to stop as he had recently turned 65 and would “rather do without all the pressure of the broadcast”.

Green first took up a six-month contract as an election researcher for the ABC’s 1990 election coverage. He beat 150 other candidates and said he thought he was chosen due to his computer skills.

He ended up being kept on and a year later he would make his first appearance on air.

Memorable Moments

The 1993 federal election was the first to use the ABC’s election computer system, which Green helped to design and has been instrumental in updating ever since.

That year saw dramatic results. John Hewson of the Coalition lost what had been described as the “unlosable” election at the time.

Green noticed early on that there had been dramatic swings in the favour of the incumbent Labor Prime Minister, Paul Keating, and interrupted a wildlife documentary to report on the developments.

Less than three hours later he called the election, something he admitted made him “quite famous”.

It was a “revelation to everyone” to call the election so early, he added.

Much-loved figure

Green has been described as an “Australian institution and much-loved figure with the public” by ABC’s director of news, Justin Stevens.

In 2017, Green was awarded the Order of Australia in Queen Elizabeth II’s birthday honour’s list. He was recognised for his service to broadcast as well as “to the community as a key interpreter of Australian democracy”.

He has developed a cult-like status among some of the Australian public.

He never expected his face to be found adorning t-shirts, mugs and other wares.

The warmth of feeling is so strong among his ABC colleagues, one of the country’s top presenters Leigh Sales wore one of the shirts to vote on election day.

When asked about the merchandise, Green’s retort was “why aren’t I getting any money out of this?”

The whole thing is “a bit embarrassing”, he admitted.

The task of helping run election analysis is no mean feat. Green has amassed a book of notes for every election over the last 35 years. His archive will, he says, be deposited in the Australian National Library to be preserved.

Is he feeling sentimental about his on-air departure? “Not particularly,” he said.

He will still be involved behind the scenes “for a few more years”, however it will be limited to statistical modelling and computer modelling.

On the night Israeli forces entered Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank and began ordering its 20,000 Palestinian residents to leave their homes, 66-year-old Jumaa Zawayda said he would refuse.

“My family all left but I told them I had to stay, if Israeli forces come to raid our house I want to be there to stop it being damaged.”

What followed was three days of fear, with the constant sound of gunfire, explosions and drones flying through the neighbourhood, and issuing of orders that Jumaa couldn’t make out amid the noise. Then water and electricity was cut off, his phone ran out of battery and Jumaa felt he could no longer stay.

Now, three months later, Jumaa is standing on a hill in Jenin city, looking out over the ghost town of the refugee camp to which he and the other residents are still prevented from returning by the Israeli military.

He’s trying to see if his home is one of the many destroyed by the Israeli forces during their operations against Palestinian armed groups that were present in the camp. The sound of ongoing explosions can be heard below.

“Some people have told me they think our building was demolished, but we don’t know for certain,” says Jumaa, struggling to express himself through his emotion.

The father of nine, who used to work in construction, stayed for three months in a school-turned-shelter for the camp’s displaced residents. He has now moved into accommodation for university students that he shares with his brother.

Before the outbreak of the war in Gaza in October 2023, Israel was already engaged in a military campaign against armed groups in the West Bank.

A number of groups emerged in the densely-populated urban refugee camps created for Palestinians who fled or were expelled from their homes during the war that followed the creation of the state of Israel in 1948.

The main groups in Jenin camp are affiliated to Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas. Their fighters have mostly attacked Israeli military forces, alongside sporadic attacks on Israeli settlers in the West Bank.

The number of fighters is unknown but local journalists estimate that there were around 150 fighters in Jenin camp prior to the recent operations by both Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

The Palestinian Authority, which governs parts of the West Bank, launched its own crackdown in Jenin camp in December 2024 and its forces only withdrew when the Israeli military began its major operation there in January.

Israel’s defence minister has called the camps “nests of terror” and in January stepped up its campaign against the armed groups operating inside them – entering and blockading a number of refugee camps in the northern West Bank that are home to tens of thousands of Palestinians.

It ordered residents to leave and began a wave of building demolitions, while giving some residents brief opportunities to gather belongings.

But with Israel almost entirely blocking access to the camps and not publicly announcing which buildings they’ve destroyed, many Palestinians are distraught about whether they have a home to return to.

The UN’s Palestinian refugee agency Unrwa says its best estimate is that Israel has razed at least 260 buildings containing around 800 apartments during “Operation Iron Wall”, focusing on three refugee camps in the north of the West Bank: Jenin, Tulkarem and Nur Shams. Unrwa estimates that 42,000 Palestinians have been displaced from the camps since January.

In February, the Israeli military announced it had killed 60 fighters in its operations and arrested 280 others. Meanwhile Palestinian health officials say 100 people have been killed in the West Bank since the start of Israel’s January operation until today.

Defence Minister Israel Katz said the army was destroying weapons and infrastructure “on an extensive scale” and said he had instructed the military to remain in the refugee camps for a year and prevent residents returning there.

The Israeli military told the BBC that the militias “exploit the civilian population as human shields and endanger them by planting explosive devices and hiding weapons”.

On 1 May, Israel gave Palestinian officials in the West Bank a new map of 106 buildings it said it would demolish in Tulkarem and Nur Shams refugee camps in the next 24 hours for “military purposes”. It said residents could apply for a brief window to return home to retrieve essential belongings.

Aid agencies say that Israel’s campaign has caused the largest forced displacement of Palestinians in the West Bank in decades.

“What’s happening is unprecedented,” says Roland Friedrich, Unrwa’s West Bank director.

“In terms of the number of displaced people and the level of destruction, we’ve never seen anything like it since 1967,” he added, referring to the year Israel began its military occupation of the West Bank.

While filming an interview with the mayor of Jenin, the BBC witnessed Israeli forces detain several Palestinians, including municipality workers who were attempting to enter the camp in order to clear a route to a nearby hospital. They were kept for three hours before being released.

“There are big challenges, in terms of providing services to citizens. As everyone knows, the infrastructure in Jenin camp has been totally demolished,” says Mayor Mohammad Jarrar.

“Israel’s goal is to try to make Jenin camp totally unfit to live in, and I’m telling you it has now become completely unliveable.”

Israel’s blockade of West Bank refugee camps has made establishing information about what is happening inside nearly impossible, says Unrwa’s Roland Friedrich, including the exact extent of demolitions.

Jumaa is among some of the displaced Palestinians who were granted a brief visit home by Israeli forces in order to retrieve belongings. He was able just to grab his UN ID card and the family dog. Then two months later, in March, Israel issued a map of over 90 buildings it identified for demolition in Jenin. Jumaa’s residence looked to be among them.

The Israeli military told the BBC that it was necessary to demolish these buildings in order to improve “freedom of movement” for its forces, but did not confirm whether Jumaa’s home was indeed destroyed.

The BBC has compared Israel’s March demolition map to satellite imagery of Jenin taken a week later. We have been able to confirm that, by 27 March, at least 33 buildings on the list, including Jumaa’s, were destroyed. Satellite imagery reveals many further demolitions have taken place since January, including the construction of new roads by Israeli forces where buildings previously stood.

“Why did they demolish my house? I want to know. I want the Israeli army to give me justification. I had no links to militants. I’m a peaceful person,” says Jumaa.

“I worked job to job for 50 years to build my home.”

Despite learning that his house was demolished, Jumaa remains insistent that he will return home.

“I won’t leave the camp. If they won’t let me rebuild my house, I will set up a tent in its place,” he said.

“Isn’t it enough that my family were displaced in 1948, now we must face displacement again?”

Dawn in a beautiful, expensively landscaped home in Santa Barbara, California, is a strange time and place to meet a British prince.

However, the Duke of Sussex infamously stepped away from the usual business of being royal. It’s a decision he says he was forced to make.

The home wasn’t his, but rather a convenient meeting point a few miles from where he lives with his wife Meghan and their two children – Archie, five, and Lilibet, three.

As we set up our cameras in the living room, we pulled up the latest court updates and news lines being filed by our teams in London.

Meanwhile, we were warned to keep the doors closed so that the screaming peacocks on the porch wouldn’t come inside.

• Watch: Prince Harry’s exclusive interview in full
• Sean Coughlan: Harry’s emotional avalanche hits the Royal Family
• Six key moments from Prince Harry’s BBC interview

The court’s judgement wasn’t the outcome Prince Harry had hoped for and I expected that when he arrived for our interview, he would be disappointed. It had been a years-long, deeply personal battle.

I have interviewed my fair share of famous people during my career – from celebrities and fashion designers to diplomats and politicians. Before the cameras even start rolling, you get a sense of how it might play out based on your interviewee’s demeanour, mood and banter.

I found Prince Harry to be down-to-earth, softly spoken and easy to talk to. He didn’t arrive with an entourage and politely introduced himself to us, shaking each of our hands. I was surprised that he knew I had flown in from New York to do the interview.

We began with some very brief small talk, which always helps to break the ice before a formal sit down, but we didn’t touch the topic at hand until the cameras started rolling.

Prince Harry was eager to share his feelings, despite the critical scrutiny that follows him. As the interviewer, I was also keenly aware of that scrutiny.

Sitting there, close up, there was a lot to unpack. I felt it was important to ask why taxpayers should pay for his security, why a change of status wasn’t warranted given he wasn’t a working royal, and why protection on a case-by-case basis made him feel at greater risk.

He wasn’t defensive or combative, and he wanted to address each of those points.

Equally, it was important to give him space to share his perspective. Because whatever anyone feels about the duke, he raises interesting questions for the public to ponder.

He asked why some people were comfortable with him not having top level security, but okay with other public officials being granted lifetime protection upon leaving office, regardless of the risk against them.

Prince Harry also raised questions about duty of care, given he can’t escape who he is, and national security. If something happened to him – the King’s son, or his family – what then?

With his foot tapping frequently as he spoke, he was surprisingly candid and forthcoming. His security, or lack thereof, was the sticking point preventing a reconciliation with his family, he said.

Whether the Royal Family agrees with him is another matter.

Buckingham Palace said following the interview that all the issues Prince Harry raised concerning his security had been examined “repeatedly and meticulously” by the courts, which had reached the same conclusion each time.

The central coast of California, with its stunning landscapes, is not a shabby place to call home. The problem is that Prince Harry has another home – one that he says he misses but doesn’t feel safe in.

Solving that problem has not been possible in the courts.

Friday’s ruling leaves the prince, in the glamour and comfort of California, hoping for a change of heart in the palaces of London.

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.

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.”

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?”

While most 13-year-olds were spending their Monday evening stressing over homework, awkward school crushes and what to post on TikTok, Blue Ivy Carter was performing in front of a crowd of 70,000 people alongside her mother Beyoncé on the opening night of her Cowboy Carter tour.

Her numerous cameos throughout the show – particularly her solo dance during Déjà Vu – were highly praised.

“She must be one of the most self-disciplined 13-year-olds in America,” Variety’s Chris Willman wrote. On social media, fans said the child prodigy was the “greatest nepo baby of all time” as they marvelled at her flawless dance routines.

Being a nepo baby – shorthand for the children of celebrities who often find themselves fast-tracked into industries such as film, fashion, and music – may have been scorned at in the past, but Blue Ivy’s performance may have complicated the narrative.

The teen had access to a stage that most could only dream of, but she also delivered a performance that fans and critics agreed was very impressive, which raises the question: Is this just another example of a celebrity child given an unearned spotlight, or could Blue Ivy be a genuine star in her own right?

This is also not the first time Blue Ivy has performed in public – she joined her mother on stage two years ago on the Renaissance tour and last year voiced the character of Kiara in The Lion King prequel Mufasa: The Lion King.

But music journalist Caroline Sullivan says Blue Ivy’s trajectory to stardom “has very little to do with her and everything to do with the parent”.

“It’s about how much we like or dislike the parent – Beyoncé is well liked so fans will praise Blue Ivy,” she explains. “Of course, it helps that she’s good at what she does but even if she wasn’t, she’d be given an easier ride.”

Sullivan also says that the authenticity of Blue Ivy wanting to perform instead of being forced to do it by her mother adds to how we perceive her.

Speaking to the BBC last month, Beyoncé’s mother, Tina Knowles, said Blue Ivy and her siblings were being nurtured to do “anything that they want for themselves… but definitely not pushed into show business”.

She added that her granddaughter had had to “work for” her role in The Lion King prequel and she “worries about the fame” impacting her grandchildren.

Blue Ivy is hardly the first child to have performed on stage with a famous parent. Madonna’s 17-year-old daughter played the piano on her mother’s Celebration tour in 2023, Dave Grohl’s 19-year-old daughter has often sung with him on stage and Phil Collins’ son was the drummer on his 2019 tour.

“It’s not because he’s the boss’s son that he’s playing the drums, it’s because he’s good enough,” the former Genesis drummer said in 2019 as he defended his decision to take his 17-year-old son on his world tour.

Sullivan says it can often be “naff and cringy” if a musician brings their child on stage “just for the sake of it”, but if done right, it can be “incredibly sweet and show a lot of love”.

Many critics, including Tomas Mier from Rolling Stone, said Beyoncé’s youngest daughter Rumi joining her on stage for Protector was “one of the most heartwarming moments of the evening”.

Kim Kardashian and Kanye West’s 11-year-old daughter, North West, has also forged the beginnings of a music career, recently delivering a rap verse in Japanese on FKA Twigs’ single Childlike Things.

Twigs said she chose to collaborate with North West because her “energy is so inspiring” and she was “so confident”.

“I wasn’t that confident when I was a kid. I was so shy, I was scared of the dark, I was very different to the other kids at my school. It suddenly occurred to me that I would have loved to have a friend like North, who could speak up for themselves.”

North West also appeared as Young Simba in the Hollywood Bowl’s The Lion King 30th anniversary concert last year but her singing was criticised on social media.

“Given how controversial her parents are, I think North West will struggle to break away from the nepo baby claims because unless she is unbelievably talented, she will be slated,” Sullivan says.

In December 2022, New York magazine’s cover story on nepo babies caused a stir in the showbusiness industry.

The cover featured the faces of famous actors including Dakota Johnson, Jack Quaid, Zoë Kravitz and Lily Rose-Depp edited onto the bodies of babies, with the headline: “She has her mother’s eyes. And agent.”

The story claimed that “a nepo baby is physical proof that meritocracy is a lie” and that “today, they’re not only abundant – they’re thriving”.

It was met with backlash by many stars who claimed the label was unfair and diminished their hard work.

Gwyneth Paltrow, a nepo baby herself as the daughter of actress Blythe Danner and film director Bruce Paltrow, said the term was an “ugly moniker” and that children of famous people should not be judged negatively because “there’s nothing wrong with doing or wanting to do what your parents do”.

Similarly, Zoe Kravitz told GQ that it was “completely normal for people to be in the family business”, while Stranger Things actress Maya Hawke said a famous family name “definitely gives you massive advantages in this life but the chances will not be infinite; so you have to keep working and do a good job. If you do a bad job, the chances will stop”.

Almost Famous star Kate Hudson, daughter of actors Goldie Hawn and Bill Hudson, said in a 2022 interview with the Independent that “people call it whatever they want”, but the idea that children will follow in the footsteps of their parents is “not going to change”.

Hudson was right that, in the three years since New York magazine’s cover story caused so much controversy, nepo babies haven’t slunk off into the background. In fact, they continue to thrive, particularly those with real talent.

Pam Lyddon, a PR executive in the entertainment industry says that there’s “no denying that being well-connected can absolutely help you succeed in the industry” but “while connections might get you noticed, you do still need genuine talent, hard work, and resilience to stay in the game – results speak for themselves and reputations are everything.”

She explains that for the new wave of nepo babies, talent is even more important as the “scrutiny is more intense and people are more media savvy” so you can’t get away with mediocrity.

As fans and critics continue to praise Blue Ivy, it seems that the credibility of nepo babies hasn’t been damaged by the nepo baby backlash, and if you have the star factor, your parents being Beyonce and Jay-Z is only going to help you fly.

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.

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.

A court in Tunisia has sentenced former Prime Minister Ali Laarayedh to 34 years in prison on a raft of terrorism charges.

He is the latest high-profile critic of the president to be jailed as campaigners slam “sham trials” in the country.

The 69-year-old is a prominent opponent of President Kais Saied and leader of Ennadha, a moderate Islamist party that holds the largest number of seats in parliament.

Along with seven other people, Laarayedh was charged with setting up a terrorist cell and helping young Tunisians travel abroad to join Islamist fighters in Iraq and Syria.

“I am not a criminal… I am a victim in this case,” he wrote in a letter to the court’s prosecutor last month, according to the AFP news agency.

He was sentenced on Friday.

Laarayedh has consistently denied any wrongdoing and said the case was politically motivated.

In recent weeks, at least 40 critics of Tunisia’s president have been sent to prison – including diplomats, lawyers and journalists.

Rights groups say these trials have highlighted Saied’s authoritarian control over the judiciary, after dissolving parliament in 2021 and ruling by decree.

Since he was first elected six years ago, the former law professor has rewritten the constitution to enhance his powers.

Laarayedh was arrested three years ago and campaigners had called for his release –including Human Rights Watch, who said the affair seemed like “one more example of President Saied’s authorities trying to silence leaders of the Ennahda party and other opponents by tarring them as terrorists”.

Ennahdha governed the North African nation for a short while after a popular uprising dubbed the Arab Spring.

The protest movement originated in Tunisia – where a vegetable-seller called Mohamed Bouazizi set fire to himself in despair of government corruption – and mass demonstrations soon spread across the wider region in 2011.

However many Tunisians say the democratic gains made have since been lost, pointing to the current president’s authoritarian grip on power.

Yet President Saied has rejected criticism from inside and outside the country, saying he is fighting “traitors” and suffering “blatant foreign interference”.

• Tunisia’s president – saviour or usurper of power?
• Pink flamingos ‘seized from smugglers’ in Tunisia
• ‘My black skin says I don’t belong in Tunisia’
• The fisherman who found a dead baby in his net

“It’s not our night,” Australia’s opposition leader Peter Dutton told a roomful of supporters in Brisbane after his rival, Anthony Albanese, was re-elected as prime minister.

It was indeed a bruising night for Dutton, a 54-year-old political veteran who also lost his parliamentary seat of 24 years to a candidate from Albanese’s Labor Party.

This is a big win for the prime minister, who made a surprising comeback to secure a comfortable majority for a second term. But it’s an even bigger loss for Dutton and his Liberal National Coalition.

Dutton initially seemed to have an advantage over the incumbent PM who was battling a cost-of-living crisis and dismal ratings. But that advantage vanished as the campaign wore on, ending in a humiliating defeat.

An awkward and inconsistent campaign that did not do enough to reassure voters was partly to blame. But there is no mistaking the big part played by what some have called the “Trump effect”.

Dutton, whether he liked it or not, was a man who many saw as Australia’s Trump – but as it turns out Australians do not appear to want that.

Dutton’s brand of hard-line conservatism, his support for controversial immigration policies – like sending asylum seekers to offshore detention centres – and his fierce criticism of China, all led to comparisons with US President Donald Trump.

It’s a likeness he has rejected but then the Coalition pursued policies that seemed to have been borrowed from the Trump administration.

Dutton said that if elected he would cut public sector jobs – more than 40,000 by some estimates. This reminded voters of billionaire Elon Musk’s Doge, or Department of Government Efficiency, which has slashed US bureaucracy. Dutton later walked back the plan.

The Coalition even appointed Jacinta Nampijinpa Price as shadow minister for government efficiency. And images of her wearing a cap with the words Maga – short for the popular Trump slogan, Make America Great Again – have became a key talking point.

None of this served Dutton well and he knew it. Towards the end of the campaign, he tried to shake off Trump’s shadow, and in the final leaders’ debate he repeatedly told the audience that he didn’t know Trump before attempting to answer questions on him.

“The Coalition will probably regret issuing messages that came across as supporting Trump and opposing the US Democrats,” said Frank Mols, a political science lecturer at the University of Queensland.

“Once the stock markets started to drop in response to the uncertainty created by the [Trump’s] tariffs, it became harder for the Coalition to profile itself as a safer pair of hands for the economy.”

The talk of trade wars and tariffs increased voters’ worries. Speaking to people across Australia – the BBC travelled to Perth in Western Australia and Melbourne in the final week of campaigning – it was clear that global politics only became more important through the campaign.

Australia has long balanced its military alliance with the US and its economic relationship with China, its biggest trading partner.

But a US-China trade war, along with an unpredictable White House, is tricky territory for any country – even a US ally like Australia.

Could Dutton provide stability in these unusual times?

Dutton had long tried to convince voters that he would be the politician best suited to dealing with Trump. He often cited his experience as a cabinet minister during tariff negotiations in Trump’s first term.

But in the end voters weren’t convinced.

Dutton’s own inconsistent policies and the Trump-esque rhetoric and decisions appear to have driven away an electorate that is deeply concerned about a new, tumultuous world order.

“Our message was confusing… Labor had a tight and very disciplined campaign,” Jitendra Prasad, a LNP supporter, told the BBC as he was about to leave the watch party on Saturday night after a disappointing outcome.

That was evident in the swings towards Labor across the country, which led to a fairly quick, emphatic result.

Towards the end of the campaign, Dutton also embraced the right-wing One Nation Party, which some Coalition members had warned was the wrong move. And it didn’t seem to have helped. Rather, it may have hurt him.

“They just read the rooms incorrectly,” says Ben Wellings, associate professor of Politics and International Relations at Monash University.

“It was one of the things that we always say about the electorate in Australia – it’s a small C conservative and maybe the radical right message was just in the end, too radical and seemed too disruptive.”

What also didn’t help was that Dutton’s was never a smooth campaign.

There were gaffes, such as when he accidentally hit a cameraman with a football, and costly missteps, like getting the price of a carton of eggs wrong during an election debate – his guess (A$4.20) was, in fact, half the actual price.

It was not a good look in an election where cost-of-living has been a dominant theme.

“Dutton has seemed more comfortable attacking Labor than presenting a strong alternative,” says Jacob Broom, a lecturer in politics and policy at Murdoch University in Perth.

“I think it has been effective for Labor to point to the Liberals voting against cost-of-living measures like the tax cuts which they proposed toward the end of the term.”

While Dutton criticised Labour’s tax relief measures and spending, he then announced that he would also effect tax rebates and big spends, including billions to boost defence and fix an ailing public healthcare system.

But at the same time he also promised cuts. Analysts say this inconsistency confused voters and became an unfortunate theme in his campaign.

He announced and then walked back plans for huge changes to the bureaucracy, including job cuts and the plans to end work from home arrangements. He said it was “a mistake”.

But “the backflips on working from home and his uncertainty over public service cuts,” complicated his message, according to John Warhurst, Emeritus Professor, Australian National University.

The result, many believe, was the lack of a coherent campaign.

“I think people couldn’t understand Dutton’s policies,” a member of Dutton’s own party in his Dickson constituency told the BBC earlier on Saturday.

He wondered if Dutton’s support for nuclear energy put people off – an issue that analysts such as Dr Mols said could have worked against him because Australian voters had not “warmed up” to the idea of nuclear energy.

Ultimately, the biggest issue this election – cost-of-living – may have helped Labor cement its message that theirs was the steadier hand.

Evanthia Smith, another voter in Dutton’s Dickson seat, said she voted for Labor because she believed their candidate would do more to improve public education and access to healthcare.

Dutton acknowledged the huge loss the Coalition had faced: “Our Liberal family is hurting across the country tonight, including in my electorate of Dickson… We’ll rebuild from here.”

It was the same advice a supporter in Brisbane had for the party: “The party needs to go back to the drawing block and look at their policies. We need to focus on the typical issues: Housing, cost-of-living – they are the biggest.”

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.

The Home Office, meanwhile, said it was “pleased” that the judgement was in the government’s favour, adding the UK’s security system is “rigorous and proportionate”.

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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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 140,000 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.”

Labor candidate Ali France has won the seat of Dickson in Australia’s 2025 federal election, taking it from opposition leader Peter Dutton.

Dutton, the head of the Liberal-National coalition, had held the seat for 24 years and is the first federal opposition leader to lose his own seat.

France, 49, has been chipping away at Dutton’s home base of Dickson for years.

In 2019, the former journalist, communications manager and para athlete won 45.4% of the vote in her maiden campaign. In 2022, her vote share went up to 48.3%.

France is the eldest daughter of former Queensland state minister Peter Lawlor and a single mother.

France, who lost her leg in an accident in 2011, said she was inspired to run for political office to advocate for people with disabilities.

France has campaigned for easing the cost of living through tax cuts, lower medicine costs, electricity rebates, expanded paid parental leave and investing in education and public healthcare.

Her eldest son Henry died from leukaemia in February 2024. She has one other son, Zac.

After announcing her candidacy last year, she said Henry would have been proud of her for running.

“Obviously, I’m incredibly sad that he is not here,” France said at the time. “But he said to me many times on many different issues: ‘Don’t make me the excuse for not doing the important things.’ And this is so incredibly important.”

In his concession speech on Saturday, Dutton said: “I told Ali her son Henry would be incredibly proud of her tonight, and she will do a good job as the local member.”

• Australian PM wins second term with increased majority
• Peter Dutton: The ex-cop who brought Australia’s opposition back from the brink

France’s family “have relied heavily on Medicare and know investment in healthcare, cheaper medicines and ensuring access to GPS and specialists is incredibly important”, according to the Labor Party’s website.

France had her leg amputated in May 2011 after an incident while she was pushing a pram holding her son Zac, who was four at the time, in the car park of a Brisbane shopping centre.

A driver, aged 88, lost control of his car and pinned her against the front of another vehicle. She pushed the pram out of the way, and Zac did not suffer serious injuries.

France’s femoral artery was severed and surgeons had to amputate her left leg from above the knee.

In 2019, Dutton apologised to France for suggesting she was using her disability as an “excuse” for not living in the Dickson electorate at the time.

France had been living in the neighbouring electorate and said she was looking for a wheelchair accessible home in Dickson.

The Labor Party website said France now lives in Arana Hills with her son.

Last week’s deadly militant attack in Pahalgam in Indian-administered Kashmir, which claimed 26 civilian lives, has reignited a grim sense of déjà vu for India’s security forces and diplomats.

This is familiar ground. In 2016, after 19 Indian soldiers were killed in Uri, India launched “surgical strikes” across the Line of Control – the de facto border between India and Pakistan – targeting militant bases.

In 2019, the Pulwama bombing, which left 40 Indian paramilitary personnel dead, prompted airstrikes deep into Balakot – the first such action inside Pakistan since 1971 – sparking retaliatory raids and an aerial dogfight.

And before that, the horrific 2008 Mumbai attacks – a 60-hour siege on hotels, a railway station, and a Jewish centre – claimed 166 lives.

Each time, India has held Pakistan-based militant groups responsible for the attacks, accusing Islamabad of tacitly supporting them – a charge Pakistan has consistently denied.

Since 2016, and especially after the 2019 airstrikes, the threshold for escalation has shifted dramatically. Cross-border and aerial strikes by India have become the new norm, provoking retaliation from Pakistan. This has further intensified an already volatile situation.

Once again, experts say, India finds itself walking the tightrope between escalation and restraint – a fragile balance of response and deterrence. One person who understands this recurring cycle is Ajay Bisaria, India’s former high commissioner to Pakistan during the Pulwama attack, who captured its aftermath in his memoir, Anger Management: The Troubled Diplomatic Relationship between India and Pakistan.

“There are striking parallels between the aftermath of the Pulwama bombing and the killings in Pahalgam,” Mr Bisaria told me on Thursday, 10 days after the latest attack.

Yet, he notes, Pahalgam marks a shift. Unlike Pulwama and Uri, which targeted security forces, this attack struck civilians – tourists from across India – evoking memories of the 2008 Mumbai attacks. “This attack carries elements of Pulwama, but much more of Mumbai,” he explains.

“We’re once again in a conflict situation, and the story is unfolding in much the same way,” Mr Bisaria says.

A week after the latest attack, Delhi moved quickly with retaliatory measures: closing the main border crossing, suspending a key water-sharing treaty, expelling diplomats, and halting most visas for Pakistani nationals – who were given days to leave. Troops on both sides have exchanged intermittent small-arms fire across the border in recent days.

Delhi also barred all Pakistani aircraft – commercial and military – from its airspace, mirroring Islamabad’s earlier move. Pakistan retaliated with its own visa suspensions and suspended a 1972 peace treaty with India. (Kashmir, claimed in full by both India and Pakistan but administered in parts by each, has been a flashpoint between the two nuclear-armed nations since their partition in 1947.)

In his memoir, Mr Bisaria recounts India’s response after the Pulwama attack on 14 February 2019.

He was summoned to Delhi the morning after, as the government moved quickly to halt trade – revoking Pakistan’s most-favoured-nation status, granted in 1996. In the following days, the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) imposed a 200% customs duty on Pakistani goods, effectively ending imports, and suspended trade at the land border at Wagah.

Mr Bisaria notes that a broader set of measures was also proposed to scale down engagement with Pakistan, most of which were subsequently implemented.

They included suspending a cross-border train known as the Samjhauta Express, and a bus service linking Delhi and Lahore; deferring talks between border guards on both sides and negotiations over the historic Kartarpur corridor to one of Sikhism’s holiest shrines, halting visa issuance, ceasing cross border, banning Indian travel to Pakistan, and suspending flights between the two countries.

“How hard it was to build trust, I thought. And how easy was it to break it,” Mr Bisaria writes.

“All the confidence-building measures planned, negotiated, and implemented over years in this difficult relationship, could be slashed off on a yellow notepad in minutes.”

The strength of the Indian high commission in Islamabad was reduced from 110 to 55 only in June 2020 after a separate diplomatic incident. (It now stands at 30 after the Pahalgam attack.) India also launched a diplomatic offensive.

A day after the attack, then foreign secretary Vijay Gokhale briefed envoys from 25 countries – including the US, UK, China, Russia, and France – on the role of Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM), the Pakistan-based militant group behind the bombing, and accused Pakistan of using terrorism as state policy. JeM, designated a terrorist organisation by India, the UN, the UK, and the US, had claimed responsibility for the bombing.

India’s diplomatic offensive continued on 25 February, 10 days after the attack, pushing for JeM chief Masood Azhar‘s designation as a terrorist by the UN sanctions committee and inclusion on the EU’s “autonomous terror list”.

While there was pressure to abrogate the Indus Waters Treaty – a key river water sharing agreement – India opted instead to withhold any data beyond treaty obligations, Mr Bisaria writes. A total of 48 bilateral agreements were reviewed for possible suspension. An all-party meeting was convened in Delhi, resulting in a unanimous resolution.

At the same time, communication channels remained open – including the hotline between the two countries’ Directors General of Military Operations (DGMO), a key link for military-to-military contact, as well as both high commissions. In 2019, as now, Pakistan said the attack was a “false-flag operation”.

Much like this time a crackdown in Kashmir saw the arrest of over 80 “overground workers” – local supporters who may have provided logistical help, shelter, and intelligence to militants from the Pakistan-based group. Rajnath Singh, then Indian home minister, visited Jammu and Kashmir, and dossiers on the attack and suspected perpetrators were prepared.

In a meeting with the external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj, Mr Bisaria told her that “that India’s diplomatic options in dealing with a terrorist attack of this nature was limited”.

“She gave me the impression that some tough action was round the corner, after which, I should expect the role of diplomacy to expand,” Mr Bisaria writes.

On 26 February, Indian airstrikes – its first across the international border since 1971 – targeted JeM’s training camp in Balakot.

Six hours later, the Indian foreign secretary announced the strikes had killed “a very large number” of militants and commanders. Pakistan swiftly denied the claim. More high-level meetings followed in Delhi.

The crisis escalated dramatically the next morning, 27 February, when Pakistan launched retaliatory air raids.

In the ensuing dogfight, an Indian fighter jet was shot down, and its pilot, Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman, ejected and landed in Pakistan-administered Kashmir. Captured by Pakistani forces, his detention in enemy territory triggered a wave of national concern and further heightened tensions between the two nuclear-armed neighbours.

Mr Bisaria writes India activated multiple diplomatic channels, with US and UK envoys pressing Islamabad. The Indian message was “any attempt by Pakistan to escalate situation further or to cause harm to the pilot would lead to escalation by India.”

Pakistani prime minister Imran Khan announced the pilot’s release on 28 February, with the handover occurring on 1 March under prisoner of war protocol. Pakistan presented the move as a “goodwill gesture” aimed at de-escalating tensions.

By 5 March, with the dust settling from Pulwama, Balakot, and the pilot’s return, India’s political temperature had cooled. The Cabinet Committee on Security decided to send India’s high commissioner back to Pakistan, signalling a shift towards diplomacy.

“I arrived in Islamabad on 10 March, 22 days after leaving in the wake of Pulwama. The most serious military exchange since Kargil had run its course in less than a month,” Mr Bisaria writes,

“India was willing to give old-fashioned diplomacy another chance…. This, with India having achieved a strategic and military objective and Pakistan having claimed a notion of victory for its domestic audience.”

Mr Bisaria described it as a “testing and fascinating time” to be a diplomat. This time, he notes, the key difference is that the targets were Indian civilians, and the attack occurred “ironically, when the situation in Kashmir had dramatically improved”.

He views escalation as inevitable, but notes there’s also a “de-escalation instinct alongside the escalation instinct”. When the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) meets during such conflicts, he says, their decisions weigh the conflict’s economic impact and seek measures that hurt Pakistan without triggering a backlash against India.

“The body language and optics are similar [this time],” he says, but highlights what he sees as the most significant move: India’s threat to annul the Indus Waters Treaty. “If India acts on this, it would have long-term, serious consequences for Pakistan.”

“Remember, we’re still in the middle of a crisis,” says Mr Bisaria. “We haven’t yet seen any kinetic [military] action.”

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.”