Anthony Albanese has secured a stunning federal election win while delivering a devastating result for the Coalition that cost Peter Dutton his own seat.

As counting continued on Saturday night, Labor secured an improved majority with Albanese becoming the first prime minister to win a second term since John Howard in 2004.

“Today, the Australian people have voted for Australian values, for fairness, aspiration and opportunity for all,” Albanese told a raucous crowd of Labor supporters at Canterbury-Hurlstone Park RSL Club in Sydney’s inner-west.

“Australians have chosen to face global challenges the Australian way, looking after each other while building for the future.”

As of 10pm, the ABC had Labor on 86 seats – a clear majority – while the Coalition were on 39 seats, a massive 18-seat collapse.

Some 16 seats were in doubt.

The opposition leader was the biggest casualty of what some Liberal MPs were calling a “bloodbath”, losing his marginal Brisbane seat of Dickson to Labor’s Ali France.

“We did not do well enough during this campaign,” Dutton told Coalition supporters in Brisbane.

“That much is obvious tonight and I accept full responsibility for that.”

Dutton commiserated with fellow Coalition MPs who had lost their seat but said “we will rebuild”.

“We have been defined by our opponents in this election, which is not a true story of who we are,” he said.

“But we will rebuild from here, and we will do that because we know our values, we know our beliefs, and we will always stick to them.”

Dutton said he had called Albanese to concede defeat and told the prime minister how proud his late mother Maryanne would be of her son.

The Liberal frontbenchers Michael Sukkar and David Coleman, and the outspoken backbencher Bridget Archer, were also set to lose their seats as Labor secured swings across the country.

Queensland – traditionally one of Labor’s weakest states – swung heavily behind the government, which was set to pick up the seats of Bonner, Leichhardt, Petrie and Forde.

The feared backlash in Victoria never eventuated, with Labor on track to win Menzies as well as Sukkar’s seat of Deakin.

The Liberals were wiped out in Tasmania, losing the seats of Braddon and Bass, and lost the prized seat of Sturt in Adelaide’s eastern suburbs.

The treasurer, Jim Chalmers, declared the victory “a win for the ages”.

Albanese reached polling day optimistic of retaining majority government after outperforming Dutton during the five-week campaign.

Ahead in the polls just months ago, the Coalition suffered a collapse in support amid policy confusion, damaging comparisons with the US president, Donald Trump, and Labor’s attacks on its proposed nuclear reactors and supposed plan to gut Medicare.

Albanese, 62, has pitched himself as a steady hand to guide Australia through a period of global turbulence turbocharged by Trump’s tariff war.

Ali France, the Labor candidate who is the first person to unseat an opposition leader at an election, is a disability advocate, former journalist and world champion para-athlete.

She has defeated the Liberal leader, Peter Dutton, at her third effort at the seat of Dickson, in Brisbane’s west.

For the past 24 years, it has been held by Dutton, now the leader of the Liberal party and opposition leader.

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France lost her eldest son, Henry, to leukaemia last year. She has another son, Zac, who was with her when she was involved in the accident that led to her losing a leg in 2011. She is the daughter of former Labor Queensland MP Peter Lawlor.

She told the Guardian on Saturday that she started preparing for her third attempt at the electorate months ago. She said the fight was an “uphill battle”, given the high profile of her opponent.

“He’s a massive spender on his campaign, particularly advertising,” she said. “We have never been able to compete with that. But what our campaign has always been about is a huge grassroots game. It’s about door-knocking, it’s about the high visibility. It’s about being at markets.”

France also ran against Dutton in 2019 and 2022, and gradually chipped away at his lead. It became the state’s most marginal conservative electorate at the 2022 election, with just 3,360 votes separating the two.

France had her leg amputated after a car accident in 2011. She was with Zac, then 4, in a shopping centre car park when an 88-year-old driver lost control of his car and pinned her against another car. She managed to push the pram with Zac in it out of the way moments before she was hit. Zac escaped injury but France was seriously injured and had her leg amputated after two surgeries attempting to save it failed.

At the 2019 ballot, Dutton was condemned after criticising France for “using her disability as an excuse for not moving into our electorate”. After the Australian reported France did not live in the electorate of Dickson, France said she had “searched high and low” but had been unable to find a wheelchair-accessible home, and that if elected she would move to the electorate and renovate.

Labor’s biography of France now lists her as a “Moreton Bay local, living in Arana Hills with her son”, in the electorate. The 49-year-old is a single mother.

She was accompanied by Zac when voting at a polling booth in Albany Creek on Saturday.

“I feel positive, really positive [about winning the seat],” France said on Saturday morning.

“It’s been seven years of work for me and the team, and the positive thing this time is that I’ve really gotten to know a lot of people in the electorate. I’ve knocked on so many doors, I’ve had so many conversations. I feel like people really know who I am and what I stand for now.”

A leading immunologist warned of a “post-herd-immunity world”, as measles outbreaks affect communities with low vaccination rates in the American south-west, Mexico and Canada.

The US is enduring the largest measles outbreak in a quarter-century. Centered in west Texas, the measles outbreak has killed two unvaccinated children and one adult and spread to neighboring states including New Mexico and Oklahoma.

“We’re living in a post-herd-immunity world. I think the measles outbreak proves that,” said Dr Paul Offit, an expert on infectious disease and immunology and director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

“Measles – because it is the most contagious of the vaccine-preventable diseases, the most contagious human disease really – it is the first to come back.”

The US eliminated measles in 2000. Elimination status would be lost if the US had 12 months of sustained transmission of the virus. As of 1 May, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported 935 confirmed measles cases across 30 jurisdictions. Nearly one in three children under five years old involved in the outbreak, or 285 young children, have been hospitalized.

Three large outbreaks in Canada, Mexico and the US now account for the overwhelming majority of roughly 2,300 measles cases across the World Health Organization’s six-country Americas region, according to the health authority’s update this week. Risk of measles is considered high in the Americas, and has grown 11-fold compared with 2024.

Only slightly behind, data released earlier this week from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) and WHO also noted that measles cases across Europe were up tenfold in 2024 compared to 2023. That data also indicated that the 2024 measles cases in Europe followed a seasonal pattern, which was not previously noted in 2021 through 2023.

Of the European cases, which reportedly hit 35,212 for 2024, 87% were reported in Romania. The ECDC said the dip in vaccine rates has impacted the recent spike in measles, with only three countries, Hungary, Malta and Portugal, having coverage of 95% or more for both doses of the measles vaccine.

“This virus was imported, traveling country to country,” said Leticia Ruíz, the director of prevention and disease control in Chihuahua, Mexico, according to the Associated Press.

Many cases are in areas with large populations of tight-knit Mennonite communities. The religious group has a history of migration through the American south-west, Mexico and Canada.

Mennonite teaching does not explicitly prohibit immunization, according to an expert in the religion. However, as some in the Mennonite community in Texas resist assimilation and speak a dialect of Low German, community members may have limited contact with public health authorities, leading to lower vaccination rates.

Immunologists fear the rate of infection of such diseases – and the unnecessary suffering they bring – will increase as the US health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, spreads misleading claims about vaccines and vaccine-preventable diseases, undermines public confidence in vaccines’ benefits, threatens to make some vaccines less accessible, guts public health infrastructure and pushes leading vaccine experts out of the department.

The National Institutes of Health said it would launch a “universal” influenza vaccine trial with $500m in funding, but the news comes as the administration displays hostility toward Covid-19 vaccines.

“Here, Robert F Kennedy Jr is exactly who he has been for the last 20 years. He’s an anti-vaccine activist, he is a science denialist and a conspiracy theorist,” said Offit.

“He has a fixed belief that vaccines are doing more harm than good – as he’s said over and over again.”

Although Kennedy has tepidly endorsed the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine to prevent measles, he has also made false and inflammatory claims about the vaccine. Just this week, Kennedy told a crowd that it contains “aborted fetus debris”. The rubella vaccine, like many others, is produced using decades-old sterile fetal cell lines derived from two elective terminations in the 1960s.

Kennedy’s health department also stated this week that it would implement new safety surveillance systems and approval requirements for vaccines, but did not provide any specifics about the design.

Experts said running certain trials, such as for a decades-old vaccine like MMR, would be unethical because it could expose people to a dangerous disease when an intervention is known to be safe.

Kennedy recently visited the most affected community in Texas, centered in Gaines county, in his capacity as health secretary. There, he made misleading claims about measles treatment, including that the antibiotic clarithromycin and steroid budesonide had led to “miraculous and instantaneous recovery”.

The overwhelming scientific consensus is that the best way to treat measles is through prevention with the MMR vaccine, which is 97% effective. Still, Kennedy has said he will ask the CDC to study vitamins and drugs to treat the viral disease.

Measles is a virus. There is no cure for the viral disease and it is not considered “treatable” by leading physicians’ groups, such as the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP).

“There is no cure for measles, and it can result in serious complications. It’s misleading and dangerous to promote the idea that measles is easily treated using unproven and ineffective therapies like budesonide and clarithromycin,” the AAP has said of Kennedy’s claims.

Measles kills about one in 1,000 children who become infected with the disease, and has similar rates of brain swelling, called encephalitis, that can result in lifelong disability. Measles infection suppresses the immune system, which can lead to other infections.

Measles vaccination is believed to have saved more than 93 million lives worldwide between 1974 and 2024 and reduced overall childhood mortality.

The Duke of Sussex has said it is “impossible” for him to bring his wife and children back to the UK after losing his legal challenge over personal security, and revealed he would “love” a reconciliation with his family.

In an emotional interview with the BBC, Prince Harry said his father, King Charles, would not speak to him “because of the security stuff”, but said he wanted reconciliation as life was “precious” and he did not know how long his father, who has been diagnosed with cancer, had left to live.

Speaking in California, where he now lives, Harry, 40, said: “For the time being, it’s impossible for me to take my family back to the UK safely.”

He added: “I can’t see a world in which I would be bringing my wife and children back to the UK at this point … I love my country. I always have done, despite what some people in that country have done. I miss the UK. And it’s really quite sad I won’t be able to show my children my homeland.”

Harry had sought to overturn changes to his security provision while in the UK, which were made after he and the Duchess of Sussex stepped away from royal duties in 2020.

He was offered “bespoke” security, which he felt was inferior and claimed the Executive Committee for the Protection of Royalty and Public Figures (known as Ravec), which authorises security measures, had breached its own terms of reference by not conducting a risk management board (RMB) before making the decision.

He insisted his father could help resolve the issue, though he had not asked him to intervene. “I can only come to the UK safely if I am invited, and there is a lot of control and ability in my father’s hands.

“Ultimately, this whole thing could be resolved through him, not by intervening, but by stepping aside and allowing the experts to do what is necessary and to carry out an RMB,” he said.

It is understood it would have been constitutionally improper for the king to intervene while the matter was being considered by the government and reviewed by the courts.

Although the royal household provides representation and input into the Ravec decision, Friday’s judgment laid out that the chair of the Ravec committee was the decision maker on the provision of security. Royal private offices and private secretaries should be consulted as to the practicalities of the protection measures agreed, the ruling said.

Harry appealed to the prime minister, Keir Starmer, saying: “This all was initiated under a previous government. There is now a new government. I have had it described to me by people who know about the facts that this is a good old-fashioned establishment stitch-up. And that’s what it feels like.”

Asked whether the prime minister should “step in”, he replied: “Yes, I would ask the prime minister to step in.

“I would ask Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, to look at this very, very carefully and I would ask her to review Ravec and its members, because if it is an expert body, then what is the royal household’s role there if it is not to influence and decide what they want for the members of their household?”

The prime minister would be “quite reluctant” to become involved in decisions about Harry’s security, a senior cabinet minister said on Friday night. Pat McFadden told Sky News: “I think he would be quite reluctant to make a judgment about someone’s personal security needs. We have experts who do that for a reason, and I’m not sure it’s a good idea for any politician to be saying that that person requires this level or that level of security.”

On his family rift, Harry said: “There have been so many disagreements, differences between me and some of my family. This current situation, that has been ongoing now for five years with regard to human life and safety as the sticking point. It is the only thing that’s left.

“Of course some members of my family will never forgive me for writing a book, of course they will never forgive me for lots of things, but … I would love reconciliation with my family.

“There’s no point in continuing to fight any more. Life is precious. I don’t know how much longer my father has. He won’t speak to me because of this security stuff. But it would be nice to reconcile.”

He added: “If they want that, it’s entirely up to them.”

Harry said he could never leave the royal family, though he had left the “institution” because “I had to”.

He continued: “Whether I have an official role or not is irrelevant to the threats, risk and impact on the reputation of the UK if something was to happen. What really worries me more than anything else about today’s decision [is that] it set a new precedent that security can be used to control members of the family, and effectively, what it does is imprison other members of the family from being able to choose a different life.”

He claimed that, through the court disclosure process, he had “discovered that some people want history to repeat itself, which is pretty dark”. Asked who he meant, Harry declined to answer.

In a statement released on the Sussexes’ website, Harry said: “Ravec’s ability to make decisions outside of its own policies and the so-called political sensitivities of my case have prevailed over the need for fair and consistent decision-making. The court has decided to defer to this, revealing a sad truth: my hands are tied in seeking legal recourse against the establishment.

“This all comes from the same institutions that preyed upon my mother, that openly campaigned for the removal of our security, and that continue to incite hatred towards me, my wife and even our children, while at the same time protecting the very power that they should be holding accountable.”

He told the BBC he was “devastated” by the court’s decision, adding: “Not so much devastated with the loss [as] about the people behind the decision feeling as though this is OK. Is it a win for them? I’m sure there are some people out there, probably most likely the people that wish me harm, [who] consider this a huge win.”

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

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

The Duke of Sussex has lost a legal challenge over the level of taxpayer-funded security he is entitled to while in the UK, allowing the government to proceed with a “bespoke”, and cheaper, level of protection for his family.

Three senior judges at the court of appeal rejected Prince Harry’s claim that he had been “singled out” for “inferior treatment” and that his safety and life were “at stake” after a change in security arrangements that occurred when he stepped down as a working royal and moved abroad.

He had challenged the dismissal of his high court claim against the Home Office over the decision of the Executive Committee for the Protection of Royalty and Public Figures, known as Ravec, that he should receive a different degree of protection when in the country.

Sir Geoffrey Vos, the master of the rolls, said: “I concluded, having studied the detailed documents, I could not say the duke’s sense of grievance translated into a legal argument for a challenge to Ravec’s decision.”

The ruling will be a personal blow to Harry who said he was “overwhelmed” by the case when he flew back for the two-day hearing last month. Speaking to a Daily Telegraph reporter outside the hearing, he suggested he considered the appeal more important than his other legal battle against tabloids, saying “this one always mattered the most”.

Barristers for Harry, 40, told the appeal court that Ravec did not follow its own “terms of reference” when deciding his security.

Shaheed Fatima KC said his safety, security and life were “at stake”, and that the “human dimension” of the case should not be forgotten.

“We do say that his presence here, and throughout this appeal, is a potent illustration, were one needed, of how much this appeal means to him and his family,” said Fatima.

The Home Office, which is legally responsible for Ravec’s decisions, opposed the appeal. Sir James Eadie KC, for the Home Office, said Ravec was faced with a “unique set of circumstances”.

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

In a ruling on Friday, Vos, Lord Justice Bean and Lord Justice Edis dismissed Harry’s appeal.

Reading a summary of the decision, Vos said:”The Duke was in effect stepping in and out of the cohort of protection provided by Ravec.

“Outside the UK, he was outside the cohort, but when in the UK, his security would be considered as appropriate.”

He continued: “It was impossible to say that this reasoning was illogical or inappropriate, indeed it seemed sensible.”

A high court judge ruled last year that Ravec’s decision, taken in early 2020 after Harry and Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, stepped down as senior working royals, was lawful. Harry’s legal team argued the judge had erred in his judgment.

Ravec’s final decision, shared on 28 February 2020, stated that Metropolitan police protection would no longer be appropriate after the Sussexes’ departure, and that they should receive a different degree of protection when in the UK.

The Sussexes would instead receive a “bespoke” security service, whereby they would be required to give 30 days’ notice of any plans to travel to the UK, with each visit being assessed for threat levels and whether protection is needed.

Critics of Harry have said he raised his own profile as a possible terrorist target in 2023 after disclosing in his memoir Spare that he had killed 25 Taliban fighters.

Harry could appeal, but would need permission to do so, according to the legal commentator Joshua Rozenberg.

“There wasn’t an application for permission just now from the court of appeal. There might be one in writing. If permission is refused, then Prince Harry’s lawyers could go and ask the supreme court for permission,” Rozenberg told Sky News.

“But what the supreme court will look at is whether this is a case of general public interest, general public importance. It seems to me it’s one of very, very specific importance to Prince Harry.”

A Home Office spokesperson said: “The UK government’s protective security system is rigorous and proportionate.”

Voters in a small patch of south Texas are casting their ballots on Saturday in an election that could give Elon Musk a town to call his own. The vote would officially create a new city called Starbase in the area where Musk’s SpaceX holds its Texas rocket launches.

A couple of hundred residents of what was previously known as Boca Chica will decide whether to make their unincorporated neighborhoods into a town that would grant them the authority to pass city ordinances. The outcome, which will be decided almost entirely by SpaceX employees and their families, who make up the majority of the local population, is nearly guaranteed to result in incorporation.

The creation of Starbase would put Musk in the unusual position of holding sway over a company town, a distinction that has more in common with Gilded Age industrialists than most modern US businesses. It would be a small victory for the world’s richest man as he pivots away from his job as de facto leader of the “department of government efficiency” – a role that has elicited furious backlash and hurt his public image as well as his businesses.

Much like with Doge, Musk will not officially be in charge of Starbase. The entirety of the future city revolves around SpaceX, however, and it is almost entirely made up of the company’s employees and their kin. The Starbase population, as of 2025, is a little over 500 people, some 260 of which are SpaceX employees. The others are mostly family members of workers, according to Bloomberg.

The town’s proposed mayor, 36-year-old Bobby Peden, has worked at SpaceX since 2013 and is vice-president of test and launch operations in Texas. Peden, along with two other city commissioner candidates who are also SpaceX employees, are all running unopposed.

Starbase sits on a tiny piece of land near the Mexican border on a small bay that feeds into the Gulf of Mexico. Prefabricated houses, airstreams and palm trees line the streets. An imperious golden bust of Musk stands nine feet tall outside the town. A plaque on its pedestal reads “ELON aka Memelord”.

Last month, vandals defaced the statue by peeling off layers of foam and fiberglass from its cheeks. There is an employee-only restaurant called Astropub with a neon red “Occupy Mars” sign behind the bar. One of the main boulevards is called “Memes Street”.

Although creating Starbase is likely somewhat of a vanity project, one which Musk has been touting for years, it does grant the potential city and its SpaceX leadership powers over what to do with the land. Company workers submitted identical statements to a legislative hearing in April arguing that creating the town would help with logistics and coordination around issues such as road closures during test launches, the Associated Press reported.

Opposing Starbase

Even though the incorporation of Starbase is extremely likely, given who can vote in the election, it has also faced protests and pushback from others in the area. The South Texas Environmental Justice Network activist group has been holding protests and urging Texans to email their state representatives to oppose the incorporation. The group argues that creating Starbase will allow SpaceX to close access to the public beach in the town whenever it wants and block others from using the public land.

“Boca Chica Beach is meant for the people, not Elon Musk to control,” the organization said in a statement on its site. “For generations, residents have visited Boca Chica beach for fishing, swimming, recreation, and the Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe has spiritual ties to the beach. They should be able to keep access.”

Musk has in previous years made grand pronouncements about the future of Starbase while urging employees to move to the town. “Starbase will grow by several thousand people over the next year or two,” he posted on Twitter in 2021.

SpaceX has become an increasingly valuable part of Musk’s empire as Tesla’s performance has tanked and the government has turned to SpaceX for billions of dollars in contracts related to space travel.

Musk has relocated his primary residence and businesses to Texas in recent years. He lives in a $35m sprawling compound in Austin that houses three separate mansions. During his backing of Trump’s re-election last year, he temporarily uprooted and moved to the swing state of Pennsylvania.

Musk then took up residence in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building while serving as senior adviser to Donald Trump, but left the White House in late April as he shifts back to overseeing his companies.

The White House plans to cut staffing at the Central Intelligence Agency by 1,200 positions while other intelligence agencies including the National Security Agency will also shed thousands of jobs, the Washington Post has reported.

A person familiar with the plan confirmed the changes to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity.

The Trump administration has told members of Congress about the planned cuts at the CIA, which will take place over several years and be accomplished in part through reduced hiring as opposed to layoffs, the Post reported on Friday. The cuts include several hundred people who had already opted for early retirement, it said.

In response to questions about the reductions, the CIA issued a statement saying its director, John Ratcliffe, was working to align the agency with Donald Trump’s national security priorities.

“These moves are part of a holistic strategy to infuse the agency with renewed energy, provide opportunities for rising leaders to emerge, and better position CIA to deliver on its mission,” the agency said in the statement.

A spokesperson for the director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment. Gabbard’s office oversees and coordinates the work of 18 agencies that collect and analyse intelligence.

The CIA earlier this year became the first US intelligence agency to join a voluntary redundancy program initiated by Trump, who has vowed to radically downsize the federal workforce in the name of efficiency and frugality. The NSA has already offered voluntary resignations to some employees.

The CIA has said it also plans to lay off an unknown number of recently hired employees.

The Trump administration has also eliminated diversity, equity and inclusion programs at intelligence agencies, though a judge has temporarily blocked efforts to fire 19 employees working on DEI programs who challenged their terminations.

Trump also abruptly fired the general who led the NSA and the Pentagon’s Cyber Command, Tim Haugh.

Ratcliffe has vowed to overhaul the CIA and said he wants to boost the agency’s use of intelligence from human sources and its focus on China.

With the Associated Press and Agence France-Presse

The White House plans to cut staffing at the Central Intelligence Agency by 1,200 positions while other intelligence agencies including the National Security Agency will also shed thousands of jobs, the Washington Post has reported.

A person familiar with the plan confirmed the changes to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity.

The Trump administration has told members of Congress about the planned cuts at the CIA, which will take place over several years and be accomplished in part through reduced hiring as opposed to layoffs, the Post reported on Friday. The cuts include several hundred people who had already opted for early retirement, it said.

In response to questions about the reductions, the CIA issued a statement saying its director, John Ratcliffe, was working to align the agency with Donald Trump’s national security priorities.

“These moves are part of a holistic strategy to infuse the agency with renewed energy, provide opportunities for rising leaders to emerge, and better position CIA to deliver on its mission,” the agency said in the statement.

A spokesperson for the director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment. Gabbard’s office oversees and coordinates the work of 18 agencies that collect and analyse intelligence.

The CIA earlier this year became the first US intelligence agency to join a voluntary redundancy program initiated by Trump, who has vowed to radically downsize the federal workforce in the name of efficiency and frugality. The NSA has already offered voluntary resignations to some employees.

The CIA has said it also plans to lay off an unknown number of recently hired employees.

The Trump administration has also eliminated diversity, equity and inclusion programs at intelligence agencies, though a judge has temporarily blocked efforts to fire 19 employees working on DEI programs who challenged their terminations.

Trump also abruptly fired the general who led the NSA and the Pentagon’s Cyber Command, Tim Haugh.

Ratcliffe has vowed to overhaul the CIA and said he wants to boost the agency’s use of intelligence from human sources and its focus on China.

With the Associated Press and Agence France-Presse

King Charles has accepted an invitation to open Canada’s parliament on 27 May, in “an historic honour that matches the weight of our times”, the country’s prime minister, Mark Carney, said on Friday.

In his first news conference since an election dominated by Donald Trump’s threats to Canada’s sovereignty, the prime minister also confirmed he would meet the US president at the White House on Tuesday.

Trump has repeatedly suggested annexing Canada to the US and imposed tariffs on some Canadian goods, moves which Carney has described as a “betrayal”.

“As I’ve stressed repeatedly, our old relationship, based on steadily increasing integration, is over,” he said, adding he would “fight” to get the best deal for the country. “The questions now are how our nations will cooperate in the future.”

Carney’s Liberals are set to form a minority government after Monday’s election, and are projected to hold at least 168 seats, with recounts pending in at least two electoral districts. The Conservatives will form the official opposition with a projected 144 seats, while the Bloc Québecois won 23, the progressive New Democratic party seven and the Greens one. Carney praised the strength of the country’s democracy amid high turnout, telling reporters all party leaders “quickly and graciously” accepted the results.

The prime minister said he would call a byelection immediately after Conservatives decide which member of parliament will step aside to give leader Pierre Poilievre, who failed to win his own seat, the chance to run for a new seat.

“No games,” he said.

But Carney rejected the idea of signing a formal pact with the NDP in order to guarantee the survival of his minority government, as his predecessor Justin Trudeau did following his narrow electoral victory in 2021. Carney said the Liberals had received a strong mandate “and the most votes in Canadian history”, adding: “Canadians elected a new government to stand up to President Trump and build a strong economy.”

Carney told reporters he would announce a cabinet with gender parity on 12 May and parliament would return on 27 May in a move that “clearly underscores the sovereignty of our country”.

The visit of a monarch to give the speech from the throne marks the first in more than half a century. The last time a sovereign opened parliament was in 1957, when Queen Elizabeth II came to Ottawa.

The prime minister also acknowledged that a large portion of the voter base had concerns they felt the Liberals had so far failed to fully address.

Ahead of the election, the Conservatives had emphasized a “tough on crime” message and Carney said on Friday that his party would strengthen both the criminal code and bail laws “for those threatening the safety of Canadians”, making it more difficult for those accused of auto theft, home invasion and human trafficking to obtain bail. Carney also pledged to build more houses and to cut taxes on new builds in an attempt to make the real estate market more accessible.

“I’ve been clear since day one of my leadership campaign in January, I’m in politics to do big things, not to be something,” he said. “Now that Canadians have honoured me with a mandate to bring about big changes quickly, I will work relentlessly to fulfil that trust.”

Much of the press conference, however, focused on Carney’s upcoming meeting with Trump. The prime minister told reporters he would not negotiate in public amid questions over how he might approach a possible trade deal with the president, as well as the presence of tariffs on Canadian goods that violate current trade rules.

“Do not expect white smoke out of that meeting,” he said, a reference to the upcoming papal conclave.

The White House has cited the alleged flow of fentanyl from Canada for imposing tariffs, even though only minimal amounts of the drug have been seized at the northern border in recent months.

“There will be difficult discussions,” Carney said in French. “The fentanyl-related tariffs, we don’t understand why they’re still in place.”

When pressed on Trump’s musing on making Canada the 51st state, Carney said any such proposal would be rejected by Canada.

“It’s always important to distinguish want from reality,” he said.

A UN judge has been jailed for six years and four months after forcing a young woman to work as a slave in the UK.

Lydia Mugambe, 50, was found to have taken advantage of her status in relation to the Ugandan woman in the “most egregious way” while Mugambe studied for a PhD in law at the University of Oxford.

Mugambe was found guilty in March of conspiring to facilitate the commission of a breach of UK immigration law, facilitating travel with a view to exploitation, forcing someone to work, and conspiracy to intimidate a witness after a trial.

Mugambe, who is also a high court judge in Uganda, stopped the woman holding down steady employment and forced her to work as her maid and provide childcare, prosecutors said.

Judge Foxton, sentencing Mugambe at Oxford crown court on Friday, said it was a “very sad case”, outlining Mugambe’s legal accomplishments including work concerning the protection of human rights.

Foxton said the defendant “showed absolutely no remorse” for her conduct and that she had looked to “forcibly blame” the victim for what happened.

He gave Mugambe a restraining order with terms saying she cannot directly or indirectly contact the victim.

In a written statement read to the court by the prosecutor Caroline Haughey KC, the victim described living in “almost constant fear” due to Mugambe’s powerful standing in Uganda.

The young woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, said she could not go back to Uganda due to concerns of what could happen to her, and said she may never see her mother again.

Haughey said Mugambe exploited her victim by taking advantage of the woman’s lack of knowledge about employment rights and misleading her about why she came to the UK.

The prosecutor said on Friday there was a “clear and significant imbalance of power within the relationship” between Mugambe and her victim.

Haughey told the court that the victim had been granted asylum in the UK on the basis that she had a well-founded fear of persecution in Uganda.

Paul Raudnitz KC, defending, spoke of Mugambe’s “glittering legal career” and told of the great support she had received since her conviction.

A small crowd held placards and chanted “Justice for Lydia Mugambe” outside the court before the hearing took place.

Raudnitz also said Mugambe had resigned as a UN judge.

According to her profile on the UN website, Mugambe was appointed to the body’s judicial roster in May 2023, three months after police were called to her address in Oxfordshire.

South Korea’s conservative People Power party has picked former labour minister Kim Moon-soo as its candidate for the 3 June presidential election, which was called after the removal of Yoon Suk Yeol over his failed attempt to impose martial law.

Kim will face the liberal Democratic party’s candidate, Lee Jae-myung, who has led each of the declared conservative candidates by large double-digit margins in polls.

Kim, 73, who was a labour activist in his university days but later turned hardline conservative, served as labour minister under Yoon and has pledged to implement business-friendly policies if elected.

He laid out a sweeping conservative vision for the country in his acceptance speech, vowing to take a hard line against North Korea and implement incentives for businesses and for innovation and science.

He also pledged to strengthen policies to support young workers and the underprivileged, recounting his experiences as a labour and democracy activist, for which he was jailed and expelled from school.

“I have never abandoned the weakest among us in the lowest of places,” he said.

But he added the party must prove that it was starting over to win voters, after the public backlash over Yoon’s martial law attempt.

The conservatives trail the liberals in public support, although they have narrowed the gap since the initial weeks after the martial law declaration in early December.

Kim remains one of the few in the party who says Yoon’s removal was not warranted.

Lee, the liberal candidate, remains the clear frontrunner, with nearly 50% of public support, according to a survey by the pollster Realmeter released on Monday, while Kim has 13% support.

But the race was rocked this week by a court ruling that cast doubt on Lee’s eligibility to run for the presidency, overturning a lower court acquittal that cleared him of breaching election law in a previous race. The supreme court sent the case back to an appeals court, and it was not clear when a new ruling would come.

On Friday, Yoon’s former prime minister, Han Duck-soo, announced his entry into the presidential race, hoping to leverage his higher profile. Han, while not a member of the conservative party, has been mentioned as a potential partner of the party to join forces against the liberals in the presidential race.

The election was triggered by the removal of Yoon from the presidency in April by the constitutional court, which ruled he committed a grave violation of his duties by declaring martial law on 3 December with no justifiable grounds.

An Illinois landlord who killed a six-year-old Muslim boy and severely injured his mother in a vicious hate-crime attack days after the war in Gaza began was sentenced on Friday to 53 years in prison.

Joseph Czuba, 73, was found guilty in February of murder, attempted murder and hate-crime charges in the death of Wadee Alfayoumi and the wounding of his mother, Hanan Shaheen.

Czuba targeted them in October 2023 because of their Islamic faith and as a response to the war between Israel and Hamas. The Palestinian American family were renting rooms from Czuba at a suburban Chicago house at the time of the attack.

“No sentence can restore what was taken, but today’s outcome delivers a necessary measure of justice,” said Ahmed Rehab, executive director of Cair-Chicago. “Wadee was an innocent child. He was targeted because of who he was – Muslim, Palestinian, and loved.”

The boy’s great-uncle, Mahmoud Yousef, was the only family member who spoke during the hearing. He said that no matter the sentence length it wouldn’t be enough. The boy’s parents had plans for him and Czuba robbed them of that, he said.

Yousef asked Czuba to explain why he attacked the boy and his mother, asking him what news he heard that provoked him, but Czuba did not respond, the Chicago Tribune reported.

Evidence at trial included harrowing testimony from Shaheen and her frantic 911 call, along with bloody crime scene photos and police video. Jurors deliberated for less than 90 minutes on Friday before handing in a verdict. Illinois does not have the death penalty.

The family had been renting rooms in Czuba’s home in Plainfield, about 40 miles (65km) from Chicago. Central to prosecutors’ case was harrowing testimony from the boy’s mother, who said Czuba attacked her before moving on to her son, insisting they had to leave because they were Muslim. Prosecutors also played the 911 call and showed police footage. Czuba’s wife, Mary, whom he has since divorced, also testified for the prosecution, saying he had become agitated about the Israel-Gaza war, which had erupted days earlier.

Police said Czuba pulled a knife from a holder on a belt and stabbed the boy 26 times, leaving the knife in the child’s body. Some of the bloody crime scene photos were so explicit that the judge agreed to turn television screens showing them away from the audience, which included Wadee’s relatives.

“He could not escape,” Michael Fitzgerald, a Will county assistant state’s attorney, had told jurors at trial.

The attack renewed fears of anti-Muslim discrimination and hit particularly hard in Plainfield and surrounding suburbs, which have a large and established Palestinian community.

Separately, lawsuits have been filed over the boy’s death and the US Department of Justice has launched a federal hate-crimes investigation.

Switching off the colours on your phone and spending half an hour a week pruning your algorithm can help consumers control and improve their online media diet, according to a professor turned “digital nutritionist”.

These two measures, otherwise known as greyscaling and algorithmic resistance, are among a number of recommendations from Dr Kaitlyn Regehr, an associate professor at University College London and a leading expert in digital literacy.

While recent debate has focused on the harm caused to children by social media, Regehr wants to address digital illiteracy among parents so they can better understand their children’s devices and how they can be used safely and effectively.

In her new book, Smartphone Nation, Regehr recommends first facing up to your own usage with a digital “walk-through” of favourite apps with a friend or partner, or keeping a “phone-fed journal”, noting what you opened your phone to do, where you ended up, how long you were on it and how you felt at the end.

“Turning your phone to greyscale is one of the quickest and easiest ways of understanding the impact of colour and images on our user experience,” she writes. “This will give you a sense of how colour and image play into the addictive nature of these devices.”

Instructions for this can be found either at Google Help for Android phones or Apple Support for iPhones.

Algorithmic resistance, meanwhile, is about controlling your algorithm rather than letting it control you, so Regehr advises making clear choices about what you want to see on your feed, dedicating half an hour a week to finding the best possible content and not dwelling on rubbish.

“When I was concerned about my family’s digital diet … I struggled to know what guidance to use,” Regehr explains in the book. “I created something to help myself and my family navigate the digital terrain. I thought of myself as a digital nutritionist.”

In an interview with the Guardian, Regehr said she supported school smartphone bans and the growing campaign for a smartphone-free childhood, but these were not enough alone and more education was needed to help families think critically about their digital choices.

“Because even if you hold off giving a kid a smartphone until after they are 15, they will turn 16. And we have a responsibility to give them the tools they need to navigate this space effectively,” she said. “We do need to provide them with education about how these things work.”

Her book, subtitled “Why we’re all addicted to screens and what you can do about it”, is designed to help fill that gap, and will be accompanied by new educational materials that will be introduced in schools later this month.

Almost all schools in England have now banned mobile phone use by pupils in school hours, according to the first national survey on the subject, commissioned by Rachel de Souza, the children’s commissioner for England.

Prompted by concerns about the effect on children’s mental health, attention span and online safety, the survey of more than 15,000 schools found that 99.8% of primary schools and 90% of secondary schools had some form of ban.

“I support the work of Smartphone Free Childhood,” said Regehr, who is programme director of digital humanities at UCL and has previously researched how algorithms used by social media platforms are rapidly amplifying extreme misogynistic content. “My fear is that when you implement a ban, it can let schools and legislators off the hook because they think the job is done.”

Regehr’s book is dedicated to her two young daughters. “My goal is for my kids to look back on our generation as wildly unhealthy and tech-enslaved, just as we look back on a generation previous smoking in hospital delivery rooms and not wearing seatbelts.

“I am trying to make a cultural change so that their lives are better. This is the biggest threat to their health and wellbeing, and it’s something that I want to tackle and I believe we can see a cultural change. People just need the information.”

Smartphone Nation: Why We’re All Addicted to Screens and What You Can Do About It by Dr Kaitlyn Regehr is published by Bluebird on 15 May