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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Brisbane electrician Callum Bailey is one of them.

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

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

“[I] just can’t keep up.”

This is a tale James Gillespie kept hearing.

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

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

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

And that’s just primary care.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Drag star Bianca Castro-Arabejo, who performed as Jiggly Caliente, has died aged 44, her family has said.

The performer, who found fame on the fourth season of RuPaul’s Drag Race, had part of her leg amputated on Thursday after suffering a “severe infection”.

Caliente had served as a judge on the show’s Philippines spin-off, and also appeared in the hit US TV series Pose.

Her family wrote in a statement on Instagram: “It is with profound sorrow that we announce the passing of Bianca Castro-Arabejo, known to the world and cherished by many as Jiggly Caliente.”

They said Caliente died in the early hours of Sunday morning, “surrounded by her loving family and close friends”.

The star’s family paid tribute to Caliente’s “infectious energy, fierce wit, and unwavering authenticity”, adding that she left a legacy of “love, courage and light”.

“She touched countless lives through her artistry, activism, and the genuine connection she fostered with fans around the world,” they said.

“Though her physical presence is gone, the joy she shared and the space she helped create for so many will remain forever.”

A letter written by a Titanic passenger days before the ship sank has been sold for a record-breaking £300,000 ($400,000) at auction in the UK.

Colonel Archibald Gracie’s letter was purchased by an anonymous buyer at Henry Aldridge and Son auction house in Wiltshire on Sunday, at a price five times higher than the £60,000 it was expected to fetch.

The letter has been described as “prophetic”, as it records Col Gracie telling an acquaintance he would “await my journey’s end” before passing judgement on the “fine ship”.

The letter was dated 10 April 1912, the day he boarded the Titanic in Southampton, and five days before it sank after hitting an iceberg in the North Atlantic.

Col Gracie was one of about 2,200 passengers and crew on board the Titanic sailing to New York. More than 1,500 died in the disaster.

The first-class passenger, wrote the letter from cabin C51. It was posted when the ship docked in Queenstown, Ireland, on 11 April 1912. It was also postmarked London on 12 April.

The auctioneer who facilitated the sale said the letter had attracted the highest price of any correspondence written onboard the Titanic.

Col Gracie’s account of the sinking is among the best known.

He later wrote the book The Truth About The Titanic, recalling his experience onboard the doomed ocean liner.

He recounted how he survived by scrambling onto an overturned lifeboat in the icy waters.

More than half the men who had originally reached the lifeboat died from exhaustion or cold, he wrote.

Although Col Gracie survived the disaster, his health was severely affected by the hypothermia and physical injuries he suffered.

He fell into a coma on 2 December 1912, and died of complications from diabetes two days later.

Images of Pope Francis’ tomb at the Santa Maria Maggiore church in Rome have been released.

A single white rose was pictured lying on the stone tomb that bears the name he was known by during his pontificate, below a crucifix illuminated by a single spotlight.

The late pope was laid to rest at the church – one of four major basilicas in the Italian capital, and one he would regularly visit during his time as cardinal and pontiff – in a private ceremony following his public funeral in the Vatican on Saturday.

Mourners queued outside the church early on Sunday morning to be among the first to pay their respects to Pope Francis, who died aged 88 on Monday.

• Why Pope Francis hasn’t been buried in the Vatican
• Who was at the funeral and where did they sit?

Among them was Rosario Correale, an Italian, who said it was “very emotional” seeing the tomb. “He really left a mark on us,” he told the Associated Press.

Polish pilgrim Maria Brzezinska felt the resting place befit the man. “I feel like it’s exactly in the way of the Pope. He was simple, and so is his place now,” she told the news agency Reuters after visiting.

Francis was particularly devoted to the Virgin Mary, and Santa Maria Maggiore was the first church to be dedicated to her when it was built in the 4th Century.

The basilica sits near the Colosseum, a stone’s throw from the city’s endlessly bustling and chaotic central Termini station – well beyond the limits of the Vatican, where popes are traditionally entombed.

But it was one the South American pontiff had a long-held affinity for.

It’s senior priest previously told an Italian newspaper that Pope Francis had said he wished to be laid to rest there in 2022, citing inspiration from the Virgin Mary.

“I thought it was amazing that he wanted to be buried here in this basilica,” Amaya Morris, another pilgrim, told AP.

“Out of all of the [churches], he chose this one. So I thought that was really amazing. It’s really humbling to be able to be here.”

Francis’ funeral was attended by heads of state, heads of government and monarchs from around the world – as well as hundreds of thousands of Catholics who lined the streets leading to the Vatican to pay their respects.

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

The cardinal emphasised that Pope Francis had repeatedly urged the world to “build bridges, not walls”.

The funeral was also the venue for a meeting between US President Donald Trump and Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky, which the latter said afterwards had the “potential to become historic”.

Trump later questioned Russian President Vladimir Putin’s willingness to end the now three-year war in Ukraine, a conflict which Pope Francis had regularly called for peace during his papacy.

Following the public funeral, Pope Francis’ coffin was carried through Rome in a slow procession.

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

After a period of mourning, attention will soon turn to the selection of the next pope.

A date has not yet been set but it is thought it could start as early as 5 or 6 May, with 135 cardinals set to attend, making it the largest conclave in modern history.

When Donald Trump made a historic return to power earlier this year, it was with the help of voters who represented a diverse coalition of backgrounds – truck drivers, veterans, business owners and more.

They represented a wide range of perspectives that helped explain Trump’s enduring appeal. But 100 days after he took office, how do his staunchest supporters feel now?

The BBC has returned to five of them. Here’s what they had to say about the promises he kept, the pledges he has yet to address, and what they want next.

Luiz Oliveira says he “can’t keep up” with the rapid policy changes Trump has made in his first 100 days.

On immigration, he has appreciated the flurry of new border restrictions and the emphasis on deportations, including sending men to a notorious mega-prison in El Salvador. Encounters between migrants and US border agents at the US-Mexico are now at a four-year low.

The issue is important to Luiz, a Brazilian who came to the US legally in the 1980s and now lives in Nevada. Echoing Trump, he describes the influx of migrants in recent years as an “invasion”.

Luiz, 65, says Trump is telling undocumented immigrants: “This is my house, my yard, and you’re not going to stay here.”

In other areas, however, he, is nervous about Trump’s approach.

The coffee shop owner supports Trump’s efforts to make other countries pay “their fair share” through tariffs. But he’s apprehensive about the short-term economic effects as well as how long it could take for America to see the benefits.

“It’s going to be painful [and] I don’t think it’s going to be as fast as he says.

“I’m a supporter, but at the end of the day, if this doesn’t work, I’ll say it’s a mistake – he did things too fast, scared the markets, scared the economy.”

Amanda Sue Mathis backed Trump in 2024 because she felt he was the best candidate to address America’s most pressing problems – 100 days in, she says he’s made strong progress.

“There were a lot of people who cared about the wars in the Middle East and Ukraine, but I think it’s time we look at our country and get things in order before we go fix other countries’ problems,” the 34-year-old Navy veteran says.

She wants a “merit-based society” and praises Trump’s rollback of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion policies which had tried to boost minority representation and tackle discrimination. Critics say those policies are themselves discriminatory – and Amanda Sue believes they went too far in recent years.

She also welcomes Trump’s executive orders restricting gender care for Americans under the age of 19 and banning transgender women from female sports.

Broadly, she thinks the president is “kicking butt” and his first 100 days have made her “happier with [her] vote”.

But Amanda Sue is prepared to have her mind changed too.

“I’m not one of those people who is always for Trump,” she says. “If he messes up, I’ll be the first one to tell you.”

Trump’s promise to impose tariffs and bring manufacturing jobs back to America was a key reason why Ben Maurer, a 39-year-old freight truck driver from Pennsylvania, voted for the president.

“A lot of people thought he was bluffing on more than a few things,” he says.

So Ben’s delighted Trump hit the gas immediately, imposing tariffs on countries that range from allies like Canada and Mexico to adversaries like China.

It has not been a smooth ride, however. In a tumultuous series of announcements, the administration has raised, lowered, delayed and retracted tariffs in response to ongoing trade negotiations and stock market reaction.

Currently, the US has imposed a 10% tariffs on all imports – and China has been hit with a 145% tax on goods it exports to America.

Despite economists’ concerns about higher prices, Ben believes the businesses he delivers to will benefit in the long run.

“Trump has earned back the respect [for the US],” he says of the president’s tariff policies. “We are still the force to be reckoned with.”

Overall, he feels Trump has been more productive at the start of his second term. The president had time to prepare, he says, and it shows.

June Carey’s opinion of Donald Trump has not changed, but the first few months of Trump’s second term are not what she anticipated either.

“He’s a bit more aggressive and a little bit more erratic than I expected,” the California artist says.

But June, 70, doesn’t see the surprises as negative. She is “blown away” by the “waste” the so-called Department of Government Efficiency – led by billionaire Trump ally Elon Musk – says it has found.

Critics say his claims about savings appear to be inflated and he has faced a backlash for blunt cuts at government departments that were later reversed, including firings of key federal workers.

June says she’s uncertain about Musk himself.

“Musk is a character I don’t understand,” June says. “My feeling is that if Trump has trusted him as much as he has, than he must be a pretty good guy with the right ideas and the right goals.”

She previously told the BBC she was concerned about welfare spending and hoped Trump would push Americans to be more self-sufficient. While she is happy with the cuts so far, she hopes they leave alone social security – the monthly government payments that she and 67 million retired or disabled Americans live off.

Democrats warn those are at risk in future, but June asks: “Why would they cut [social security] when they’ve cut so many things that have saved them millions and millions of dollars?”

Jeremy Stevens has faithfully stood by Trump for years.

“[Trump is] very aggressively getting things he promised on the campaign trail done,” he says.

At his automotive repair and used car shop in Maine, Jeremy sees some customers who feel differently about Trump’s economic efforts. But the 45-year-old believes their nerves around tariffs in particular come from “a lack of understanding”.

The tariffs are part of a Trump administration vision that Jeremy believes will pay off in the long run – if critics can hold on until then.

“There definitely is a perception out there about the impact of these policies that is short-sighted,” he says.

Trump’s back-and-forth shift on tariff policies have come at a price, economists say. Markets around the world were sent spiralling. The International Monetary Fund has cut its global growth forecast because of the uncertainty, with the US hardest hit. It warned there is a 40% chance of a recession in the US.

But Jeremy is convinced time will prove Trump right.

“It’s a temporary pain,” he says. “This too shall pass.”

At least 28 people have been killed and 800 injured in a massive explosion at one of Iran’s key ports, authorities say.

The blast took place at Shahid Rajaee, the country’s largest commercial port, near the southern city of Bandar Abbas on Saturday morning.

It blew out windows and roofs of nearby buildings and destroyed cars. Residents reported feeling the impact of the blast up to 50km (31 miles) away. Six people remain unaccounted for, state media reports.

Videos verified by the BBC show a fire growing in intensity before a huge explosion, with people subsequently fleeing the blast and others lying wounded on roads surrounded by smoking debris.

“The entire warehouse was filled with smoke, dust and ashes. I don’t remember if I went under the table or was thrown there by the blast,” one person who was in the area told Iranian state TV.

Aerial footage showed at least three areas ablaze and Iran’s interior minister later confirmed that the fire was spreading from one container to another. Schools and offices in the region have been ordered to remain closed on Sunday.

One private maritime risk consultancy said it believed the affected containers had contained solid fuel destined for ballistic missiles.

The fire was the result of “improper handling of a shipment of solid fuel intended for use in Iranian ballistic missiles”, Ambrey Intelligence said.

Ambrey added that it was aware that an Iran-flagged ship “discharged a shipment of sodium perchlorate rocket fuel at the port in March 2025”.

The Financial Times newspaper had previously reported that two vessels had shipped fuel to Iran from China.

State media quoted witnesses as saying the explosion occurred after a fire broke out and spread to unsealed containers storing “flammable materials”.

Customs officials later released a statement reported by Iranian state TV saying the explosion had probably resulted from a fire that had broken out in a hazmat and chemical materials storage depot.

In a later update Ambrey quoted Iran’s National Disaster Management Organisation as saying officials had previously issued warnings to Shahid Rajaee port regarding the safe storage of chemicals.

Shahid Rajaee port is Iran’s largest and most advanced terminal, through which much of the country’s commercial shipping transits.

It is located on the Strait of Hormuz, a major shipping channel for oil cargo, and is about 20km (12 miles) west of Bandar Abbas, Iran’s major port city on its south coast and home to the Iranian Navy’s main base.

Iran’s national oil production company said the explosion at the port had “no connection” to the country’s oil refineries, fuel tanks and pipelines, local media reported.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has expressed his “deep regret and sympathy” for victims. He has announced a government investigation and sent the interior minister to the region to lead it.

Saturday’s explosion coincided with the latest round of negotiations between Iranian and US officials on Iran’s nuclear programme, with US President Donald Trump aiming to make a deal that would prevent Tehran from gaining nuclear weapons.

Negotiating through Oman mediators, both sides reported that progress had been made, but Iran’s top representative said work was still needed to narrow differences. Negotiations will continue next week.

Iran has said it is open to curbs on its nuclear programme in return for sanctions easing but has insisted it will not stop enriching uranium. It insists its nuclear programme is for civilian use.

The talks this year have marked the first high-level engagement between the US and Iran since 2018, when Trump in his first term pulled out of a previous deal to restrict Iran’s nuclear activities and reinstated economic sanctions.

• What is Iran’s nuclear programme and what does the US want?

Donald Trump has questioned Vladimir Putin’s willingness to end the war in Ukraine following his meeting with the country’s leader Volodymyr Zelensky on the sidelines of Pope Francis’s funeral.

Posting on social media after leaving Rome, Trump said he feared Putin was “tapping me along” after Moscow’s strikes on Kyiv earlier this week, adding there was “no reason for Putin to be shooting missiles into civilian areas”.

Earlier in the day Trump and Zelensky were seen in deep discussion in St Peter’s Basilica shortly before the funeral began.

The White House described the 15-minute meeting with Zelensky as “very productive”. The Ukrainian president said it had the “potential to become historic”.

It was Trump’s first face-to-face encounter with the Ukrainian president since February’s acrimonious Oval Office showdown.

Writing on his Truth Social account, Trump said the Russian attacks on Ukrainian cities “makes me think that maybe he doesn’t want to stop the war, he’s just tapping me along, and has to be dealt with differently, through ‘Banking’ or ‘Secondary Sanctions?'”.

Trump had previously said Russia and Ukraine were “very close to a deal” following three-hour talks between his envoy Steve Witkoff and the Russian president on Friday.

The Kremlin meanwhile said on Saturday that Putin had confirmed Russia’s readiness to enter into direct talks with Ukraine “without preconditions” to Witkoff.

During their last face-to-face meeting at the White House, Trump had told Zelensky “you don’t have the cards” and that he was not winning against Russia.

Trump repeated that message this week, saying the Ukrainian leader had “no cards to play”. He has previously blamed Ukraine for starting the war and has accused Zelensky multiple times of being an obstacle to peace negotiations.

But the White House struck a more positive tone about Saturday’s meeting, while Zelensky described the sit down as a “very symbolic” and one which could prove significant “if we achieve joint results”.

Two images were released of the meeting, showing the US leader in a blue suit and Ukrainian president in a black top and trousers, locked in intense conversation while sitting opposite each other.

Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha also posted an image of the meeting on X with the caption: “No words are needed to describe the importance of this historic meeting. Two leaders working for peace in St. Peter’s Basilica.”

Another image posted by the Ukrainian delegation from inside St Peter’s showed the two men standing alongside UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron, whose hand is on Zelensky’s shoulder.

The implication was that the two European leaders – who have regularly acted as intermediaries for Trump and Zelensky – had helped to bring the two together against the sombre backdrop of the funeral.

After the meeting, Trump and Zelensky walked down the steps of the basilica, where Zelensky’s arrival was met with applause from the crowds, and took their seats in the front row.

• Thousands line streets of Rome as Pope Francis laid to rest
• Who was there and where did they sit?
• Extraordinary photos from the funeral

During the service, the pair sat a short distance from each other, with Macron and other heads of state in between.

In his homily, Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re spoke of Pope Francis’s incessant calls for peace. “‘Build bridges, not walls’ was an exhortation he repeated many times,” said the cardinal.

Ukrainian officials had talked of a possible second meeting, but Trump’s motorcade drove away from St Peter’s immediately afterwards and his plane left Rome a short time later.

Zelensky, however, later met Macron in the garden of Villa Bonaparte, home to the French embassy to the Holy See.

He also met Sir Keir at Villa Wolkonsky, the British ambassador’s residence, as well as holding separate talks with EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

Macron said ending the war in Ukraine was an objective that “we share in common with President Trump” in a post on X, adding that Ukraine was ready for “an unconditional ceasefire”.

A Downing Street spokesperson said Starmer and Zelensky discussed the positive progress that had been made recently to “secure a just and lasting peace in Ukraine,” adding that the pair had agreed to “maintain momentum” and “speak again at the earliest opportunity”.

During February’s heated White House exchange, Trump accused the Ukrainian president of “gambling with World War Three” by not going along with ceasefire plans led by Washington.

Kyiv has been on the receiving end of growing pressure from Trump to accept territorial concessions as part of an agreement with Moscow to end the war.

These concessions would reportedly include giving up large portions of land, including the Crimean peninsula which was illegally annexed by Russia in 2014.

Zelensky has repeatedly rejected the idea in the past. He suggested to the BBC on Friday that “a full and unconditional ceasefire opens up the possibility to discuss everything”.

There had been rumours. There had been aerial photographs. There had been the written testimony of a few escapees. But it took liberation for the revelation of the shocking reality of the Nazi’s concentration camps.

Nowhere was this more true than when British and Canadian troops advanced on the camp at Bergen-Belsen, near Hanover, in April 1945.

A truce with local German commanders enabled them to enter without a fight. They were met with a stomach-churning vista of death, a torrid panorama of human suffering.

The troops calculated there were 13,000 unburied corpses. A further 60,000 emaciated, diseased, spectral-like survivors stood and lay amongst them.

To mark the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Belsen, more than a thousand survivors and families are attending commemoration events at the camp on Sunday.

“To me, Belsen was the ultimate blasphemy,” wrote one British soldier, Michael Bentine, who, after World War Two, went on to become a famous entertainer.

Other chroniclers, film-makers and diarists struggled to convey in words and pictures the scenes that made unwanted incursions into their minds.

The BBC’s Richard Dimbleby was the first broadcaster to enter the camp shortly after liberation. In his landmark broadcast he included the words: “This day at Belsen was the most horrible of my life.”

Belsen’s notoriety soon stood out, not just because of the chillingly vivid accounts of journalists, soldiers and photographers, whose testimonies were sent around the world, but because it was found with all its grotesqueness intact.

Other camps further east, like the death camps of Treblinka, Sobibor and Auschwitz, had either been destroyed by the Germans to hide their crimes in the face of Soviet advances or emptied of their inmates.

At Belsen, the huts, the barracks, the evidence, remained.

At Belsen, there were witnesses, perpetrators, victims.

It was where many of those eastern concentration camp prisoners ended up. Overcrowding led to dysentery, malnutrition and typhus.

There were no gas chambers at Belsen. It was Nazi cruelty and incompetence that accounted for the 500 deaths a day that the camp endured.

And most of it came in the final weeks of the war, well into April 1945.

As the Third Reich collapsed and freedom came to those in other occupied territories, the dying continued at Belsen: between 50,000 and 70,000 people in total, more than 30,000 of those between January and April 1945.

Around 14,000 of the prisoners died after liberation, their digestive systems unable to cope with the highly calorific, rich sustenance offered by well-meaning cooks and medics.

The vast majority were Jews, with Soviet prisoners of war, Sinti and homosexuals among other groups to be engulfed by the horrors of the camp.

• Belsen: What They Found – directed by Sam Mendes

Among the survivors and relatives attending Sunday’s event are 180 British Jews. Their journey is being organised by Ajex, the Jewish Military Association.

Wreaths will be laid by Ajex veterans, as well as dignitaries, including Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner.

A psalm will be read by UK Chief Rabbi Sir Ephraim Mirvis.

They will do so amid the verdant surroundings of Lower Saxony, where the watch towers, fences and buildings have gone.

That’s because, in the end, to contain disease, the British soldiers decided they had to burn the huts at Belsen.

And so, today, little remains. A visitor centre is a focal point, near to where a handful of memorial stones and crosses have been erected.

The inscription on one reads: here rest 5,000 dead.

It is just one of the graves, one of the memories, that haunt the grassed landscape.

A federal judge has said that a two-year-old US citizen may have been deported to Honduras with her mother and 11-year-old sister without due process, amid the Trump administration’s drive to ramp up deportations.

In a court filing, Judge Terry Doughty said that there was “strong suspicion” that the child – identified only as VML – was deported “with no meaningful process”.

The Louisiana-born child and her family members were apprehended during a routine appointment at a New Orleans immigration office on 22 April, according to the document.

A spokesperson for the US Department of Homeland Security said the mother wanted to take her children with her when she was sent to Honduras.

The judge had sought to arrange a phone call with the girl’s mother, but was told by a government lawyer that it “would not be possible because she (and presumably VML) had just been released in Honduras”, court documents say.

The immigration status of the girl’s mother, father and sister remains unclear. The two-year-old, however, is a US citizen.

“It is illegal and unconstitutional to deport, detain for deportation, or recommend deportation of a US citizen,” said the judge.

A hearing has been scheduled for 19 May “in the interest of dispelling our strong suspicion that the government just deported a US citizen with no meaningful process”.

Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement to the BBC’s US partner, CBS News, that “the parent made the decision to take the child with them to Honduras”.

She added: “It is common that parents want to be removed with their children.”

Earlier this week, the girl’s father had also filed for a temporary transfer of legal authority, which according to state law would give his sister-in-law – also a US citizen – custody of the children.

However, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent spoke to a family attorney and “refused to honour the request” and said that the “father could try to pick her up, but that he would also be taken into custody”.

In a second, similar case in Florida, a Cuban woman with a one-year-old child and her US citizen husband were detained at a scheduled immigration appointment and flown back to Cuba two days later, according to media reports.

The woman, identified as Heidy Sánchez, was still breastfeeding her daughter, who suffers from seizures, according to her lawyer. He has argued that Ms Sanchez was not a criminal and should have remained in the US on humanitarian grounds.

Thousands of undocumented immigrants have been detained since Donald Trump returned to the White House on 20 January.

Trump’s hard-line immigration policies have encountered a number of legal hurdles.

In the highest-profile case, the government admitted it mistakenly deported El Salvador national Kilmar Ábrego García, but contends he is a member of the MS-13 gang, which his lawyer and family denies. Mr Ábrego García has never been convicted of a crime.

The Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the government should facilitate bringing back Mr Ábrego García, but the Trump administration has said he will “never” live in the US again.

The French government has been urged to reconsider rehoming two stranded killer whales in Canada.

Wikie, 23, and her 11-year-old son Keijo are currently held at Marineland Antibes, a marine zoo in southern France, where they were born and have been kept their entire lives. It closed in January.

An application to send them to the most likely rehoming destination – Loro Parque marine zoo in Tenerife – was blocked by Spanish authorities. Loro Parque is already home to four orcas, including one born last month.

Lori Marino, president of The Whale Sanctuary Project (WSP), said their site in Nova Scotia is “the only option left”, as French authorities have not yet identified a location in Europe for orcas and rejected a move to a marine zoo in Japan.

Her group is bidding to rehome the orcas in the east Canadian province despite a previous offer being rejected by the French ministry for ecology earlier this year.

Animal rights groups want the orcas to be rehomed in a whale sanctuary where they will have more space to swim and will not be forced to breed or perform in shows.

Agnès Pannier-Runacher, the French ecology minister, said in February she was looking for a European sanctuary but a suitable site for Wikie and Keijo has not been secured yet.

“If you don’t even have a site, you’re years away from being a viable sanctuary,” said Lori, adding that the WSP had already carried out environmental studies, water surveys and been offered a lease by Canada’s department of natural resources.

Managers at Marineland said sanctuaries are a hypothetical that “will take years” to be built and with “no guarantees” the whales will be properly looked after.

They stressed that Wikie and Keijo “must leave now” for their own welfare, adding: “Marineland reaffirms the extreme urgency of transferring the animals to an operational destination.”

Though Marineland has closed as a marine zoo business, they are still legally responsible for the welfare of the animals until they are rehomed.

The application to move them to Loro Parque was described as a temporary measure by Pannier-Runacher that would bridge the gap until a sanctuary in Europe had been found and built.

But activists feared the transfer would end up being permanent. The decision by a Spanish scientific panel to block it came as a pleasant surprise to many of them.

“I was shocked,” Lori told BBC News. “We thought it was a fait accompli. We assumed that was where the orcas were going, it looked like a done deal.”

The scientific panel’s approval was needed to complete the transfer but they concluded Loro Parque’s facilities did “not meet the minimum requirements in terms of surface area, volume and depth necessary to house the specimens in optimal conditions”.

Dr Jan Schmidt-Burbach, head of animal welfare and wildlife research at the charity World Animal Protection, said the decision was “unexpected but rational”.

He added that it “perfectly illustrates the fact that marine parks are an outdated industry with dropping acceptability” in society.

Loro Parque responded to the panel’s decision by saying their “facilities are recognised by independent assessors as providing among the highest levels of animal welfare in the world”.

The WSP has identified a site in Port Hilford Bay, Nova Scotia that they plan to cordon off using 1,600m of nets.

The project’s team also contains people who were involved in a whale sanctuary that was created to house Keiko – the orca who starred in the 1993 movie Free Willy.

Charles Vinick, CEO of the WSP, managed the Keiko project in Iceland and Jeff Foster, who specialises in moving marine animals, was also part of that team.

Keiko was born in the wild and was able to relearn some survival skills after arriving at the sanctuary in 1998.

He spent four years there before leaving with a pod of orcas he had joined. They swam to Norway where he died in 2003 following an infection.

There is no chance Wikie and Keijo will be released into the wild as, unlike Keiko, they were born in captivity.

They have spent their whole lives being cared for and entertained by their trainers. Lori says they would be similarly cared for in Nova Scotia but have much more space to live in than a pool.

“We have a whole crew who know how to build and run a sanctuary,” said Lori. “They have done it before and I think we are the only team who has any experience in doing this.”

Lori and the WSP team contacted the ministry after learning the transfer to Loro Parque had been blocked. At time of writing, they had not received a response.

BBC News also contacted the ministry for comment. Pannier-Runacher had not made any new announcements about what will happen to the orcas.

Until a decision is made Wikie and Keijo remain in Marineland, unaware the rest of their home is now empty.

At a rally in London, Ontario, on Friday, the crowd booed as Mark Carney delivered his core campaign line about the existential threat Canada faces from its neighbour.

“President Trump is trying to break us so that America could own us,” the Liberal leader warned.

“Never,” supporters shouted back. Many waved Canadian flags taped to ice hockey sticks.

Similar levels of passion were also on display at the union hall where Pierre Poilievre greeted enthusiastic supporters in the Toronto area earlier in the week.

The Conservative leader has drawn large crowds to rallies across the country, where “Bring it Home” is a call to arms: both to vote for a change of government and a nod to the wave of Canadian patriotism in the face of US tariff threats.

In the final hours of a 36-day campaign, Donald Trump’s shadow looms over everything. The winner of Monday’s election is likely to be the party able to convince voters they have a plan for how to deal with the US president.

National polls suggest the Liberals have maintained a narrow lead entering last stretch.

Still, Trump is not the only factor at play – he was only mentioned once in Poilievre’s stump speech.

The Conservative leader has focused more on voters disaffected by what he calls a “Lost Liberal decade”, promising change from a government he blames for the housing shortage and a sluggish economy, and for mishandling social issues like crime and the fentanyl crisis.

His pitch resonates with voters like Eric and Carri Gionet, from Barrie, Ontario. They have two daughters in their mid-20s and said they were attending their first ever political rally.

“We’re pretty financially secure – but I worry about them,” said Eric Gionet. While he and his wife could buy their first home while young, he said, “there’s no prospect” their children will be able to do the same.

“I’m excited to be here,” said Carri Gionet. “I’m hopeful.”

Tapping into voter frustration has helped opposition parties sweep governments from power in democracies around the world. Canada seemed almost certain to follow suit.

Last year, the Conservatives held a 20-point lead in national polls over the governing Liberals for months. Poilievre’s future as the country’s next prime minister seemed baked in.

Then a series of shockwaves came in quick succession at the start of 2025, upending the political landscape: Justin Trudeau’s resignation, Carney’s subsequent rise to Liberal leader and prime minister; and the return of Trump to the White House with the threats and tariffs that followed.

By the time the election was called in mid-March, Carney’s Liberals were polling neck-and-neck with the Conservatives, and by early April they had pulled slightly ahead, national surveys suggest.

It has been a stunning reversal of fortunes. Seemingly dead and buried, the Liberals now believe they could win a fourth successive election, and even a majority in Parliament.

Carney is pitching himself as the man most ready to meet this critical moment – a steady central banker who helped shepherd Canada’s economy through the 2008 financial crisis and later, the UK through Brexit.

For Conservative voter Gwendolyn Slover, 69, from Summerside in the province of Prince Edward Island, his appeal is “baffling”.

“Many people think Mark Carney is some kind of Messiah,” she said. “It’s the same party, he’s one person. And he’s not going to change anything.”

For Carney’s supporters, they see a strong resume and a poise that has calmed their anxieties over Trump’s threats of steep tariffs and repeated suggestions the country should become the 51st US state – though the president has been commenting less frequently on Canada during the campaign.

“I’m very impressed by the stability and the serious thought process of Mark Carney,” said Mike Brennan from Kitchener, Ontario, as he stood in line to meet the Liberal leader at a coffee shop in Cambridge, about an hour outside Toronto.

Mr Brennan is a “lifelong Liberal” who did not initially plan to vote for the party in this election because of his dislike for Trudeau.

The departure of former prime minister Trudeau, who had grown increasingly unpopular over his decade in power, released “a massive pressure valve”, said Shachi Kurl, president of the Angus Reid Institute, a non-profit public opinion research organisation.

“All of these angry Liberals who are either parking their votes with the [left-wing] NDP or parking their votes with the Conservatives start re-coalescing,” she said.

Then more disaffected Liberals and other progressive voters began to migrate towards Carney’s Liberals, driven by Trump, this election’s “main character”, Ms Kurl said.

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

It has worked to Carney’s advantage, with Trump’s tariffs threats giving the political neophyte – he is the first prime minister never to have held elected public office – the chance to publicly audition to keep his job during the campaign.

Trump’s late-March announcement of global levies on foreign automobile imports allowed Carney to step away from the trail and take on the prime minister’s mantle, setting up a call with the president and meeting US Cabinet ministers.

He’s never been tested in a gruelling federal election campaign, with its relentless travel, high-pressure demands for retail politics and daily media scrutiny. Yet on the campaign trail, and in the high-stakes debate with party leaders, he is considered to have performed well.

Poilievre, in contrast, is a veteran politician and polished performer. But on the shifting political ground, Conservatives appeared to struggle to find their footing, pivoting their message from Canada being broken to “Canada First”.

Poilievre had to fend off criticism from political rivals that he is “Trump lite”, with his combative style, his vows to end “woke ideology”, and willingness to take on the “global elite”.

“I have a completely different story from Donald Trump,” he has said.

More on the Canadian election:

• Canada’s top candidates talk up fossil fuels as climate slips down agenda
• Patriotism surges in Quebec as Trump rattles Canada
• ‘My home is worth millions – but young people are priced out of this city’
• A simple guide to Canada’s federal election

Canadians have historically voted in either Conservative or Liberal governments, but smaller parties – like the NDP or the Bloc Québécois, a sovereigntist party that only runs candidates in the province of Quebec – have in the past formed Official Opposition.

In this campaign, both are languishing and face the possibility of losing a number of seats in the House of Commons as anxious voters turn towards the two main political parties.

If the Liberals and Conservatives both succeed in getting over 38% of the vote share nationally, as polls suggest is likely, it would be the first time that has happened since 1975.

The message from the NDP – which helped prop up the minority Liberals in the last government – in the final days of campaigning has been to vote strategically.

“You can make the difference between Mark Carney getting a super majority or sending enough New Democrats to Ottawa so we can fight to defend the things you care about,” leader Jagmeet Singh said earlier this week.

The campaign has also highlighted festering divides along regional lines.

With much of the campaign dominated by the US-Canada relationship and the trade war, many issues – climate, immigration, indigenous reconciliation – have been on the backburner.

Even when the campaigns have focused on other policies, the discussion has centred on the country’s economic future.

Both frontrunners agree in broad strokes on the priorities: the need to pivot away from dependence on the US; the development of oil, gas and mining sectors; protection for workers affected by tariffs; and increased defence spending.

But they disagree on who is best to lead Canada forward, especially when so much is at stake.

“It’s time for experience, not experiments,” Carney told his supporters in London.

Poilievre closing message was: “We can choose change on Monday. We can take back control of our lives and build a bright future.”

Former clients of a Canadian tech entrepreneur say they were let down after they paid his company tens of thousands of dollars to help launch their start-ups.

People across the world – from Scotland to the southern states of the US – have told the BBC they paid Josh Adler’s software company ConvrtX up to $245,000 (£184,000) but did not receive the websites and apps they expected.

We spoke to more than 20 former employees and customers who say that Mr Adler continued to sell services and ask for more money, despite repeatedly not delivering everything customers paid for.

In a letter to the BBC, Mr Adler’s lawyers say the allegations are false and have been incited by one former client who they are suing.

They add that although Mr Adler was “inexperienced” when he founded his business, aged 21, his company became very successful in a short period of time and “the vast majority of clients were happy with their work”.

Launched in 2019, ConvrtX claims to be a “world-leading venture studio” that has helped more than 700 aspiring entrepreneurs start companies by developing business plans, making pitch documents for potential investors, and building custom websites and apps.

In pitches to clients, the company claims it has a five-star satisfaction rating. It also says it has 70 staff worldwide and operates from the UK, US and Canada. Mr Adler runs the company from Dubai.

Leaked internal documents suggest ConvrtX billed more than $5m (£3.8m) in sales to more than 280 customers between 2019 and 2023 alone, but senior insiders say there were few success stories.

Our investigation found:

• Customers who say they spent their life savings without receiving a viable product – they told the BBC they received products from ConvrtX which didn’t work or match what they had paid for
• Clients who received legal or financial threats after complaining, including one woman who was sent inappropriate, flirtatious emails from a lawyer working for the company
• Fake positive website testimonials – one attributed to a complainant who had in fact requested a refund of $18,000 (£13,600)
• ConvrtX said on its now-disabled website that it had been featured in Forbes Magazine and had a working relationship with Harvard Business Review – both publications have denied this was the case

In response, Mr Adler’s legal team say ConvrtX had only received about 12-15 complaints out of about 340 customers – adding that after the incident of the sexually inappropriate emails, the company immediately terminated its contract with the lawyer.

Amy (not her real name), a 37-year-old single mother from the UK, says she was “led down the garden path” after paying $53,000 (£40,000) in 2021 for a website and an app for her non-profit organisation, which aims to match people with fertility issues to potential surrogates.

She says she was strung along for two years, only ever receiving a basic website and no working app, while Mr Adler continued to ask for more funds.

Amy was particularly annoyed by a text she says Mr Adler sent to her, featuring a picture of him celebrating New Year’s Eve on a tropical beach in Bali.

“Why flaunt your money to me? It’s disgraceful,” says Amy, who had funded the project by remortgaging her home and using credit cards.

Eventually, she requested a refund through her bank and complained to the UK’s Financial Ombudsman Service. A senior investigator there has provisionally recommended that the bank return $39,000 (£30,000) to Amy, according to documents seen by the BBC. She is still waiting for her bank to agree to the recommendation.

As part of the process, two expert software developers reviewed the app developed by ConvrtX. According to the senior investigator, the evidence supported Amy’s claim that the company had breached their contract by failing to provide the service she paid for.

“I think it’s fair to say ConvrtX failed to exercise reasonable care and skill when they were providing the service,” the investigator said. “It seems the work completed by ConvrtX cannot be salvaged and the entire process would need to be completed again if [Amy] wanted a working app to be developed.”

In response, lawyers for Mr Adler say that the client had “received a website, clickable prototype and a fully developed mobile app from ConvrtX”.

Former senior staff say that Josh Adler – the son of Kerry Adler, a wealthy Canadian businessman – presided over a culture of instability, resulting in high turnover of staff and errors due to “cutting corners” and hiring and firing inexperienced contractors.

On his Facebook profile, Mr Adler described himself as #YoungAndReckless and #LivingTheDream. We spoke to a number of former employees who described him as immature and a poor leader.

In company meetings, they say he “bragged” about living at the Emirates Palace Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Abu Dhabi, boasted about renting a villa in Bali, and showed off a newly purchased Porsche 911 and multiple speeding fines.

He cared about “his rich kid, bling-bling lifestyle,” says a former senior employee speaking on the condition of anonymity. “When you have that many unhappy clients, it can’t be a coincidence.”

Mr Adler’s lawyers describe him as “highly ambitious” and say he sought to build a world-leading business, but that not all staff lived up to his high standards and would be “let go” if they under-delivered. “Young and Reckless” is a clothing brand he likes, they add.

But several senior ex-staff told us they had concerns about how Mr Adler ran his company, saying he continued to take on new clients even after being warned that some business and app ideas were unviable or impossible to make. They say he requested payments from clients in advance, sometimes as much as $53,000 (£40,000), though the company had a no-refund policy.

Two senior ex-employees claim that when Mr Adler was informed that some apps were not working, he would subsequently tell customers – against the advice of the development team – that he could fix the problem if they paid more money, or their outstanding balance.

“So don’t tell the client that it cannot be done because we’ll find [a contractor] that can do it when they’ve paid,” one ex-staff member recalls Mr Adler repeatedly telling them. “He’s a good talker, he’s good at sales… but he gives a lot of false promises.”

A former customer, DeShawn Womack, says he felt “lied to” after he hired ConvrtX in 2021. He says he paid more than $50,000 (£37,750) for a mobile app that would allow users to remotely access their phone and all its data from another device if it was lost, stolen or damaged.

He says he received a design prototype, but not a finished working app.

After making payments over two years, Mr Womack – a truck driver from the US state of Georgia – messaged a senior ConvrtX employee for clarity about whether his app would be able to sync missed calls and voicemails. He also asked if it would allow users to make phone calls from a different device using their same number – a specific feature he said Mr Adler had told him was possible and was referenced in his contract with ConvrtX.

“This is impossible, your app was never ever possible in the first place,” the employee responded in messages seen by the BBC. “Did someone tell you this was possible?”

Mr Womack replied: “Yes, Josh [Adler] did and plus it’s in my project sign-off.”

The 40-year-old, who says he spent his life savings on the project, told the BBC he stopped making additional payments after he believed his app was not being properly worked on.

“He [Josh Adler] sold me a dream and this is frustrating,” he says.

Lawyers for Mr Adler say he denies telling customers that their ideas were viable when they were not. They say ConvrtX was always clear about the difficulty of developing an app, but if the client wanted to proceed it would usually take on the project.

Gemma Martin from Dundee, who runs a tarot-card-reading business, says ConvrtX failed to deliver after she paid more than $35,000 (£26,000) for services including a working interactive website and mobile app that would let users request readings and subscribe to her services.

After she wrote negative reviews online, the 33-year-old says ConvrtX refused to release her website unless she signed a non-disclosure agreement stopping her from criticising the company – which she declined.

In emails seen by the BBC, a company lawyer then made sexually inappropriate remarks to Ms Martin while trying to resolve the dispute, writing that he had researched her online and her “professional profile” did not “match [her] beauty”.

Lawyers for ConvrtX say the emails were sent by a part-time third-party contractor who was terminated immediately once Mr Adler, who also apologised to Ms Martin, learned of the incident.

Ms Martin says she received a business plan from ConvrtX and eventually raw source codes for her website and app, though she says these were unusable and incomplete.

Lawyers for ConvrtX say it delivered Ms Martin a fully developed mobile app and source code, despite her having failed to pay her remaining balance. The company has since taken legal action against her for defamation, which she is contesting.

Steven Marshall, 53, says he was also threatened with legal action by ConvrtX when he asked for a full refund. He says he was “thoroughly disappointed” with work he had paid $5,183 (£3,920) for to help launch his business supporting independent filmmakers.

In emails seen by the BBC, ConvrtX’s compliance officer told Mr Marshall that if he publicly shared his “baseless allegations” it would be “criminal and civil libel” and the company would seek a “criminal charge” against him.

The compliance officer also said that Mr Marshall had “signed away” his right to post negative reviews online about ConvrtX because of a non-disclosure agreement signed prior to the work starting.

Other former customers say they also faced threats – including Ayesha Imran, who told the BBC she had requested a refund of $18,000 (£13,500) when she did not receive an app and a privacy policy for her website, after hiring ConvrtX in 2021.

In March 2023, she complained to Mr Adler for what she described as a breach of contract because of ConvrtX’s failure to deliver.

In her complaint, she wrote she had been informed that Mr Adler was not paying his development team the appropriate amount for the work that needed to be done, causing several delays because of staff turnover, and resulting in insufficient product delivery.

The company’s compliance officer responded that Ms Imran would face damages of at least $60,000 (£47,000) if she publicly shared negative comments about ConvrtX or attempted to contact any of its employees. She says she viewed this as an attempt to intimidate and scare her.

Despite her experience, Ms Imran was being featured – until last month – as a false testimonial on the company’s website.

“ConvrtX has helped us go from vision, to launch and supported with everything in between. They are really quite holisitc [sic], in what they do!” the post read.

“Those words never left my mouth,” says Ms Imran, who tells us she had previously asked Mr Adler to remove it.

Alongside Ms Imran’s fake testimonial, the BBC has found that Mr Adler also used an image of Jen Selter, a lifestyle and fashion influencer with more than 13 million followers on social media. Ms Selter confirmed she had never used ConvrtX’s services, and that the image had been used without her consent.

Mr Adler’s lawyers say these testimonials were on a “dummy site” that was “not intended by ConvrtX to be publicly available”.

However, they were publicly available as recently as last month and some date back to August 2020, according to website archives and screengrabs taken by the BBC.

Earlier this year, Mr Adler rebranded ConvrtX and, until being contacted by the BBC, was selling eight-week “bootcamps” for $159 (£124). In a promotional video, he claimed to have helped “founders raise capital – six, eight, nine figures and the like” and to have “positively impacted 10,000 lives”.

The BBC wrote to Mr Adler asking what these numbers were based on, but his lawyers did not answer our question.

In a letter, lawyers for Josh Adler say he “unequivocally” denies the allegations. They say that Mr Adler and his business are the “victims” and that, until Gemma Martin made defamatory statements about it, ConvrtX had received very few, if any, complaints from its clients.

Democrats have struggled to land a unified message in President Donald Trump’s first months in office, with fractures both in Congress and among supporters. What comes next for a party in a difficult spot?

The rural, agricultural town of Bakersfield, California, is an odd stop for a pair of East Coast progressive politicians.

After all, Trump won the surrounding county by 20 points in the last election, and the dusty fields and endless orchards feel a world away from the party’s power centres in Los Angeles and the Bay Area.

Yet Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Independent Senator Bernie Sanders packed a local auditorium during a recent stop on their Fighting Oligarchy tour. The rally felt like a 1960s-style sit-in with attendees singing along to a gentle rendition of Woody Guthrie’s This Land is Your Land. They launched rowdy boos and jeers every time Sanders inveighed against Trump and tech billionaire Elon Musk.

The visit also felt like an answered prayer for local Democrats and left-leaning Independents who oppose Trump and his policies, while directing much of their fury at their own party, which they feel has failed to mount an effective opposition.

The Democratic party “should be doing more to try to protect everybody,” said Karla Alcantar, 26, who attended the rally. “I feel like some of them have just folded over completely, and there are some that are trying to do the work of all.”

“I definitely feel like they should be doing way more,” she said.

It is not a great time to be a Democratic politician in the United States. The party is out of power. Elected officials cannot agree on a course of action to counter Trump’s agenda. No clear leader has emerged to unify the unwieldy coalition. Various ideological and generational factions are warring against each other and nobody seems to be winning.

“I understand that they don’t have the power to, like, change like things drastically, but they do have the power to slow down like things even a little bit,” said rally attendee Juan Dominguez, 26. “It honestly feels like I’m not seeing any of that.”

The anger extends beyond the rally-goers.

Fifty-two percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents said their party’s leadership is moving in the wrong direction, according to a CNN/SSRS poll conducted in mid-March, as opposed to 48% who said it is moving in the right direction.

That same survey suggested a desire for strong opposition: 57% wanted Democrats in Congress to try and stop the Republican party’s agenda. It’s a complete reversal of a poll in 2017, the year after Trump first won the presidency, that suggested 74% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents wanted leaders to work with Republicans following a divisive election.

“What they’re pressing for is not just Democratic leaders to lash out because that’s going to make their followers feel good,” said former Pennsylvania congressman Conor Lamb, who held a town hall-style event in Pittsburgh last week.

Though Lamb said he is not currently running for office, he felt a hunger within the Democratic base.

“I think they feel like the survival of the system we have all counted on is itself on the line, and they want us to act with that level of urgency,” Lamb told the BBC. “I think it’s important for us not to forget just to be advocates for things that are specific and concrete, and really affecting people.”

Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez’s tour is just one attempt to solve that. It stops in conservative-dominated areas and remains laser-focused on the economy, citing cost of living grievances that propelled Trump to a second term, while framing him and his billionaire supporters like Musk as the culprits.

Ocasio-Cortez put the argument simply: “Oligarchy or democracy?”

But the Fighting Oligarchy tour is only one theory about how the Democratic Party should evolve.

“It is completely normal when a party loses, especially the presidency, for there to be this period of soul searching and asking, ‘What’s next?'” said Professor Christian Grose, a political scientist at the University of Southern California.

Some Democrats accused their party of falling out of step with more conservative Americans on subjects like transgender rights, or failing to accommodate diverse viewpoints within the party’s ideological spectrum. Without widening their potential base, these Democrats argue, they stand little chance of regaining power.

One such gambit by California Governor Gavin Newsom involves moving the party’s branding more to the center. Though Newsom has long brushed off White House ambitions, he is among a new generation of Democrats who could vie for the presidency in 2028.

The governor, known nationwide as a liberal defender of abortion and LGBTQ rights, recently launched a podcast to host conversations with politicos who disagree with him.

Newsom’s decision to interview right-wing strategist Steve Bannon infuriated many Democrats.

“I think it’s important to have difficult conversations or even have a civil conversation that may be difficult for people to listen to, because everyone is out there trying to tear each other down,” Newsom said at a recent press conference.

While such debates over whether to moderate or play to the base feature in every party’s soul-searching, this year does have a new twist, Mr Grose noted.

“Some of the questions for the Democrats’ strategy is the age question – is it time for a new generation? That is a little unique,” he said.

David Hogg, 25, a gun safety organiser and vice chair of the Democratic National Committee, is currently locked in a heated public debate with a party elder statesmen, strategist James Carville.

Hogg recently pledged $20m through his political group to fund primary challengers to Democrats in safe seats.

“We cannot win back the majority if we do not convince the American people that our party offers something that isn’t just, not Donald Trump, but something substantially better,” he said. “I think it’s time for some new voices in our party.”

Carville, credited with shepherding Bill Clinton to the White House, called the plan “insane.”

“Aren’t we supposed to run against Republicans?” he asked on CNN.

As party figures traded barbs on TV, disgruntled Democrats rallying in Bakersfield told the BBC that it doesn’t matter as much what leaders do, as long as they do something – preferably something loud.

Lisa Richards, a 61-year-old voter who drove 230 miles from San Diego, praised New Jersey Senator Cory Booker’s recent 25-hour speech on the US Senate floor opposing Trump’s policies.

That speech, and the Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez rallies are “showing people in the country that they care,” Ms Richards said.

A young female South African doctor has sparked a nationwide conversation about a form of domestic abuse often shrouded in silence – financial abuse.

In a series of viral videos Dr Celiwe Ndaba opened up about how she said she had been financially exploited by her husband, how it had spiralled and led to their separation.

Often sitting in her car on her way to work, the mother of three vlogged over two weeks about how despite her successful career she had become trapped in a toxic marriage for years, feeling manipulated to fund her husband’s lifestyle – in particular his desire to drive a Mercedes Benz.

Taking out loans for him to buy such vehicles was the “worst decision” of her life, putting the family under huge financial pressure, said Dr Ndaba – who since sharing her story has reverted to using her maiden name and the number of her followers has ballooned.

Despite pleas for her husband to downgrade, she said he refused – accusing her of wanting to “turn him into a laughing stock by making him drive a small car”.

The medic said she was speaking out as she wanted to issue a warning to others – that it was not only “uneducated” and “less fortunate” women who find themselves in abusive relationships.

Her estranged husband, Temitope Dada, has not responded to a BBC request for comment.

In the wake of the social media storm, he set up a TikTok account, where in one of his first videos he acknowledged: “You may know me as… ‘Mr Benz or nothing.'”

The few posts he has made are accompanied by hashtags such as #divorcetrauma – saying the accusations are lies.

Nonetheless, the comments section on Dr Ndaba’s TikTok and other social media platforms have transformed into support groups, filled with female breadwinners sharing eerily similar stories.

“You are brave to speak out so publicly… I have been suffering in silence,” one person commented.

Bertus Preller, a lawyer based in Cape Town, believes this is because although South African women are becoming doctors, lawyers and entrepreneurs, getting well-paid jobs does not necessarily free them from the clutches of the patriarchy.

Women’s financial independence clashes with “cultural norms that prioritise male authority”, he says.

If anything, their success appears to make them targets.

Financial abuse occurs when one partner dominates or exploits the other’s financial resources, the lawyer explains.

“It is a subtle yet potent tactic of domestic violence, aimed at keeping the victim under control,” he says.

In South Africa, this is legally classified as economic abuse under the Domestic Violence Act.

Mr Preller says things like “unjustly withholding money for essentials or interfering with shared assets,” are covered by the act.

A university lecturer, who requested anonymity, told the BBC how her husband had lied about his qualifications and eventually left her in financial ruin.

It started with her car that he mostly drove but never refuelled. Then loans she took out for his multiple failed business ventures. Finally, there came an eviction notice as she said he had stopped contributing towards rent, leaving her to shoulder all the expenses for their family, which included three children.

Despite this, they stayed together for close to a decade – even though he was also physically abusive.

“He’s very smart… I was in love with his smartness, his big dreams. But he couldn’t follow them up with actions. His pride was his downfall,” she said.

Even when he managed to get some money, he still did not contribute.

“He started withholding whatever money he had for himself. He’d go out drinking with his friends, come back – the salary is gone,” she said.

Legal financial expert Somila Gogoba says that beyond the control of money, financial abuse often has deep psychological roots.

“For the abuser, this behaviour may stem from feelings of inadequacy, fear of abandonment, or the need for dominance,” she told the BBC.

“For the victim, the psychological impact includes feelings of worthlessness, fear, and dependence, which can be paralysing.”

Research from the University of South Africa suggests these are not isolated cases – and that women who out-earn their partners face significantly higher risks of intimate partner violence.

Out of their in-depth study of 10 women who were the primary breadwinners of their families, only two were married.

“For eight of the participants, their choice of being single resulted from their experiences of physical, emotional and sexual violence… All the women said they believed that their role as female breadwinners was viewed as threatening to the traditional male role of a provider,” said researcher Bianca Parry.

Ms Gogoba says female breadwinners are less valued than their male counterparts, despite their economic contributions: “This cultural backdrop can encourage some partners to feel entitled to control the finances, even when they do not contribute equally.

“This control is not just about money – it is also about power and maintaining a grip on the relationship dynamics.”

Nombulelo Shange, sociologist lecturer at the University of the Free State, says it is part of a growing pattern in South Africa of middle-class women being financially exploited.

“Black women face a double patriarchy: Western expectations at work, traditional expectations at home. When these collide, harmful ideologies escalate,” she told the BBC.

She explained that balancing the pressures of being a successful woman, but playing the role of “the caregiver, the mother, the good wife, the good neighbour and community member who goes to church every Sunday”, was difficult as women were always taught to tiptoe around men’s egos.

Since Dr Ndaba’s revelations, women on social media have shared stories of giving their male partners their debit or credit cards when they go out to eat so it appears as though he is paying for the meal.

For Ms Shange this shows how the burden of a happy home is often placed on the woman’s shoulders.

“You think: ‘If I just get them a car, they’ll be happy.’ Love makes you blind. When your person struggles, you struggle too – you want to fix it,” she said.

By the time the university lecturer divorced her husband, she was left with debts of 140,000 rand ($7,500; £5,600) – all racked up in her name.

“Before, I could plan things like holidays. Now they are a luxury,” she said.

Dr Ndaba has been at pains to tell her followers, as she did on one vlog: “Finance is an important aspect of people’s marriages.”

The lecturer could not agree more, urging young women to take their time when getting to know their partners and have open, honest conversations.

“Talk about the finances, talk about your background, talk about emotions and character.”

Ms Gogoba urged more people to protect themselves from their partner, telling them to keep a separate bank account, keep their pins secure and monitor their credit cards.

They all agreed that women should understand that love should not come with an unsustainable price tag.

• Oscar Pistorius release: A reminder of South Africa’s femicide problem
• Will I be next? South Africa women ask
• Do men hold the key to fighting rape in South Africa? Published 30 September 2011

A miniature dachshund has been found alive and well after spending more than 500 days in the Australian wilderness.

Kangala Wildlife Rescue said it had been working “around the clock” to find the dog, Valerie, on Kangaroo Island, off the coast of Australia. She was last seen by her owners on a camping trip in November 2023.

Georgia Gardner and her boyfriend, Joshua Fishlock, had momentarily left Valerie in a playpen at their campsite while the couple went fishing. When they returned, she was gone.

Valerie’s 529 days in the wilderness – surviving intense heat and avoiding venomous snakes – was brought to an end in part through using Ms Gardner’s t-shirt to create a “scent trail” to a trap.

“After weeks of tireless efforts […] Valerie has been safely rescued and is fit and well,” Kangala said in a social media post.

The charity said volunteers spent more than 1,000 hours searching for Valerie, covering more than 5,000km (3,109 miles).

The rescue effort included surveillance cameras and a trap cage with a remote door system filled with food, Ms Gardner’s clothes and some of Valerie’s toys from home.

Lisa Karran, a director of Kangala, said she wore the remnants of Ms Gardner’s clothes as she approached Valerie after the dog had been trapped, and sat with her until the dog was “completely calm”.

In the initial days after Valerie went missing, other campers spotted her underneath a parked car which startled the dog and sent her fleeing into bushland, the Washington Post reported.

Months later, island locals reported seeing a pink collar that matched Valerie’s, much to the surprise of Jared Karran, another Kangala director.

“Of all dogs, that would be the last one I would say would survive out there, but they do have a good sense of smell,” Mr Karran said.

In a 15-minute video on social media, Mr and Ms Karran explained how the “rollercoaster” rescue had transpired.

Ms Karran said they had to wait until Valerie was in the right part of the trap and calm enough to ensure she would not attempt another escape.

“She went right into the back corner, which is where we wanted her. I pressed the button and thankfully it all worked perfectly,” Mr Karran said.

“I know people were a little bit frustrated, like ‘why is it taking so long?’ But these are the things that we were doing in the background,” he said.

Ms Gardner said on social media after Valerie’s long-awaited rescue: “For anyone who’s ever lost a pet, your feelings are valid and never give up hope.

“Sometimes good things happen to good people.”

The area of the UK burnt by wildfires so far this year is already higher than the total for any year in more than a decade, satellite data suggests.

More than 29,200 hectares (292 sq km or 113 sq miles) has been burnt so far, according to figures from the Global Wildfire Information System, which has recorded burnt area since 2012.

That is more than the previous high of 28,100 hectares for the whole year of 2019.

The prolonged dry, sunny weather in March and early April helped to create ideal conditions for widespread burning, according to researchers.

Wildfires are very common in the UK in early spring, with plenty of dead or dormant vegetation at the end of winter that can dry out quickly.

The switch back to wetter conditions over the past couple of weeks has largely brought an end to the spell of fires for now, but not before reaching record levels.

The figures from the Global Wildfire Information System only capture fires larger than roughly 30 hectares (0.3 sq km).

More than 80 such fires have been detected across the UK since the beginning of the year.

Most fires are deliberately or accidentally started by humans, but favourable weather conditions can make it much easier for fires to ignite and spread quickly.

“We had an exceptionally dry and sunny March,” said Will Lang, head of risk and resilience services at the Met Office.

“This followed quite a wet autumn and winter, which can have the effect of increasing the vegetation that acts as fuel for any fire that does start.”

A lack of rainfall in March and April can be particularly conducive to fires.

“The vegetation is coming out of the winter and it has gone dormant, so it’s not growing, and therefore it’s very dry and doesn’t have water,” explained Guillermo Rein, professor of fire science at Imperial College London.

“Then in the spring, before you start to collect the water into the live tissue, there is a period where it’s very flammable.”

The seven days from 2 to 8 April saw more than 18,000 hectares (180 sq km) burnt, the highest weekly figure on record.

The BBC has also analysed satellite images to illustrate two of the biggest burns this year.

In Galloway Forest Park, in south-west Scotland, an estimated 65 sq km burnt, nearly a quarter of the UK total.

A fire in mid-Wales, about 25 km (16 miles) from Aberystwyth, also burnt a large area of roughly 50 sq km.

Fires have also been detected by satellite imagery on the Isle of Arran, the Isle of Bute and the Isle of Skye in Scotland, as well as in the Mourne Mountains in south-east Northern Ireland. All occurred in early April.

These early season burns – predominantly grass, heath and shrub fires – have created great strain on fire services, but their ecological impacts can be complicated.

Not all fires, particularly smaller, lower-intensity burns, are necessarily catastrophic to long-term vegetation health.

Certain plants, such as heather, are adapted to fire-prone environments. But increasingly frequent or severe blazes can impair their ability to naturally recover.

Some researchers are concerned about the second peak of the fire season, which typically comes later in the year when temperatures are high and vegetation has dried out again.

“My number one worry is what is going to happen in the summer,” said Prof Rein, when “there are fewer wildfires but they are bigger and they can actually be seriously catastrophic”.

“You can have 100 [small] wildfires across the whole country and all of them can be handled in one day, or you could have one summer wildfire that actually cannot be stopped in a week and actually goes on to burn houses.”

The recent widespread burns don’t necessarily mean this summer will be a busy fire season.

But scientists expect the UK to see an increase in weather conditions conducive to extreme wildfires in a warming world, even though there’s lots of variation from year to year.

A study led by the Met Office found that the extreme “fire weather” that helped spread the destructive blazes of July 2022 were made at least six times more likely by human-caused climate change.

Shifts in the way land is used can also play a key role in shaping fire risk.

“One thing that seems to have consensus is that we are likely to see more fires and possibly worse fires with climate change,” said Rory Hadden, senior lecturer in fire investigation at the University of Edinburgh.

“We need to be prepared for this to become more common.”

Sign up for our Future Earth newsletter to keep up with the latest climate and environment stories with the BBC’s Justin Rowlatt. Outside the UK? Sign up to our international newsletter here.

Russia’s military says it has regained full control of the country’s western Kursk region – a claim denied by Ukraine.

Top Russian commander Valery Gerasimov said the last village held by Ukrainian troops had now been recaptured – eight months after Kyiv’s surprise incursion.

He also praised the “heroism” of North Korean troops during a Russian counter-offensive, in what is the first time Russia has publicly acknowledged their involvement. Russian President Vladimir Putin described Ukraine’s efforts in Kursk as a complete failure.

Ukraine says its troops are still conducting operations in the Russian border region, with the military describing Moscow’s claims as “propaganda tricks”.

Ukrainian forces have been in retreat in Kursk in recent months, facing 70,000 Russian troops and heavy drone attacks as part of Russia’s drive to regain the territory.

In its latest report on 25 April, the US-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW) think-tank said: “Russian forces recently advanced near the international border in Kursk Oblast [region] as part of efforts to push Ukrainian forces from their limited remaining positions in the area.”

The ISW also reported that “fighting continued in [Russia’s] north-western Belgorod Oblast [region] on 25 April”.

During a video conference meeting with Putin on Saturday, Gerasimov said: “Today, the last settlement in the Kursk region, the village of Gornal, has been liberated from Ukrainian forces.”

Gerasimov said more than 76,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed and wounded in the Kursk region – a claim not verified independently.

He also praised North Korean troops for providing “significant assistance in defeating the group of Ukrainian armed forces”.

“The Kyiv regime’s adventure has completely failed,” Putin told Gerasimov in response, claiming that it would pave the way for further Russian advances on other fronts.

Russia’s military says its troops now control several settlements in Ukraine’s north-eastern Sumy region, located next to Kursk.

Responding in a post on Telegram, the Ukrainian military’s general staff said the situation on the battlefield was “difficult” – but insisted its forces were still holding positions in Kursk and were continuing an incursion in the Belgorod region, which lies immediately south of Kursk.

Ukraine’s incursion was launched last August as an attempt to create a buffer zone on the border between the two countries that would prevent Russian forces from being deployed on Ukraine’s eastern front line.

It comes a day after US President Donald Trump said Russia and Ukraine were “very close to a deal” on ending the war, following talks between his envoy Steve Witkoff and Putin this week.

But Trump on Saturday questioned Putin’s willingness to end the war, referencing Russia’s attacks on Kyiv earlier this week which killed at least 12 people and injured 90 others.

His comments followed a meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on the sidelines of Pope Francis’s funeral at the Vatican – their first face-to-face encounter since February’s acrimonious Oval Office showdown.

The White House struck a more positive tone about Saturday’s meeting, while Zelensky described the sit down as a “very symbolic meeting that has potential to become historic, if we achieve joint results”.

Ukraine’s leader told the BBC on Friday that he was pushing for a “full and unconditional ceasefire” before any deal was struck.

Kyiv has faced growing pressure from Trump to accept territorial concessions as part of any deal with Moscow to end fighting, which could reportedly include giving up the Crimean peninsula which was illegally annexed by Russia in 2014.

Zelensky has repeatedly rejected any such concessions.

Ukraine had hoped it could use the land it had seized in the Kursk region as a bargaining chip in future peace talks with Russia, which launched its full-scale invasion in 2022 and currently controls around 20% of Ukraine’s internationally-recognised territory.

A woman says she has been left unable to walk after she was accidentally trampled by players participating in an annual Easter Monday tradition.

Alexie Winship said she was among spectators watching the Hallaton bottle kicking event in Leicestershire, where players attempt to wrestle wood kegs through a field to win.

The 23-year-old was caught up in a scrum and seriously injured. At hospital, she was found to have suffered a neurological injury and a bleed on her spine, which has left her without most feeling below her waist.

Ms Winship, who remains in hospital, said she could not remember much of what happened.

I was on the outskirts [of the players], just watching when a beer keg came flying out in my direction,” Ms Winship said.

“I couldn’t get out of the way. I was with friends who said I got kicked in the head, knocked out, and then trampled on.

“It was like a stampede. One of my friends pulled me out and I was blue-lighted to hospital.”

Bottle kicking takes place in a field between neighbouring villages Hallaton and Medbourne. It has few rules, but is won when players are able to carry two of three barrels across a stream back to their village.

Two of the “bottles” contain beer, while one is completely wooden – painted red and white – and is referred to as the dummy.

Organisers have said local legend suggested the event, preceded by a procession through Hallaton in which hare pies are scattered, can trace its roots back 2,000 years.

Ms Winship told the BBC she had planned to run a half-marathon on Sunday, but her injuries had “thrown a spanner in the works”.

She added while she was a spectator, she “never intended” to get involved in the action.

“I can’t feel anything below my waist. I can’t walk,” she said.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen and that’s the scary thing. I’m an active, fit and healthy person.”

Ms Winship, who works in retail, has been told she will recover, but that it would be “a long-term thing” and that she was facing “months” using a wheelchair.

She added she wanted people to be aware of the risks of attending the event.

“I wasn’t standing particularly close,” she said. “We were a few metres away but it surged so quickly towards us.

“They [the players] were looking at the keg, not where they were going. I know it was an accident.

“Maybe they could have marshals to make it safer.”

Phil Allan, chairman of the bottle kicking organising committee, said he wished Ms Winship a “full recovery”.

He added people were warned well in advance of the risks of entering the field of play.

“We don’t want anyone to get hurt but you do get the odd injury – it’s an age-old problem,” Mr Allan said.

“We’ve looked at all sorts of things but you can’t marshal it. It’s an unpredictable event.

“We put posters up around the field telling people they enter at their own risk so they are warned. And we pay for ambulances and paramedics to attend in case anyone does get hurt.”

Bottle kicking is not the only peculiar rough-and-tumble English tradition that comes with a risk of injury.

Paramedics are deployed to the annual cheese rolling event in Gloucestershire, where participants chase a 7lb (3kg) Double Gloucester down a steep 200-yard hill, many tripping and tumbling as they go.

Medics have also been required to treat players hurt during Royal Shrovetide Football, which takes place annually in Ashbourne in Derbyshire, as the Up’Ards and Down’Ards compete to move a ball to opposite ends of the town.

Actor Jack Lowden has said he likes the idea of “breaking down barriers” by being a ginger Mr Darcy in a new adaptation of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.

The 34-year-old joked on the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg that “it is one of the great last barriers to break down”.

In a wide-ranging interview alongside fellow British actor Martin Freeman, 53, he discussed being trained by an ex-MI6 officer and their upcoming West End play.

On his role in Netflix’s six-part adaptation of Austen’s classic novel, Lowden said he might draw on inspiration from some actors who have previously played the iconic Mr Darcy role.

“I quite like the idea of being a ginger Darcy,” he told the BBC. “I think that is really breaking down barriers – one of the great last barriers to be broken down.”

Sitting next to Lowden a smiling Freeman said he “agreed”.

Lowden continued: “I quite like the idea of me coming along and doing something else with it.

“Or just copying one of them because some of the guys who played it are amongst the best. Matthew Macfadyen, to me, is one of the best actors on the planet. So if I just try copy him – maybe that’s alright?”

“But ginger?” Freeman asked.

“Ginger”, Lowden replied. “Yep, change it up.”

Lowden and Freeman are set to take part in the David Ireland’s West End theatre show the Fifth Step which is due to open at Soho Place Theatre on 12 May.

The pair told the programme they had not met before they agreed to play an alcoholic and his Alcoholics Anonymous sponsor.

Lowden said he enjoyed the dark humour of the show, saying that, while it may be “corny”, laughter was “the best medicine” and a way of “self-healing”.

Asked about the Bafta-nominated series Slow Horses, which focuses on intelligence agents who have been discarded by MI5, Lowden talked about being trained in spycraft.

“We did a day with an ex-MI6 officer who was helping us to train in the art of surveillance and counter-surveillance. Walking along and following a mark.

“He gave us a lecture for a bit and then said ‘right we are going to go outside and do this’. But then he pulled the shutters up on the window and saw that it was raining and he went ‘oh no maybe we shouldn’t’.

“So MI6 don’t operate a lot in the rain,” Lowden – who has been touted as a possibility for the new James Bond – said. “Maybe it’s cause they’re abroad a lot.”

Freeman then shared his own experiences about being “tailed occasionally”.

“Just by people, sometimes follow you around. And they think you don’t know and of course you do know.”

Freeman said those experiences are “less scary and more annoying”.

“It’s annoying because they think you don’t know they are doing it. So occasionally I do just turn round and go ‘look, what do you want?’

“I try to be reasonable with people and say ‘look I am not a prop’.”

At a rally in London, Ontario, on Friday, the crowd booed as Mark Carney delivered his core campaign line about the existential threat Canada faces from its neighbour.

“President Trump is trying to break us so that America could own us,” the Liberal leader warned.

“Never,” supporters shouted back. Many waved Canadian flags taped to ice hockey sticks.

Similar levels of passion were also on display at the union hall where Pierre Poilievre greeted enthusiastic supporters in the Toronto area earlier in the week.

The Conservative leader has drawn large crowds to rallies across the country, where “Bring it Home” is a call to arms: both to vote for a change of government and a nod to the wave of Canadian patriotism in the face of US tariff threats.

In the final hours of a 36-day campaign, Donald Trump’s shadow looms over everything. The winner of Monday’s election is likely to be the party able to convince voters they have a plan for how to deal with the US president.

National polls suggest the Liberals have maintained a narrow lead entering last stretch.

Still, Trump is not the only factor at play – he was only mentioned once in Poilievre’s stump speech.

The Conservative leader has focused more on voters disaffected by what he calls a “Lost Liberal decade”, promising change from a government he blames for the housing shortage and a sluggish economy, and for mishandling social issues like crime and the fentanyl crisis.

His pitch resonates with voters like Eric and Carri Gionet, from Barrie, Ontario. They have two daughters in their mid-20s and said they were attending their first ever political rally.

“We’re pretty financially secure – but I worry about them,” said Eric Gionet. While he and his wife could buy their first home while young, he said, “there’s no prospect” their children will be able to do the same.

“I’m excited to be here,” said Carri Gionet. “I’m hopeful.”

Tapping into voter frustration has helped opposition parties sweep governments from power in democracies around the world. Canada seemed almost certain to follow suit.

Last year, the Conservatives held a 20-point lead in national polls over the governing Liberals for months. Poilievre’s future as the country’s next prime minister seemed baked in.

Then a series of shockwaves came in quick succession at the start of 2025, upending the political landscape: Justin Trudeau’s resignation, Carney’s subsequent rise to Liberal leader and prime minister; and the return of Trump to the White House with the threats and tariffs that followed.

By the time the election was called in mid-March, Carney’s Liberals were polling neck-and-neck with the Conservatives, and by early April they had pulled slightly ahead, national surveys suggest.

It has been a stunning reversal of fortunes. Seemingly dead and buried, the Liberals now believe they could win a fourth successive election, and even a majority in Parliament.

Carney is pitching himself as the man most ready to meet this critical moment – a steady central banker who helped shepherd Canada’s economy through the 2008 financial crisis and later, the UK through Brexit.

For Conservative voter Gwendolyn Slover, 69, from Summerside in the province of Prince Edward Island, his appeal is “baffling”.

“Many people think Mark Carney is some kind of Messiah,” she said. “It’s the same party, he’s one person. And he’s not going to change anything.”

For Carney’s supporters, they see a strong resume and a poise that has calmed their anxieties over Trump’s threats of steep tariffs and repeated suggestions the country should become the 51st US state – though the president has been commenting less frequently on Canada during the campaign.

“I’m very impressed by the stability and the serious thought process of Mark Carney,” said Mike Brennan from Kitchener, Ontario, as he stood in line to meet the Liberal leader at a coffee shop in Cambridge, about an hour outside Toronto.

Mr Brennan is a “lifelong Liberal” who did not initially plan to vote for the party in this election because of his dislike for Trudeau.

The departure of former prime minister Trudeau, who had grown increasingly unpopular over his decade in power, released “a massive pressure valve”, said Shachi Kurl, president of the Angus Reid Institute, a non-profit public opinion research organisation.

“All of these angry Liberals who are either parking their votes with the [left-wing] NDP or parking their votes with the Conservatives start re-coalescing,” she said.

Then more disaffected Liberals and other progressive voters began to migrate towards Carney’s Liberals, driven by Trump, this election’s “main character”, Ms Kurl said.

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

It has worked to Carney’s advantage, with Trump’s tariffs threats giving the political neophyte – he is the first prime minister never to have held elected public office – the chance to publicly audition to keep his job during the campaign.

Trump’s late-March announcement of global levies on foreign automobile imports allowed Carney to step away from the trail and take on the prime minister’s mantle, setting up a call with the president and meeting US Cabinet ministers.

He’s never been tested in a gruelling federal election campaign, with its relentless travel, high-pressure demands for retail politics and daily media scrutiny. Yet on the campaign trail, and in the high-stakes debate with party leaders, he is considered to have performed well.

Poilievre, in contrast, is a veteran politician and polished performer. But on the shifting political ground, Conservatives appeared to struggle to find their footing, pivoting their message from Canada being broken to “Canada First”.

Poilievre had to fend off criticism from political rivals that he is “Trump lite”, with his combative style, his vows to end “woke ideology”, and willingness to take on the “global elite”.

“I have a completely different story from Donald Trump,” he has said.

More on the Canadian election:

• Canada’s top candidates talk up fossil fuels as climate slips down agenda
• Patriotism surges in Quebec as Trump rattles Canada
• ‘My home is worth millions – but young people are priced out of this city’
• A simple guide to Canada’s federal election

Canadians have historically voted in either Conservative or Liberal governments, but smaller parties – like the NDP or the Bloc Québécois, a sovereigntist party that only runs candidates in the province of Quebec – have in the past formed Official Opposition.

In this campaign, both are languishing and face the possibility of losing a number of seats in the House of Commons as anxious voters turn towards the two main political parties.

If the Liberals and Conservatives both succeed in getting over 38% of the vote share nationally, as polls suggest is likely, it would be the first time that has happened since 1975.

The message from the NDP – which helped prop up the minority Liberals in the last government – in the final days of campaigning has been to vote strategically.

“You can make the difference between Mark Carney getting a super majority or sending enough New Democrats to Ottawa so we can fight to defend the things you care about,” leader Jagmeet Singh said earlier this week.

The campaign has also highlighted festering divides along regional lines.

With much of the campaign dominated by the US-Canada relationship and the trade war, many issues – climate, immigration, indigenous reconciliation – have been on the backburner.

Even when the campaigns have focused on other policies, the discussion has centred on the country’s economic future.

Both frontrunners agree in broad strokes on the priorities: the need to pivot away from dependence on the US; the development of oil, gas and mining sectors; protection for workers affected by tariffs; and increased defence spending.

But they disagree on who is best to lead Canada forward, especially when so much is at stake.

“It’s time for experience, not experiments,” Carney told his supporters in London.

Poilievre closing message was: “We can choose change on Monday. We can take back control of our lives and build a bright future.”

Images of Pope Francis’ tomb at the Santa Maria Maggiore church in Rome have been released.

A single, white rose was pictured lying on the stone tomb that bears the name he was known by during his pontificate, below a crucifix illuminated by a single spotlight.

The late pope was laid to rest at the church – one of four major basilicas in the Italian capital, and one he would regularly visit during his time as cardinal and pontiff – in a private ceremony following his public funeral in the Vatican on Saturday.

Mourners queued outside the church early on Sunday morning to be among the first to pay their respects to Pope Francis, who died aged 88 on Monday.

• Why Pope Francis hasn’t been buried in the Vatican
• Who was at the funeral and where did they sit?

Francis was particularly devoted to the Virgin Mary, and Santa Maria Maggiore was the first church to be dedicated to her when it was built in the 4th Century.

The basilica sits near the Colosseum, a stone’s throw from the city’s endlessly bustling and chaotic central Termini station – well beyond the limits of the Vatican, where popes are traditionally entombed.

But it was one the South American pontiff had a long-held affinity for.

It’s senior priest previously told an Italian newspaper that Pope Francis had said he wished to be laid to rest there in 2022, citing inspiration from the Virgin Mary.

Francis’ funeral was attended by heads of state, heads of government and monarchs from around the world – as well as hundreds of thousands of Catholics who lined the streets leading to the Vatican to pay their respects.

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

The cardinal emphasised that Pope Francis had repeatedly urged the world to “build bridges, not walls”.

The funeral was also the venue for a meeting between US President Donald Trump and Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky, which the latter said afterwards had the “potential to become historic”.

Trump later questioned Russian President Vladimir Putin’s willingness to end the now three-year war in Ukraine, a conflict which Pope Francis had regularly called for peace during his papacy.

Following the public funeral, Pope Francis’ coffin was carried through Rome in a slow procession.

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

After a period of mourning, attention will soon turn to the selection of the next pope.

A date has not yet been set but it is thought it could start as early as 5 or 6 May, with 135 cardinals set to attend, making it the largest conclave in modern history.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Brisbane electrician Callum Bailey is one of them.

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

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

“[I] just can’t keep up.”

This is a tale James Gillespie kept hearing.

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

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

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

And that’s just primary care.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

At least 28 people have been killed and 800 injured in a massive explosion at one of Iran’s key ports, authorities say.

The blast took place at Shahid Rajaee, the country’s largest commercial port, near the southern city of Bandar Abbas on Saturday morning.

It blew out windows and roofs of nearby buildings and destroyed cars. Residents reported feeling the impact of the blast up to 50km (31 miles) away. Six people remain unaccounted for, state media reports.

Videos verified by the BBC show a fire growing in intensity before a huge explosion, with people subsequently fleeing the blast and others lying wounded on roads surrounded by smoking debris.

“The entire warehouse was filled with smoke, dust and ashes. I don’t remember if I went under the table or was thrown there by the blast,” one person who was in the area told Iranian state TV.

Aerial footage showed at least three areas ablaze and Iran’s interior minister later confirmed that the fire was spreading from one container to another. Schools and offices in the region have been ordered to remain closed on Sunday.

One private maritime risk consultancy said it believed the affected containers had contained solid fuel destined for ballistic missiles.

The fire was the result of “improper handling of a shipment of solid fuel intended for use in Iranian ballistic missiles”, Ambrey Intelligence said.

Ambrey added that it was aware that an Iran-flagged ship “discharged a shipment of sodium perchlorate rocket fuel at the port in March 2025”.

The Financial Times newspaper had previously reported that two vessels had shipped fuel to Iran from China.

State media quoted witnesses as saying the explosion occurred after a fire broke out and spread to unsealed containers storing “flammable materials”.

Customs officials later released a statement reported by Iranian state TV saying the explosion had probably resulted from a fire that had broken out in a hazmat and chemical materials storage depot.

In a later update Ambrey quoted Iran’s National Disaster Management Organisation as saying officials had previously issued warnings to Shahid Rajaee port regarding the safe storage of chemicals.

Shahid Rajaee port is Iran’s largest and most advanced terminal, through which much of the country’s commercial shipping transits.

It is located on the Strait of Hormuz, a major shipping channel for oil cargo, and is about 20km (12 miles) west of Bandar Abbas, Iran’s major port city on its south coast and home to the Iranian Navy’s main base.

Iran’s national oil production company said the explosion at the port had “no connection” to the country’s oil refineries, fuel tanks and pipelines, local media reported.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has expressed his “deep regret and sympathy” for victims. He has announced a government investigation and sent the interior minister to the region to lead it.

Saturday’s explosion coincided with the latest round of negotiations between Iranian and US officials on Iran’s nuclear programme, with US President Donald Trump aiming to make a deal that would prevent Tehran from gaining nuclear weapons.

Negotiating through Oman mediators, both sides reported that progress had been made, but Iran’s top representative said work was still needed to narrow differences. Negotiations will continue next week.

Iran has said it is open to curbs on its nuclear programme in return for sanctions easing but has insisted it will not stop enriching uranium. It insists its nuclear programme is for civilian use.

The talks this year have marked the first high-level engagement between the US and Iran since 2018, when Trump in his first term pulled out of a previous deal to restrict Iran’s nuclear activities and reinstated economic sanctions.

• What is Iran’s nuclear programme and what does the US want?

At least nine people have been killed after a car was driven into a crowd at a street festival in Vancouver, police have confirmed.

Authorities in the western Canadian city said “multiple others” were injured during the incident, which occurred at approximately 20:14 local time on Saturday (03:14 GMT on Sunday) at a street festival.

Police said a 30-year-old male suspect was in custody and that they were “confident that this incident was not an act of terrorism”. An investigation into the incident is ongoing.

Police said the suspect had driven into pedestrians at the annual Lapu Lapu festival, which celebrates Filipino culture, at East 43rd Avenue and Fraser, in the south of Vancouver.

• Follow updates on this story

Steve Rai, Vancouver Police’s interim chief, told a news conference that there had been one vehicle and one suspect involved in the incident. He said more details would be released in the morning.

The owner of a food truck selling bao buns at the festival, Yoseb Vardeh, told the BBC World Service that the attack happened right in front of his van.

“This guy, he killed some of my customers,” he said. “There was people waiting for their buns that got hit.”

Mr Vardeh added: “I stepped outside of my food truck and I just saw bodies underneath people’s food trucks, husbands crying out for their wives or their kids… It was just horrible.”

Unverified footage posted on social media showed a number of police cars, ambulances and fire engines at the scene, with injured people lying on the ground.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said in a statement on X that he was “devastated to hear about the horrific events at the Lapu Lapu festival in Vancouver”.

He continued: “I offer my deepest condolences to the loved ones of those killed and injured, to the Filipino Canadian community, and to everyone in Vancouver. We are all mourning with you.”

He also thanked emergency responders for their “swift action”.

Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim said he was “shocked and deeply saddened by the horrific incident”, adding in a post that his “thoughts are with all those affected and with Vancouver’s Filipino community during this incredibly difficult time.”

One of Vancouver’s city councillors, Peter Fry, told the BBC that local residents were struggling to process what had happened.

“This celebration was a huge, fun, vibrant, family-orientated street party, and it was a fantastic event. To see it turn so horrible so quickly and unexpectedly has, I think, our entire city is in shock,” he said.

Lapu Lapu Day is celebrated every year in the Philippines on 27 April to commemorate Lapu-Lapu, a national hero who resisted Spanish colonisation.

The festival was officially set up in Vancouver in 2023. Its website says it “symbolises the cultural harmony and mutual respect that thrive in the province of British Columbia”.

Philippines President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr said he was “shattered to hear about the terrible incident”, adding that the Philippine consulate general would work with Canadian authorities to ensure the tragedy was thoroughly investigated.

Leaders of different Canadian political parties have also shared messages of condolence.

Pierre Poilievre, leader of Canada’s Conservative Party, called the incident a “senseless attack”, while the leader of the British Columbia New Democratic Party, David Eby, said he was “shocked and heartbroken”.

New Democratic Party leader Jagmeet Singh – who had attended the festival but was not present when the incident occurred – said he was “horrified to learn” that innocent people had been killed and injured.

“As we wait to learn more, our thoughts are with the victims and their families – and Vancouver’s Filipino community, who were coming together today to celebrate resilience,” he added.

Singh, Poilievre and Carney are all running in Canada’s federal election on Monday. Singh’s constituency of Burnaby Central lies just east of where the incident took place.

Donald Trump has questioned Vladimir Putin’s willingness to end the war in Ukraine following his meeting with the country’s leader Volodymyr Zelensky on the sidelines of Pope Francis’s funeral.

Posting on social media after leaving Rome, Trump said he feared Putin was “tapping me along” after Moscow’s strikes on Kyiv earlier this week, adding there was “no reason for Putin to be shooting missiles into civilian areas”.

Earlier in the day Trump and Zelensky were seen in deep discussion in St Peter’s Basilica shortly before the funeral began.

The White House described the 15-minute meeting with Zelensky as “very productive”. The Ukrainian president said it had the “potential to become historic”.

It was Trump’s first face-to-face encounter with the Ukrainian president since February’s acrimonious Oval Office showdown.

Writing on his Truth Social account, Trump said the Russian attacks on Ukrainian cities “makes me think that maybe he doesn’t want to stop the war, he’s just tapping me along, and has to be dealt with differently, through ‘Banking’ or ‘Secondary Sanctions?'”.

Trump had previously said Russia and Ukraine were “very close to a deal” following three-hour talks between his envoy Steve Witkoff and the Russian president on Friday.

The Kremlin meanwhile said on Saturday that Putin had confirmed Russia’s readiness to enter into direct talks with Ukraine “without preconditions” to Witkoff.

During their last face-to-face meeting at the White House, Trump had told Zelensky “you don’t have the cards” and that he was not winning against Russia.

Trump repeated that message this week, saying the Ukrainian leader had “no cards to play”. He has previously blamed Ukraine for starting the war and has accused Zelensky multiple times of being an obstacle to peace negotiations.

But the White House struck a more positive tone about Saturday’s meeting, while Zelensky described the sit down as a “very symbolic” and one which could prove significant “if we achieve joint results”.

Two images were released of the meeting, showing the US leader in a blue suit and Ukrainian president in a black top and trousers, locked in intense conversation while sitting opposite each other.

Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha also posted an image of the meeting on X with the caption: “No words are needed to describe the importance of this historic meeting. Two leaders working for peace in St. Peter’s Basilica.”

Another image posted by the Ukrainian delegation from inside St Peter’s showed the two men standing alongside UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron, whose hand is on Zelensky’s shoulder.

The implication was that the two European leaders – who have regularly acted as intermediaries for Trump and Zelensky – had helped to bring the two together against the sombre backdrop of the funeral.

After the meeting, Trump and Zelensky walked down the steps of the basilica, where Zelensky’s arrival was met with applause from the crowds, and took their seats in the front row.

• Thousands line streets of Rome as Pope Francis laid to rest
• Who was there and where did they sit?
• Extraordinary photos from the funeral

During the service, the pair sat a short distance from each other, with Macron and other heads of state in between.

In his homily, Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re spoke of Pope Francis’s incessant calls for peace. “‘Build bridges, not walls’ was an exhortation he repeated many times,” said the cardinal.

Ukrainian officials had talked of a possible second meeting, but Trump’s motorcade drove away from St Peter’s immediately afterwards and his plane left Rome a short time later.

Zelensky, however, later met Macron in the garden of Villa Bonaparte, home to the French embassy to the Holy See.

He also met Sir Keir at Villa Wolkonsky, the British ambassador’s residence, as well as holding separate talks with EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

Macron said ending the war in Ukraine was an objective that “we share in common with President Trump” in a post on X, adding that Ukraine was ready for “an unconditional ceasefire”.

A Downing Street spokesperson said Starmer and Zelensky discussed the positive progress that had been made recently to “secure a just and lasting peace in Ukraine,” adding that the pair had agreed to “maintain momentum” and “speak again at the earliest opportunity”.

During February’s heated White House exchange, Trump accused the Ukrainian president of “gambling with World War Three” by not going along with ceasefire plans led by Washington.

Kyiv has been on the receiving end of growing pressure from Trump to accept territorial concessions as part of an agreement with Moscow to end the war.

These concessions would reportedly include giving up large portions of land, including the Crimean peninsula which was illegally annexed by Russia in 2014.

Zelensky has repeatedly rejected the idea in the past. He suggested to the BBC on Friday that “a full and unconditional ceasefire opens up the possibility to discuss everything”.

When Donald Trump made a historic return to power earlier this year, it was with the help of voters who represented a diverse coalition of backgrounds – truck drivers, veterans, business owners and more.

They represented a wide range of perspectives that helped explain Trump’s enduring appeal. But 100 days after he took office, how do his staunchest supporters feel now?

The BBC has returned to five of them. Here’s what they had to say about the promises he kept, the pledges he has yet to address, and what they want next.

Luiz Oliveira says he “can’t keep up” with the rapid policy changes Trump has made in his first 100 days.

On immigration, he has appreciated the flurry of new border restrictions and the emphasis on deportations, including sending men to a notorious mega-prison in El Salvador. Encounters between migrants and US border agents at the US-Mexico are now at a four-year low.

The issue is important to Luiz, a Brazilian who came to the US legally in the 1980s and now lives in Nevada. Echoing Trump, he describes the influx of migrants in recent years as an “invasion”.

Luiz, 65, says Trump is telling undocumented immigrants: “This is my house, my yard, and you’re not going to stay here.”

In other areas, however, he, is nervous about Trump’s approach.

The coffee shop owner supports Trump’s efforts to make other countries pay “their fair share” through tariffs. But he’s apprehensive about the short-term economic effects as well as how long it could take for America to see the benefits.

“It’s going to be painful [and] I don’t think it’s going to be as fast as he says.

“I’m a supporter, but at the end of the day, if this doesn’t work, I’ll say it’s a mistake – he did things too fast, scared the markets, scared the economy.”

Amanda Sue Mathis backed Trump in 2024 because she felt he was the best candidate to address America’s most pressing problems – 100 days in, she says he’s made strong progress.

“There were a lot of people who cared about the wars in the Middle East and Ukraine, but I think it’s time we look at our country and get things in order before we go fix other countries’ problems,” the 34-year-old Navy veteran says.

She wants a “merit-based society” and praises Trump’s rollback of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion policies which had tried to boost minority representation and tackle discrimination. Critics say those policies are themselves discriminatory – and Amanda Sue believes they went too far in recent years.

She also welcomes Trump’s executive orders restricting gender care for Americans under the age of 19 and banning transgender women from female sports.

Broadly, she thinks the president is “kicking butt” and his first 100 days have made her “happier with [her] vote”.

But Amanda Sue is prepared to have her mind changed too.

“I’m not one of those people who is always for Trump,” she says. “If he messes up, I’ll be the first one to tell you.”

Trump’s promise to impose tariffs and bring manufacturing jobs back to America was a key reason why Ben Maurer, a 39-year-old freight truck driver from Pennsylvania, voted for the president.

“A lot of people thought he was bluffing on more than a few things,” he says.

So Ben’s delighted Trump hit the gas immediately, imposing tariffs on countries that range from allies like Canada and Mexico to adversaries like China.

It has not been a smooth ride, however. In a tumultuous series of announcements, the administration has raised, lowered, delayed and retracted tariffs in response to ongoing trade negotiations and stock market reaction.

Currently, the US has imposed a 10% tariffs on all imports – and China has been hit with a 145% tax on goods it exports to America.

Despite economists’ concerns about higher prices, Ben believes the businesses he delivers to will benefit in the long run.

“Trump has earned back the respect [for the US],” he says of the president’s tariff policies. “We are still the force to be reckoned with.”

Overall, he feels Trump has been more productive at the start of his second term. The president had time to prepare, he says, and it shows.

June Carey’s opinion of Donald Trump has not changed, but the first few months of Trump’s second term are not what she anticipated either.

“He’s a bit more aggressive and a little bit more erratic than I expected,” the California artist says.

But June, 70, doesn’t see the surprises as negative. She is “blown away” by the “waste” the so-called Department of Government Efficiency – led by billionaire Trump ally Elon Musk – says it has found.

Critics say his claims about savings appear to be inflated and he has faced a backlash for blunt cuts at government departments that were later reversed, including firings of key federal workers.

June says she’s uncertain about Musk himself.

“Musk is a character I don’t understand,” June says. “My feeling is that if Trump has trusted him as much as he has, than he must be a pretty good guy with the right ideas and the right goals.”

She previously told the BBC she was concerned about welfare spending and hoped Trump would push Americans to be more self-sufficient. While she is happy with the cuts so far, she hopes they leave alone social security – the monthly government payments that she and 67 million retired or disabled Americans live off.

Democrats warn those are at risk in future, but June asks: “Why would they cut [social security] when they’ve cut so many things that have saved them millions and millions of dollars?”

Jeremy Stevens has faithfully stood by Trump for years.

“[Trump is] very aggressively getting things he promised on the campaign trail done,” he says.

At his automotive repair and used car shop in Maine, Jeremy sees some customers who feel differently about Trump’s economic efforts. But the 45-year-old believes their nerves around tariffs in particular come from “a lack of understanding”.

The tariffs are part of a Trump administration vision that Jeremy believes will pay off in the long run – if critics can hold on until then.

“There definitely is a perception out there about the impact of these policies that is short-sighted,” he says.

Trump’s back-and-forth shift on tariff policies have come at a price, economists say. Markets around the world were sent spiralling. The International Monetary Fund has cut its global growth forecast because of the uncertainty, with the US hardest hit. It warned there is a 40% chance of a recession in the US.

But Jeremy is convinced time will prove Trump right.

“It’s a temporary pain,” he says. “This too shall pass.”

Will India be able to stop the Indus river and two of its tributaries from flowing into Pakistan?

That’s the question on many minds, after India suspended a major treaty governing water sharing of six rivers in the Indus basin between the two countries, following Tuesday’s horrific attack in Indian-administered Kashmir.

The 1960 Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) survived two wars between the nuclear rivals and was seen as an example of trans-boundary water management.

The suspension is among several steps India has taken against Pakistan, accusing it of backing cross-border terrorism – a charge Islamabad flatly denies. It has also hit back with reciprocal measures against Delhi, and said stopping water flow “will be considered as an Act of War”.

The treaty allocated the three eastern rivers – the Ravi, Beas and Sutlej – of the Indus basin to India, while 80% of the three western ones – the Indus, Jhelum and Chenab – to Pakistan.

Disputes have flared in the past, with Pakistan objecting to some of India’s hydropower and water infrastructure projects, arguing they would reduce river flows and violate the treaty. (More than 80% of Pakistan’s agriculture and around a third of its hydropower depend on the Indus basin’s water.)

India, meanwhile, has been pushing to review and modify the treaty, citing changing needs – from irrigation and drinking water to hydropower – in light of factors like climate change.

Over the years, Pakistan and India have pursued competing legal avenues under the treaty brokered by the World Bank.

But this is the first time either side has announced a suspension – and notably, it’s the upstream country, India, giving it a geographic advantage.

But what does the suspension really mean? Could India hold back or divert the Indus basin’s waters, depriving Pakistan of its lifeline? And is it even capable of doing so?

Experts say it’s nearly impossible for India to hold back tens of billions of cubic metres of water from the western rivers during high-flow periods. It lacks both the massive storage infrastructure and the extensive canals needed to divert such volumes.

“The infrastructure India has are mostly run-of-the-river hydropower plants that do not need massive storage,” said Himanshu Thakkar, a regional water resources expert with the South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers and People.

Such hydropower plants use the force of running water to spin turbines and generate electricity, without holding back large volumes of water.

Indian experts say inadequate infrastructure has kept India from fully utilising even its 20% share of the Jhelum, Chenab and Indus waters under the treaty – a key reason they argue for building storage structures, which Pakistan opposes citing treaty provisions.

Experts say India can now modify existing infrastructure or build new ones to hold back or divert more water without informing Pakistan.

“Unlike in the past, India will now not be required to share its project documents with Pakistan,” said Mr Thakkar.

But challenges like difficult terrain and protests within India itself over some of its projects have meant that construction of water infrastructure in the Indus basin has not moved fast enough.

After a militant attack in Indian-administered Kashmir in 2016, Indian water resources ministry officials had told the BBC they would speed up construction of several dams and water storage projects in the Indus basin.

Although there is no official information on the status of such projects, sources say progress has been limited.

Some experts say that if India begins controlling the flow with its existing and potential infrastructure, Pakistan could feel the impact during the dry season, when water availability is already at its lowest.

“A more pressing concern is what happens in the dry season – when the flows across the basin are lower, storage matters more, and timing becomes more critical,” Hassan F Khan, assistant professor of Urban Environmental Policy and Environmental Studies at Tufts University, wrote in the Dawn newspaper.

“That is where the absence of treaty constraints could start to be felt more acutely.”

The treaty requires India to share hydrological data with Pakistan – crucial for flood forecasting and planning for irrigation, hydropower and drinking water.

Pradeep Kumar Saxena, India’s former IWT commissioner for over six years, told the Press Trust of India news agency that the country can now stop sharing flood data with Pakistan.

The region sees damaging floods during the monsoon season, which begins in June and lasts until September. But Pakistani authorities have said India was already sharing very limited hydrological data.

“India was sharing only around 40% of the data even before it made the latest announcement,” Shiraz Memon, Pakistan’s former additional commissioner of the Indus Waters Treaty, told BBC Urdu.

Another issue that comes up each time there is water-related tension in the region is if the upstream country can “weaponise” water against the downstream country.

This is often called a “water bomb”, where the upstream country can temporarily hold back water and then release it suddenly, without warning, causing massive damage downstream.

Could India do that?

Experts say India would first risk flooding its own territory as its dams are far from the Pakistan border. However, it could now flush silt from its reservoirs without prior warning – potentially causing damage downstream in Pakistan.

• How water shortages are brewing wars

Himalayan rivers like the Indus carry high silt levels, which quickly accumulate in dams and barrages. Sudden flushing of this silt can cause significant downstream damage.

There’s a bigger picture: India is downstream of China in the Brahmaputra basin, and the Indus originates in Tibet.

In 2016, after India warned that “blood and water cannot flow together” following a militant attack in Indian-administered Kashmir which India blamed on Pakistan, China blocked a tributary of the Yarlung Tsangpo – that becomes the Brahmaputra in northeast India.

China, that has Pakistan as its ally, said they had done it as it was needed for a hydropower project they were building near the border. But the timing of the move was seen as Beijing coming in to help Islamabad.

After building several hydropower plants in Tibet, China has green-lit what will be the world’s largest dam on the lower reaches of Yarlung Tsangpo.

Beijing claims minimal environmental impact, but India fears it could give China significant control over the river’s flow.

Former clients of a Canadian tech entrepreneur say they were let down after they paid his company tens of thousands of dollars to help launch their start-ups.

People across the world – from Scotland to the southern states of the US – have told the BBC they paid Josh Adler’s software company ConvrtX up to $245,000 (£184,000) but did not receive the websites and apps they expected.

We spoke to more than 20 former employees and customers who say that Mr Adler continued to sell services and ask for more money, despite repeatedly not delivering everything customers paid for.

In a letter to the BBC, Mr Adler’s lawyers say the allegations are false and have been incited by one former client who they are suing.

They add that although Mr Adler was “inexperienced” when he founded his business, aged 21, his company became very successful in a short period of time and “the vast majority of clients were happy with their work”.

Launched in 2019, ConvrtX claims to be a “world-leading venture studio” that has helped more than 700 aspiring entrepreneurs start companies by developing business plans, making pitch documents for potential investors, and building custom websites and apps.

In pitches to clients, the company claims it has a five-star satisfaction rating. It also says it has 70 staff worldwide and operates from the UK, US and Canada. Mr Adler runs the company from Dubai.

Leaked internal documents suggest ConvrtX billed more than $5m (£3.8m) in sales to more than 280 customers between 2019 and 2023 alone, but senior insiders say there were few success stories.

Our investigation found:

• Customers who say they spent their life savings without receiving a viable product – they told the BBC they received products from ConvrtX which didn’t work or match what they had paid for
• Clients who received legal or financial threats after complaining, including one woman who was sent inappropriate, flirtatious emails from a lawyer working for the company
• Fake positive website testimonials – one attributed to a complainant who had in fact requested a refund of $18,000 (£13,600)
• ConvrtX said on its now-disabled website that it had been featured in Forbes Magazine and had a working relationship with Harvard Business Review – both publications have denied this was the case

In response, Mr Adler’s legal team say ConvrtX had only received about 12-15 complaints out of about 340 customers – adding that after the incident of the sexually inappropriate emails, the company immediately terminated its contract with the lawyer.

Amy (not her real name), a 37-year-old single mother from the UK, says she was “led down the garden path” after paying $53,000 (£40,000) in 2021 for a website and an app for her non-profit organisation, which aims to match people with fertility issues to potential surrogates.

She says she was strung along for two years, only ever receiving a basic website and no working app, while Mr Adler continued to ask for more funds.

Amy was particularly annoyed by a text she says Mr Adler sent to her, featuring a picture of him celebrating New Year’s Eve on a tropical beach in Bali.

“Why flaunt your money to me? It’s disgraceful,” says Amy, who had funded the project by remortgaging her home and using credit cards.

Eventually, she requested a refund through her bank and complained to the UK’s Financial Ombudsman Service. A senior investigator there has provisionally recommended that the bank return $39,000 (£30,000) to Amy, according to documents seen by the BBC. She is still waiting for her bank to agree to the recommendation.

As part of the process, two expert software developers reviewed the app developed by ConvrtX. According to the senior investigator, the evidence supported Amy’s claim that the company had breached their contract by failing to provide the service she paid for.

“I think it’s fair to say ConvrtX failed to exercise reasonable care and skill when they were providing the service,” the investigator said. “It seems the work completed by ConvrtX cannot be salvaged and the entire process would need to be completed again if [Amy] wanted a working app to be developed.”

In response, lawyers for Mr Adler say that the client had “received a website, clickable prototype and a fully developed mobile app from ConvrtX”.

Former senior staff say that Josh Adler – the son of Kerry Adler, a wealthy Canadian businessman – presided over a culture of instability, resulting in high turnover of staff and errors due to “cutting corners” and hiring and firing inexperienced contractors.

On his Facebook profile, Mr Adler described himself as #YoungAndReckless and #LivingTheDream. We spoke to a number of former employees who described him as immature and a poor leader.

In company meetings, they say he “bragged” about living at the Emirates Palace Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Abu Dhabi, boasted about renting a villa in Bali, and showed off a newly purchased Porsche 911 and multiple speeding fines.

He cared about “his rich kid, bling-bling lifestyle,” says a former senior employee speaking on the condition of anonymity. “When you have that many unhappy clients, it can’t be a coincidence.”

Mr Adler’s lawyers describe him as “highly ambitious” and say he sought to build a world-leading business, but that not all staff lived up to his high standards and would be “let go” if they under-delivered. “Young and Reckless” is a clothing brand he likes, they add.

But several senior ex-staff told us they had concerns about how Mr Adler ran his company, saying he continued to take on new clients even after being warned that some business and app ideas were unviable or impossible to make. They say he requested payments from clients in advance, sometimes as much as $53,000 (£40,000), though the company had a no-refund policy.

Two senior ex-employees claim that when Mr Adler was informed that some apps were not working, he would subsequently tell customers – against the advice of the development team – that he could fix the problem if they paid more money, or their outstanding balance.

“So don’t tell the client that it cannot be done because we’ll find [a contractor] that can do it when they’ve paid,” one ex-staff member recalls Mr Adler repeatedly telling them. “He’s a good talker, he’s good at sales… but he gives a lot of false promises.”

A former customer, DeShawn Womack, says he felt “lied to” after he hired ConvrtX in 2021. He says he paid more than $50,000 (£37,750) for a mobile app that would allow users to remotely access their phone and all its data from another device if it was lost, stolen or damaged.

He says he received a design prototype, but not a finished working app.

After making payments over two years, Mr Womack – a truck driver from the US state of Georgia – messaged a senior ConvrtX employee for clarity about whether his app would be able to sync missed calls and voicemails. He also asked if it would allow users to make phone calls from a different device using their same number – a specific feature he said Mr Adler had told him was possible and was referenced in his contract with ConvrtX.

“This is impossible, your app was never ever possible in the first place,” the employee responded in messages seen by the BBC. “Did someone tell you this was possible?”

Mr Womack replied: “Yes, Josh [Adler] did and plus it’s in my project sign-off.”

The 40-year-old, who says he spent his life savings on the project, told the BBC he stopped making additional payments after he believed his app was not being properly worked on.

“He [Josh Adler] sold me a dream and this is frustrating,” he says.

Lawyers for Mr Adler say he denies telling customers that their ideas were viable when they were not. They say ConvrtX was always clear about the difficulty of developing an app, but if the client wanted to proceed it would usually take on the project.

Gemma Martin from Dundee, who runs a tarot-card-reading business, says ConvrtX failed to deliver after she paid more than $35,000 (£26,000) for services including a working interactive website and mobile app that would let users request readings and subscribe to her services.

After she wrote negative reviews online, the 33-year-old says ConvrtX refused to release her website unless she signed a non-disclosure agreement stopping her from criticising the company – which she declined.

In emails seen by the BBC, a company lawyer then made sexually inappropriate remarks to Ms Martin while trying to resolve the dispute, writing that he had researched her online and her “professional profile” did not “match [her] beauty”.

Lawyers for ConvrtX say the emails were sent by a part-time third-party contractor who was terminated immediately once Mr Adler, who also apologised to Ms Martin, learned of the incident.

Ms Martin says she received a business plan from ConvrtX and eventually raw source codes for her website and app, though she says these were unusable and incomplete.

Lawyers for ConvrtX say it delivered Ms Martin a fully developed mobile app and source code, despite her having failed to pay her remaining balance. The company has since taken legal action against her for defamation, which she is contesting.

Steven Marshall, 53, says he was also threatened with legal action by ConvrtX when he asked for a full refund. He says he was “thoroughly disappointed” with work he had paid $5,183 (£3,920) for to help launch his business supporting independent filmmakers.

In emails seen by the BBC, ConvrtX’s compliance officer told Mr Marshall that if he publicly shared his “baseless allegations” it would be “criminal and civil libel” and the company would seek a “criminal charge” against him.

The compliance officer also said that Mr Marshall had “signed away” his right to post negative reviews online about ConvrtX because of a non-disclosure agreement signed prior to the work starting.

Other former customers say they also faced threats – including Ayesha Imran, who told the BBC she had requested a refund of $18,000 (£13,500) when she did not receive an app and a privacy policy for her website, after hiring ConvrtX in 2021.

In March 2023, she complained to Mr Adler for what she described as a breach of contract because of ConvrtX’s failure to deliver.

In her complaint, she wrote she had been informed that Mr Adler was not paying his development team the appropriate amount for the work that needed to be done, causing several delays because of staff turnover, and resulting in insufficient product delivery.

The company’s compliance officer responded that Ms Imran would face damages of at least $60,000 (£47,000) if she publicly shared negative comments about ConvrtX or attempted to contact any of its employees. She says she viewed this as an attempt to intimidate and scare her.

Despite her experience, Ms Imran was being featured – until last month – as a false testimonial on the company’s website.

“ConvrtX has helped us go from vision, to launch and supported with everything in between. They are really quite holisitc [sic], in what they do!” the post read.

“Those words never left my mouth,” says Ms Imran, who tells us she had previously asked Mr Adler to remove it.

Alongside Ms Imran’s fake testimonial, the BBC has found that Mr Adler also used an image of Jen Selter, a lifestyle and fashion influencer with more than 13 million followers on social media. Ms Selter confirmed she had never used ConvrtX’s services, and that the image had been used without her consent.

Mr Adler’s lawyers say these testimonials were on a “dummy site” that was “not intended by ConvrtX to be publicly available”.

However, they were publicly available as recently as last month and some date back to August 2020, according to website archives and screengrabs taken by the BBC.

Earlier this year, Mr Adler rebranded ConvrtX and, until being contacted by the BBC, was selling eight-week “bootcamps” for $159 (£124). In a promotional video, he claimed to have helped “founders raise capital – six, eight, nine figures and the like” and to have “positively impacted 10,000 lives”.

The BBC wrote to Mr Adler asking what these numbers were based on, but his lawyers did not answer our question.

In a letter, lawyers for Josh Adler say he “unequivocally” denies the allegations. They say that Mr Adler and his business are the “victims” and that, until Gemma Martin made defamatory statements about it, ConvrtX had received very few, if any, complaints from its clients.

A federal judge has said that a two-year-old US citizen may have been deported to Honduras with her mother and 11-year-old sister without due process, amid the Trump administration’s drive to ramp up deportations.

In a court filing, Judge Terry Doughty said that there was “strong suspicion” that the child – identified only as VML – was deported “with no meaningful process”.

The Louisiana-born child and her family members were apprehended during a routine appointment at a New Orleans immigration office on 22 April, according to the document.

A spokesperson for the US Department of Homeland Security said the mother wanted to take her children with her when she was sent to Honduras.

The judge had sought to arrange a phone call with the girl’s mother, but was told by a government lawyer that it “would not be possible because she (and presumably VML) had just been released in Honduras”, court documents say.

The immigration status of the girl’s mother, father and sister remains unclear. The two-year-old, however, is a US citizen.

“It is illegal and unconstitutional to deport, detain for deportation, or recommend deportation of a US citizen,” said the judge.

A hearing has been scheduled for 19 May “in the interest of dispelling our strong suspicion that the government just deported a US citizen with no meaningful process”.

Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement to the BBC’s US partner, CBS News, that “the parent made the decision to take the child with them to Honduras”.

She added: “It is common that parents want to be removed with their children.”

Earlier this week, the girl’s father had also filed for a temporary transfer of legal authority, which according to state law would give his sister-in-law – also a US citizen – custody of the children.

However, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent spoke to a family attorney and “refused to honour the request” and said that the “father could try to pick her up, but that he would also be taken into custody”.

In a second, similar case in Florida, a Cuban woman with a one-year-old child and her US citizen husband were detained at a scheduled immigration appointment and flown back to Cuba two days later, according to media reports.

The woman, identified as Heidy Sánchez, was still breastfeeding her daughter, who suffers from seizures, according to her lawyer. He has argued that Ms Sanchez was not a criminal and should have remained in the US on humanitarian grounds.

Thousands of undocumented immigrants have been detained since Donald Trump returned to the White House on 20 January.

Trump’s hard-line immigration policies have encountered a number of legal hurdles.

In the highest-profile case, the government admitted it mistakenly deported El Salvador national Kilmar Ábrego García, but contends he is a member of the MS-13 gang, which his lawyer and family denies. Mr Ábrego García has never been convicted of a crime.

The Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the government should facilitate bringing back Mr Ábrego García, but the Trump administration has said he will “never” live in the US again.