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Peter Falconio murder: British expert says he has identified a ‘most likely’ burial location

The former British government expert who consulted on the search for the remains of the murdered backpacker Peter Falconio says he has now identified a “most likely” potential burial location – an abandoned racetrack only 8km from the scene of the infamous outback attack at Barrow Creek. In July 2001, Falconio and his partner, Joanne Lees, both from Yorkshire, were ambushed and attacked by Bradley John Murdoch as they drove along a remote stretch of road in Australia’s Northern Territory, about 300km north of Alice Springs. Falconio was shot and killed at the roadside. Murdoch bound Lees with cable ties in what is believed to have been an attempted abduction but she managed to flee into the darkness and hide in the scrub for hours. Murdoch was convicted of Falconio’s murder in 2005 but never admitted his guilt or spoke about where he took the backpacker’s remains. He died in prison last year. This week, 25 years after the attack, the Northern Territory police released a video of an agitated Murdoch refusing to reveal the location before his death. “I know nothing,” he says. The decades-long police search for Falconio’s remains has been underpinned by two assumptions. The first is that the search is a “needle-in-a-haystack” effort in an incredibly large area of red dirt and sun-bleached scrub, stretching south for a distance roughly equivalent to a drive from London to Leeds. The second is that because of that vastness, only Murdoch could ever lead authorities to the site. Dr Mark Harrison, the UK’s national police search adviser in the early 2000s and a world-leading consultant in “no-body” homicide cases, says this is not the case. Harrison told Guardian Australia last year that the chances of locating Falconio’s body remained “high” and that he had identified five possible burial locations using a combination of criminal profiling and physical site analysis. He returned to the outback this year with the retired FBI criminal profiler Kathy Canning-Mello and the pair visited the potential locations. Some of their site assessments were filmed for the documentary Outback Terror: The Falconio Murder. Harrison revealed to the Guardian that, after working with Canning-Mello, he had revised five potential sites from his earlier reports down to three. But that he believes the most likely potential burial site – the “primary” site for any comprehensive geoforensic search – is a disused racecourse. “We have a phrase in this type of work, whenever we work on a cold case we say, ‘You must clear the ground from under your feet,’” Harrison says. “What we mean by that is that the nearest most proximate location must be considered. “If you had a map of the area, the racecourse is the most likely crime scene near the attack site. The geography is unique to this case. The nearest place to conceal a body is the racecourse, otherwise it’s just a stretch of road” Into the criminal mind In the absence of a confession by Murdoch, a psychological criminal profile is arguably the most effective way of getting into the mind of the killer. The criminal profiling and other evidence that have gone into identifying possible burial sites include an assessment that Murdoch’s intent – when he shot Falconio and bound Lees – was to kidnap and rape her. Murdoch, a one-time interstate drug runner on the Stuart Highway that connects Australia’s north and south like a scar across the interior, was familiar with the terrain and is assumed to have planned to take Lees to a specific isolated location. When she escaped, Harrison says it’s likely that same intended location became the burial site. By this logic, the racecourse stands out. “What we do know is that he would absolutely know it was there, he was a long-distance driver, he would drive past that for years and one would suspect he would have driven past that when it was an active racecourse. “He chose the attack location for several reasons. When it gets dark, as soon as it’s past the racecourse he’s got a perfectly straight road. He’s doing that because he can see up the road and down the road in clear sight. He also knows the can get to the racecourse very quickly. “It provides such good cover from view. The old racecourse buildings, the canopy cover, you’re hidden away.” Lees told police that, after Murdoch searched for her along the highway, he had given up and driven south, towards Alice Springs. CCTV footage of the killer arriving at an Alice Springs petrol station that night, taking into account the time it would have taken him to drive there, leaves about 90 minutes unaccounted for. “He’s not panicking, he’s frustrated,” Harrison says. “He’s drug-affected, he’s frustrated and cross because his plan hasn’t gone to plan. But now he’s going to dispose of Peter. There’s no panicking this man, he’s got time to spend some time in concealing his body. “This is where people who are uninformed about these cases would think that if an abduction is unsuccessful, the person is going to panic. “This is not who he is. What he can control now is how he gets rid of this body. That’s going to bring some comfort to him. To make sure he disposes and hides him somewhere and in a manner he is confident no one will find him.” Northern Territory police searched the racecourse in the aftermath of the killing, after Lees flagged down a road train and was taken back to the Barrow Creek roadhouse. The searches included walk-throughs and officers riding motorbikes. Harrison says this would not have located a well-concealed body. Last year Guardian Australia revealed that the recommendations from Harrison’s two reports had never been properly been followed by the Northern Territory police. The search expert, who consulted on cases including the searches for Madeleine McCann and the Australian children Daniel Morecombe and William Tyrrell, was involved at the expense of the British government and had access to the entire case file. He says typically his involvement in cases would involve identifying sites, developing a search strategy, then having some involvement or oversight of the search. But he says the Falconio case was “unusual” because the Northern Territory government took his report “which was highly technical” and did their own searches. In a statement last year, the NT police said they received the report and attended each suggested site. “Police resourcing is finite and the entire scope of the report, and suggested search techniques, could not be completed by the NT Police at the time, however ongoing assessment and review of this data continues,” a spokesperson said. Harrison says advances in technology would allow for a “high assurance” search, including the use of drones, radar and a dog. The process could be conducted for less than the cost of the $500,000 reward for information, which remains in place despite Murdoch’s death. “What I’m saying is that the most likely site has simply not been searched to a level of confidence you’d require to say he’s not there. “The racecourse is a potential crime scene that was visited but never searched as you would a crime scene. “And that site has been almost frozen in time. Normally after such a long time you’d have to contend with changes like urban development or environmental impacts, but there aren’t any. “Nothing has changed, it literally is as it was. That is such an advantage for us.”

Iran proves it can still inflict damage despite waves of US attacks

Iran and the US have been trading blows for six consecutive nights and there are no shortage of signs that the renewed fighting will worsen further. Tehran and Washington remain far apart diplomatically, and though the US retains a significant military overmatch, Iran has more than enough capability to inflict damage. Friday’s developments are a case in point. A wave of US attacks, with missiles launched from jets, drones and warships, targeted Iranian ports and the south of the country, collapsing a tower at Chabahar, on the Gulf of Oman, and highways and bridges into the key Hormuz port of Bandar Abbas, perhaps in an effort to cut it off. Iran responded in familiar fashion by attacking US allies: Qatar, Bahrain and most significantly Kuwait, where a power and desalination plant was hit, causing a fire and an undetermined amount of damage. Desalination is critical for water supply – and human life – in the arid Gulf, providing an estimated 90% of Kuwait’s needs. The US had claimed, repeatedly, that its intense 38-day spring bombing campaign with Israel had destroyed or decimated Iran’s military. This week, with surprising precision, Trump told Fox News that Iran’s “weapons are down 91%”, but US intelligence reports and the scale of Iranian attacks tell a different story. Leaked US intelligence assessments concluded in May that Iran had regained access to 30 out of 33 missile launch sites along the strait of Hormuz and perhaps 70% of its overall prewar missile stockpile and launchers. It is easier to block the entrance to an Iranian underground missile base with rubble from explosions than entirely disable it, but that makes a clear-up during the late spring ceasefire perfectly possible. Two oil tankers that were sailing along the southern route of the strait of Hormuz, near Oman, were struck by missiles on Monday, according to the UK’s Maritime Trade Organisation, killing one sailor and wounding eight. A third tanker was struck further east, in the Gulf of Oman, 45 miles north-west of Qalhat, illustrating the range of Iranian air power against tankers that are hard to defend unless a warship is close. The results were predictable: the US reimposed its own blockade in the Gulf of Oman, the number of daily transits through Hormuz dropped to three by Thursday, the fewest since May, and the price of Brent crude oil, which ended last week at $75.50, rose to $82. Iran has to retain only a limited threat to close the strait. To emphasise the point, another tanker was reported hit on Friday, though there were no reports of casualties. “Now that the plaster has been ripped off, the costs for escalation for both sides are so much lower than before February 28,” said Michael Carpenter, a former Biden administration national security official, now with the International Institute for Strategic Studies, but the White House has “no clear or well thought-through strategy for how to get out of this”. A frustrated US is exploring how to bend Iran to its will, after Trump described the country’s leaders as “scum” and “sick people” at this month’s Nato summit, though it is not obvious how that can be done without a substantial ground campaign, for which the US is not prepared for, nor has the appetite for. The 2,200 marines in the USS Boxer amphibious group are also involved in enforcing the US blockade. Military escalation was considered at a White House Situation Room meeting on Tuesday, followed by leaks that the options considered included bombing another deep-lying nuclear site at Pickaxe Mountain – which would have no effect on the now critical Hormuz dynamic – or a seizure of the strategic Kharg Island, through which 90% of Iran’s oil exports would flow if there was no US blockade. It is perfectly possible for the US to capture Kharg or any other small location on the ground, but the challenge would be holding on, as it would be inevitably targeted by Iranian missiles and drones. Meanwhile, continued US bombing will further reduce stockpiles of hard-to-make air defence interceptors, depleted by a half, and expensive missiles, down by a quarter to a third, based on estimates from the CSIS thinktank. Trump has also threatened to escalate further, bombing “all their power plants” perhaps as soon as next week. Such a degree of escalation would invite international condemnation as it would be widely considered a war crime – as well risk a dangerous Iranian retaliation in the Gulf, as underlined by Friday’s desalination plant strike in Kuwait. It is also rhetoric from which he backed down from in April. Iran’s regime has shown it can endure. Its coherence was underlined by the organisation of the week-long national funeral procession of Ali Khamenei, points out Roxane Farmanfarmaian, a lecturer at Cambridge University. She fears a sharp military escalation, though “my feeling is it will be shorter” than in the spring, because both sides are depleted, resulting in a not dissimilar outcome to now. It is a reminder that it easier to start wars with unrealistic goals than to end them. “Neither can deliver a knockout blow at an acceptable price,” Farmanfarmaian said.

Iranian airport and bridges hit as US forces board ship amid ports blockade – as it happened

The US military has struck a number of civilian infrastructure sites across southern Iran, including railway brides and a port facility, according to Iranian state media. The latest US attacks targeted six bridges, a railway station and port control tower, Iran’s official IRNA news agency reported. Iranshahr airport was also reportedly hit. Eight people were killed and 20 others wounded in the US attacks across Iran last night, according to the country’s health ministry. Iran retaliated by firing on Middle Eastern nations hosting US bases, including Kuwait, Bahrain, Jordan and Qatar. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) threatened “more crushing” attacks if US forces continued to attack Iranian civilian infrastructure. The IRGC has said it targeted US radar systems and military aircraft in Qatar to “punish the aggressor”, with Doha saying it had intercepted a missile attack. The IRGC claimed to have “targeted American fighter jets and tankers stationed in Jordan”, resulting in “the destruction of several US refuelling aircraft and warplanes and serious damage to many more of them”. The US did not immediately comment on the claim. Kuwait’s energy ministry said one of its power and water desalination plants was attacked by Iran, resulting in a fire and damage to the facility. Meanwhile, the Jordanian military said earlier that it shot down three incoming missiles launched by Iran this morning. Iran’s strikes “will continue until peace is restored to the southern coastline and the strait of Hormuz”, Majid Mousavi, aerospace chief for the IRGC, said in a statement published by Iranian state media. The prime minister of Iraqi Kurdistan, Masrour Barzani, has denounced the “unjustified attacks” on the region that he blamed on Iran. “While urging the Islamic Republic of Iran to stop this escalation, we also call on the Iraqi federal government and the international community to end these violations,” he said in a statement issued by his office. The UK Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) agency said it has received a report of an incident off the coast of Oman involving a tanker and military forces in the area. “Reports indicate that the tanker was subject to interaction as part of ongoing military activity in the region,” UKMTO said of the incident, adding that it happened 100 nautical miles (about 115 miles) east of the Omani port of Duqm. It provided no further details.

Dismissal of Ukraine’s defence minister highlights wider issues for Zelenskyy

Volodomyr Zelenskyy’s abrupt dismissal of Ukraine’s youthful and innovative defence minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, at precisely the moment Kyiv appeared to be gaining advantages in several spheres of its war with Russia has exposed, not for the first time, a troubling flaw in the president’s leadership. The move, which has startled senior European officials and caused consternation, and demonstrations, in Ukraine, is all the more shocking given Fedorov’s role in pushing a clear strategy to prosecute the war, leveraging Ukraine’s rapidly developing technological advances in drone and missile technology. Aged 35 and appointed in January, Fedorov was feted by admirers for beginning to grasp several issues that have plagued Ukraine’s armed forces, streamlining military procurement and challenging systems prone to corruption, introducing competitive tendering, and seeking solutions to the army’s persistent recruitment and training crisis. Fedorov was also seen as one of the key drivers of Ukraine’s highly effective drone programme, beginning during his time as minister of digital transformation. A former marketing executive close to Zelenskyy, who had never served in the army, he grated with senior officers thanks to his casual style, freewheeling speeches and insistence on a data-driven approach to reforming Kyiv’s war efforts. “We will take all the data and see what works,” he said after his appointment. “Everything that works well will proceed.” That included a killing-for-points scheme designed to reward the most effective army units, which some in the military dismissed. In addition, Fedorov was credited with persuading Elon Musk to turn off unauthorised Russian Starlink access on the battlefield earlier this year, described by frontline troops as a significant advantage. Born in the year of Ukraine’s independence from Moscow, Fedorov is seen as part of a generation unencumbered by the experience of Soviet bureaucracy, in sharp contrast to the country’s 60-year-old military chief of staff Oleksandr Syrski, a graduate of Moscow higher combined arms command school, who began his career as an artillery officer. With hindsight, the conflict between the two men and their ideas about how to fight the war was inevitable: between an older – and old-school – general, micromanaging a bruising war of attrition against a more numerous foe, and Fedorov, with his tech-driven, more improvisational approach that appeared in recent months to be showing dividends. While bitter competition between key wartime leaders is hardly new, the failure, not least in the opinion of Fedorov and his supporters, has been in Zelenskyy’s handling of the rivalry, which had seen Fedorov request the removal of Syrski. “When the president said he did not plan to replace Syrskyi, I said I would learn to work with him,” Fedorov said at the press conference after his removal, suggesting the general sought to block the defence minister’s initiatives at every turn. “All the initiatives we proposed began to be blocked,” he added. “And he was not prepared to discuss any of the problems we have spoken about today personally, face to face and openly. “Instead of finding a way of defeating Russia asymmetrically – which is the commander-in-chief’s job – he’s found a way of splitting our country,” Fedorov said. Zelenskyy’s own parsing of the situation, at a joint press conference on Thursday with the outgoing British prime minister, Keir Starmer, was unconvincing as he appeared to complain that he was being asked “to choose between sides [when honestly] what I want most is unity”. All of which has led to inevitable suggestions that Zelenskyy and his circle – not for the first time – had sidelined someone seen as popular and a potential future political rival. “The decision,” an editorial in the Kyiv Independent said, “bears all the hallmarks of Zelenskyy’s tendency to dismiss top officials and commanders who get too popular, ahead of hypothetical elections that will never happen if Russia overwhelms Ukraine. “Forced to choose between the man who was turning the war of attrition around with technology and intelligent strategy on one hand, and the man who was sabotaging it with micromanagement and Soviet thinking on the other, Zelenskyy thought about it and chose the latter.” As demonstrations over Fedorov’s removal continued for a second day, the question now is what lasting impact it will have as a fifth defence minister is appointed in as many years. For Zelenskyy, it underlines again the fact that, impressive as he is on a global stage and as a wartime figurehead for Ukraine, he has struggled to assemble and retain a cohesive team of senior officials around him, balancing competing interests to ensure continuity in the war effort. While Russian military bloggers have celebrated the ousting of Fedorov, Zelenskyy’s move to appoint Yevhen Khmara as interim defence minister suggests that, despite the feud between Fedorov and Syrski, the emphasis on technology and long- and medium-range drone strikes is likely to persist. Khmara is a former head of the state security service’s Alpha unit, which has been heavily involved in drone strike operations. Zelenskyy has indicated he wants Khmara to push forward with a number of Fedorov’s key reform programmes. The question many Ukrainians find themselves asking, however, is whether anyone can genuinely be empowered to be effective in the role.

US hits bridges, energy facilities and key port as it expands strikes against Iran

The US hit bridges, energy facilities and a key Iranian port on Friday, expanding its aerial campaign against Iran, and prompting swift Iranian strikes against US allies in the Middle East. US airstrikes hit bridges in Iran’s southern Hormozgan province, killing at least seven people, Iranian state TV reported. The bridges were a key transit point for Bandar Abbas, Iran’s main port. Further US airstrikes brought down a tower in Chabahar port on the Gulf of Oman, and targeted key electrical infrastructure and Iranshahr airport. Iran’s energy ministry told citizens to reduce their use of electricity and air conditioning after the power grid came under strain due to US strikes on energy facilities. The ministry said areas in the south “are currently experiencing extreme heat and attacks on power infrastructure”, as temperatures in Iran soared. Strikes on civilian infrastructure not being used for military purposes could constitute a war crime, human rights experts have said. The days of US strikes had killed at least 38 people and wounded more than 400 in Iran by Friday morning, said a spokesperson for Iran’s health ministry, Hossein Kermanpour. The attacks appeared to be the follow-through of Donald Trump’s promise to expand strikes against Iran, including the targeting of infrastructure and power plants. The US president reportedly met senior department heads this week to discuss an expanded aerial campaign to force Iran to reopen the strait of Hormuz. The current round of fighting has entered its seventh day and further undermined the interim deal between Iran and the US, which was meant to keep the strait open and give room for negotiations to lead to a permanent truce. Iran has shut the strait and the US reimposed its blockade of Iranian ports and ships on Wednesday. After the US strikes on Friday, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) threatened a “devastating price” for countries hosting US bases if American attacks against infrastructure continued. “The American enemy and the hosts of its bases in the region should know that crossing red lines and attacking civilians and civilian infrastructure will have a very severe and devastating price to pay,” the IRGC said in a statement. The Iranian military responded to US strikes by targeting Bahrain, Kuwait, Jordan, Oman and Qatar. Qatar, one of the mediators between the US and Iran, had been mostly spared from Iranian retaliation in the recent rounds of violence. Qatari authorities said falling debris wounded a child as air defences intercepted missiles. In Kuwait, authorities said Iranian strikes hit a power and desalination plant, damaging the water facility. The country relies on desalinated water for about 90% of its drinking water. Officials said they were working to assess the damage and get the plant running again. Strikes in Iraqi Kurdistan killed eight members of armed Kurdish opposition groups, which the groups blamed on Iran. Tehran also claimed to have struck the al-Tanf military base in Syria, although Syrian authorities denied this to Agence France-Presse. The renewed fighting has focused on the strait of Hormuz, which handled about a fifth of the world’s oil and gas supply before the war. Though the memorandum of understanding signed by the US and Iran last month said the strait should be open to traffic, both sides interpreted the deal differently. Washington and Tehran advanced competing plans for ships to transit the strait, with Iran attacking some ships that took the US route. Shipping in the waterway has been drastically reduced over the last few days as violence escalated, though most ships that continued to transit used the Iranian route. A tanker traveling through the strait, on the route closest to Oman, came under attack on Friday, according to the British military. The tanker sustained minor damage but none of its crew were hurt. Iran did not claim responsibility for the attack. American forces boarded a ship in the Gulf of Oman on Thursday as part of the renewed blockade of Iran’s ports that began earlier this week, the US military said. US Marines boarded the M/T Wen Yao “to ensure full compliance with the ongoing US naval blockade”, US Central Command (Centcom) said in a post on X. Centcom also said it had “redirected” three commercial vessels “trying to run the blockade” since it took effect at 8pm GMT on Tuesday. The previous day, a US aircraft fired on and disabled an unladen oil tanker that tried to break the blockade. Iran has asked its allies in Yemen, the Houthis, to be prepared to close the oil route through the Red Sea if the US targets Iranian energy infrastructure, Reuters reported – a threat that, if followed through, could paralyse the global energy market. The Houthi leader, Abdul Malik al-Houthi, also threatened that all Saudi oil and other critical facilities could be targeted by the group if Riyadh intervened in Yemen. The threat came after Saudi Arabia struck Sana’a airport, leading to retaliatory missile strikes from the Houthis on Saudi Arabia. Week-to-week cargo shipments through the strait of Hormuz dropped by almost a quarter at the beginning of the month, according to the maritime data firm Lloyd’s List Intelligence. And that was before the recent surge in tit-for-tat attacks. Given the risks, some oil shippers are transiting the strait with their location devices turned off, but many are just staying put, Lloyd’s said on Thursday. A growing amount of the region’s energy is being shipped through pipelines, but not nearly enough to offset the decline in shipping through the strait. Pakistan’s foreign ministry on Thursday said efforts were still under way to bring the US and Tehran to the negotiating table but acknowledged that was becoming increasingly difficult. Despite the escalating conflict and interruption of trade, Trump said the war was going well for the US. “We are likewise winning big in Iran, and you will see the fruits of that labour very, very shortly,” Trump said in an address to the American public. The Associated Press and Agence France-Presse contributed to this report

Friday briefing: Is violence against politicians reshaping democracy in the UK?

Good morning. When Andy Burnham returned to Westminster as an MP last month after a decade away, what shocked him – some of his colleagues have said – was the security. In recent years, particularly since the 2017 Houses of Parliament terrorist attack in which five people were killed, security around Westminster has visibly tightened, with armed police patrolling the estate, and vehicle barriers and heavy exterior fencing erected. Meanwhile, violence, abuse and intimidation towards MPs, their staff, families and many others in public life is growing exponentially: rape and death threats are counted in their hundreds and, with increasing regularity, politicians face offline aggression. It is little wonder that the killing of Reform UK spokesperson and former Conservative MP Ann Widdecombe at her home in Devon last week has resonated so strongly with those in public life. For today’s newsletter, I spoke to Dr Hannah Phillips from the Jo Cox Foundation, about why our response must extend beyond physical security if we are to change this toxic culture. But first the headlines. Five big stories Gaza | The Gaza recovery plan being pursued by Donald Trump’s Board of Peace (BoP) has shrunk dramatically to a small pilot project in the south of the strip. UK politics | Sadiq Khan has been given a peerage by Keir Starmer just days before the prime minister stands down. US news | Donald Trump accused China of interfering with the 2020 election in a primetime televised address, which opponents warned was a smokescreen for him to meddle in the forthcoming congressional midterms. Middle East | American forces boarded a ship in the Gulf of Oman on Thursday as part of the renewed blockade of Iran’s ports that began earlier this week, the US military said. UK news | Labour’s foreign aid cuts mean reductions of as much as 90% in the bilateral support the UK will give to some African countries, Foreign Office figures show. In depth: ‘We are doing a job supporting people who are targets’ When the news alert came through to his phone saying Ann Widdecombe’s death was being investigated by counter-terror police, long-serving Commons staffer Tom Fairweather commenced a sadly familiar routine. “You see the news something has happened again. I check in with my team and make sure that they’re OK. You can’t help dwell on the fact that we are doing a job supporting people who are targets.” As the office manager for an Essex-based MP, Fairweather often sat in meetings with Sir David Amess, the MP for Southend West, who was murdered by Islamic State sympathiser, Ali Harbi Ali, in 2021. And as co-convener of the cross-party Wellness Working Group for Commons staff, he has witnessed the development of Operation Bridger, the police protective security programme for MPs and their staff that expanded in 2016 after the murder of Labour MP, Jo Cox, who was killed by the far-right extremist Thomas Mair weeks before the Brexit referendum. Commons speaker, Lindsay Hoyle, has said that MPs’ safety “keeps me awake at night”. Fairweather believes security provision for members and staff has greatly improved in recent years, with dedicated police contacts and support, monitoring for online threats to life, constituency offices undergoing expert security reviews and having panic buttons installed in workplaces and homes. But he stresses the extent of the challenge. Parliament is “a very atypical environment – effectively 650 microbusinesses with a satellite office in every constituency in the country. It’s a nightmare for the security teams.” Phillips characterises the situation thus: “More and more people in public life, MPs, councillors, staff, even families of politicians, activists, are saying experiencing some form of violence, abuse or intimidation is expected. And that normalisation is something we’re really concerned about.” *** The reality Evidence of the worsening threat level is all around us. A substantial report from the Electoral Commission on the 2024 general election found that over a quarter of candidates had experienced harassment, intimidation or abuse at least four times, with women and those from ethnic minority backgrounds more likely to report serious abuse. MPs receive so many rape and death threats they have to remind themselves not to be blase, Labour MP Jess Phillips told the Guardian earlier this week, while former Conservative MP Dame Penny Mordaunt, who lost her seat in 2024, revealed that since then: “I haven’t had a day when I haven’t had a live police investigation [into rape or death threats] or court case going on”. On Wednesday, a man was arrested over an alleged threat to shoot the Reform UK leader, Nigel Farage, who has estimated he receives 300 threats every month. And increasingly, the threat is moving offline. MPs’ staff describe “horrendous” in-person threats of violence, being doxed and followed as well as what a recent staff welfare report described as a rising number of “mentally and emotionally unstable constituents” who require sensitive management. In recent years, tensions over Labour’s stance of Gaza led to angry protests outside constituency offices and vandalism, climate activists and anti-abortion protesters targeted MPs’ family homes, while two Russian-linked arsonists attacked property connected to Keir Starmer. *** The impact More evidence is emerging that all this is having an effect on the way people are participating in politics, says Phillips, who has worked at the Jo Cox Foundation for three years. When a tranche of women MSPs stepped down from Holyrood at May’s Scottish parliament election, many referenced on and offline harassment as part of their rationale for not seeking reelection; Phillips says elected politicians are self-censoring, not having as many in-person meetings nor engaging with members of the public online. The Electoral Commission research also discovered that some candidates didn’t participate in hustings because they were fearful of abuse. “That seems to have been a change in recent years,” says Phillips, whereby candidates modify their behaviour not through direct experience but expectation. “That’s really concerning for our democracy.” Then there’s the pipeline effect: in 2023, Girl Guiding UK revealed that more than a third of girls are deterred from specific careers, including politics, because of the abuse meted out to high-profile women. *** The solutions Andy Burnham has said a serious review is needed into MP security following Widdecombe’s death, and improvements are ongoing: Operation Ford is a new scheme extending Bridger-style resources nationwide to local politicians and candidates. Other parliaments across the UK have also increased their provision. The Scottish parliament has offered an online threat monitoring service for all MSPs since 2024, removing the burden from individual offices and providing early notice to police. Jess Phillips told the Guardian that the threat to MPs must be tackled at source, amidst an ongoing refusal by social media platforms to take responsibility for what’s published on their platforms: “Everybody who’s ever attacked me has read a load of untrue stuff online that they had been fed by their algorithm.” And the Jo Cox Foundation is supporting a campaign for an elections code of practice aimed at social media companies, with a particular emphasis on risk assessments around the spreading of disinformation. “But in order to address this complex problem, we need broader political and societal change,” says Hannah Phillips. And this is the Jo Cox Foundation’s primary purpose: connecting across difference, improving community cohesion and generating more respectful politics. Research they commissioned for the tenth anniversary of Cox’s death found that, while many of us feel that our communities have become more divided and that our ties to our neighbours have weakened, a third remain committed to improving those connections. *** The community The barriers to improved connection that the study identified are worth digesting: those who are financially comfortable feel more connected to their community; younger people said anxiety, lack of confidence and digital fatigue stopped them reaching out; older generations were more likely to build on “micro-moments’ of connection – a chat with a neighbour or giving directions to a stranger. The research also discovered that people who feel well connected to their local community are the most likely to report having meaningful interaction with people of different political viewpoints. And that challenge is met at grassroots level by the kind of community-building facilitated by the Jo Cox Foundation along with other groups like Who is Your Neighbour? and Hope Unlimited that were generously supported by Guardian readers in last year’s Christmas appeal. We reported on the Salaam Shalom kitchen, a joint Muslim-Jewish venture in Nottingham that tackles interfaith bigotry at the “chop and chat” table, Back on the Map’s work to revitalise a Sunderland neighbourhood after far-right riots in 2024, and The Linking Network’s programme uniting Bradford primary schoolchildren from different faiths and backgrounds. “Social connection is not just nice to have”, Phillips tells me, “it’s a bedrock of safe, resilient, cohesive society.” We want to hear from you What would you do if you were in Andy Burnham’s cabinet? We’d like to hear from readers with experience of the NHS, education, defence and so forth about what you think new ministers should prioritise. To get in touch hit reply or email first.edition@theguardian.com What else we’ve been enjoying From lewd propositions to drunken brawls, cabin crew face it all (and worse) at 30,000 feet. Zoe Williams hears some horror stories from the sky – and now I’m planning a staycation. Michael Chris Nolan’s film adaptation of The Odyssey promises to be inescapable this summer, so I appreciated this – very smart – idiot’s guide to reading Homer’s classic – which was likely not even written by Homer, it transpires. Libby I couldn’t tell you the first thing about how Dungeons and Dragons works, but reading how players of the (magic?) table top game raised over $5m for progressive causes has piqued my interest. Michael World Cup 2026 Argentina | The Guardian’s rugby union correspondent Robert Kitson writes after watching England’s semi-final defeat in Buenos Aires, surrounded by celebrating fans. “Tell them you’re Scottish,” was one friend’s advice. Climate crisis | Guardian analysis has found one in five World Cup games reached heat levels a players’ union has said should trigger delays or postponements. Golden boot | Ahead of this Sunday’s final (and Saturday’s England v France “bronze” playoff), bookmark the Guardian’s Golden Boot tracker to see if it’s Messi, Mbappé – or even Bellingham or Kane – who top the list of competition goal-scorers. Sport Golf | Once-talkative Bryson DeChambeau had little to say except to respond to Nick Faldo’s ‘zero strategy’ jibe as Jackson Suber set the pace at the 154th Open Championship. Cycling | Soudal-Quick-Step rider Tim Merlier pipped Olav Kooij and Jasper Philipsen on the line but further back, Tadej Pogacar safely retained the yellow jersey. Cricket | Joe Root steered England to a four-wicket victory in Cardiff with an unbeaten 99, sharing a 72-run stand with Will Jacks, to level the ODI series with India. Something for the weekend Our critics’ roundup of the best things to watch, read, play and listen to right now Film The Odyssey | ★★★★★ Christopher Nolan reinvents the Homeric legend as a colossal origin-myth story of postwar disillusion, an epic ordeal of anguish witnessed by the dead and presided over by capricious deities who participate on almost equal terms with the humans. It speaks to the generational pain of PTSD. The invisible odyssey of anguish is punctuated by flashback episodes, hallucinations, confrontations with the arbitrary gods of dysfunction. And all the time the spouses and children cannot move on with their lives. This is a film with thrilling ambition, boldness, seriousness, generosity and flair. It has gasp-inducing, Imax-sized landscapes of loneliness – and full-tilt battle sequences and fight scenes accompanied by the throbbing and thrumming of drums. Peter Bradshaw TV Evolution | ★★★★★ With this new, five-part BBC nature documentary, the presenter Chris Packham is effectively crowned the successor to David Attenborough. Packham has all the great man’s passion for his subject and the willingness and ability to share his knowledge as accessibly as possible. He treads the line between assuming nothing and not infantilising his audience as nimbly as Attenborough does. Evolution takes one animal an episode and delves into a particular aspect of it and the evolutionary journey it represents. And Packham is never afraid to express a sense of wonder at the miraculous-seeming nature of it all. Lucy Mangan Games D-topia | ★★★☆☆ In the far future, on a planet that is not Earth, AI is in charge. Manifesting most visibly as cute droids, the technology is pervasive, and the so-called Optimization System has but one responsibility: ensuring the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people. In less skilled hands this game might have felt like an undergraduate seminar on the limits of utilitarianism. But Japanese studio Marumittu Games elegantly marries its philosophical concerns with smart design choices. You play as a young, unnamed Facilitator tasked with tending to both the city’s bots and its human residents. Nothing is too taxing, but there’s enough to keep you engaged. This is a deceptively simple game, artfully told. Lewis Gordon Books Up All Night by Imogen Willetts In this fabulous alternative history of the modern world, the academic and “party historian” Imogen Willetts looks at the last 500 years of civilisation through the sometimes blurry lenses of its after-dark scenes, with fascinating results. She begins by trying to capture what it feels like to go on a big night out, focusing on a phenomenon that, in 1912, the sociologist Émile Durkheim labelled “collective effervescence”. In one passage, she explains this by referencing dancing as part of ancient tribal hunting rituals, listening to Charli xcx’s 365, or singing along to Sweet Caroline with tens of thousands of other people in a stadium. This is no dry academic study, and its mix of historical research, critical theory and conversational references to pop culture makes for a bright and compelling read. Rebecca Nicholson The front pages “Trump’s Board of Peace drops ambitious plan to rebuild Gaza”, is the Guardian’s front page today. On UK politics, the Times has “Burnham set for left-wing revolt over Mahmood”, the Telegraph says “IMF issues spending warning to Burnham”, and the i Paper writes “Andy Burnham prime minister in 72 hours”. The Mail runs with “Foreign aid farce over Rochdale grooming gang boss”. Elsewhere, the FT splashes “China start-up Moonshot set to cut US lead in frontier AI”. On the World Cup, the Mirror calls Argentina’s flag-waving a “Final insult”, the Express says “It’s a ‘childish and petulant’ insult to UK”, the Sun goes with “Only 693 till the Euros” and Metro’s take is “It’s getting very Messi”. The Latest What went wrong for England in World Cup clash against Argentina? England have again suffered World Cup heartache, conceding two late goals that gave Argentina a dramatic 2-1 comeback win and a place in the final against Spain on Sunday. Many have blamed manager Thomas Tuchel’s substitution decisions for the defeat. So did his tactics ultimately backfire? Annie Kelly speaks to sports columnist, Jonathan Liew. Cartoon of the day | Ben Jennings The Upside A bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all bad A sauna might not be top of anyone’s agenda in London right now, given the interminable heatwave that the climate crisis has wrought upon the capital city, but the work of R-Urban Poplar raises a sweat without destroying the planet. The world’s first “community powered” sauna, it uses the food waste from the local housing estate in Tower Hamlets, to power the hot room. Food waste from the Teviot estate is processed in a local scale anaerobic digester to produce methane gas and power the sauna. “Nine years ago, the site was an unused car park and empty garages,” writes our reporter, Damien Gayle. “Now, butterflies flutter around leaves and flowers in raised, no-dig beds.” Elle McAll from the Women’s Environmental Network, which has helped fund R-Urban, says: “The whole thing really has been about how can we reimagine our local food system so it really does genuinely benefit local communities.” Sign up here for a weekly roundup of The Upside, sent to you every Sunday Bored at work? And finally, the Guardian’s puzzles are here to keep you entertained throughout the day. Until tomorrow. Quick crossword Cryptic crossword Wordiply

EU border chaos feared at Dover crossing as busiest summer weekend looms

The start of the peak summer season is set to bring millions of drivers on to British roads, with concerns of traffic chaos as the port of Dover faces its biggest test yet of new EU border controls. The semi-functioning entry-exit system (EES) is credited, along with the heatwaves and fears about flights after the war in Iran, with helping push British domestic holidays to its highest levels since Covid halted international travel. Motoring organisations expect this Friday to kick-off the busiest summer weekend for domestic leisure trips. The port of Dover is bracing for long tailbacks as thousands of holidaymakers join lorries at Britain’s main Channel ferry crossing from 6am. French border police, situated at Dover, will manually register non-EU travellers for EES. The new £40m automated facility built to speed through passengers is unable to operate due to software problems in the technology in France. Even though the French police aux frontières (PAF) will not be able to carry out the biometric registration required by EES – photographing and fingerprinting – the additional time needed to create a file for each visitor could still lead to long queues at the border, the port fears. About 7,500 cars travelling to France are expected at Dover on Friday, and 10,000 on Saturday, as peak summer season begins. The port has urged holidaymakers to use only main roads when driving to the port, and arrive no more than two hours before their booked sailing. Eurotunnel, operator of LeShuttle, which takes vehicles through the Channel tunnel, said that it did not anticipate delays as summer traffic built up. As at Dover, border police will still not be registering biometric information from its car passengers for EES this summer. Eurotunnel has likewise spent millions of pounds on automated processing kiosks which cannot yet be brought into service. Elsewhere, the RAC and Inrix expect the worst of the traffic on Friday in areas of the M25 around Greater London linking to the M3 to the southwest, as more than 14 million drivers make a getaway this weekend. With most schools in England and Wales closing this weekend for the summer, most leisure journeys will take place on Saturday, the RAC said, as part of the biggest domestic getaway since 2022. Spokesperson Harriet Hernando said: “The great British summer staycation is about to get off to a flying start, with many opting to stay in the UK instead of travelling abroad. This could be down to people having more confidence in the weather, as well as concerns over cancelled flights, higher air fares and EU border delays, which are no fun with a family in tow.” But she warned that the June heatwave had seen a spike in breakdowns and urged drivers to be prepared for what the RAC called a “Saturday summer scramble”, adding: “People should prepare for delays and getting stuck in a jam in potentially very hot weather.” The AA meanwhile said its surveys showed about one in five drivers would be setting off on a leisure journey of 100 miles or more in the next week, the busiest week of the summer for road trips, with more potentially drawn to the coast if hot weather persists. London Heathrow airport said this weekend would see the start of its peak summer season, with Friday likely to be the busiest day. Travel association Abta expects the main getaway for Britons going abroad to follow next weekend. Passengers flying into the Schengen area of 29 European countries will undertake EES formalities at the airport on landing and departure. Europe’s biggest carrier, Ryanair, warned again this week that UK passengers could be “the testing ground for unfinished border infrastructure”, and told customers to prepare for long possible queues. It identified a number of popular holiday airports including Lisbon, Tenerife South, Alicante, Malaga and Milan Bergamo as “recurring hotspots” for EES-related delays.

As the UK and Europe battle deadly wildfires, what lessons can Australia offer?

The violent hot red flames of deadly wildfires across the UK and Europe and scenes of panicked communities fleeing homes could not, at least geographically, be further away for Jan Harris. But sitting in her new home at Reedy Swamp in rural New South Wales in Australia, the 67-year-old has found herself in tears. “It is so heartbreaking for people,” she says. “They have such a hard road in front of them.” For someone who lost her home to a wildfire, she knows this as well as anyone. In the UK, experts have this week described the worst outbreak of wildfires ever recorded in the country. In north Wales, residents had to be evacuated from their homes. Wildfires have swept through parts of Spain, Portugal and France. About 4o miles outside Paris, about 900 homes were evacuated as firefighters battled a blaze of “exceptional” scale in a Unesco-listed forest. Arson is suspected. In Spain’s Andalucía fires, seven Britons were among the 13 dead. Major fires are burning in the US and Canada and, like in Europe, they coincide with extreme heatwaves. It’s a picture becoming all too familiar as the climate crisis extends and worsens fire seasons around the planet. Prepare before the fire arrives Harris can recall tiny details from Sunday 18 March 2018: how the clock on the TV news showed 12.34pm, the “unbelievable winds” and how her husband, John, not usually a man to insist on anything, said “we’re getting in the car … we just have to go babe” as a wall of flames and smoke charged towards their house. It was 38C (100F) that day. The Harris home wasn’t assessed for its ability to withstand fire, but they had done the usual things to prepare for fire. Gutters were cleared of debris so flying embers were less likely to start fires on the roof; firefighting hoses were checked and working; an extra water tank was full and ready. But the speed of the fire’s approach dismissed any thoughts of defending their home. “It went from just a whiff of smoke to a wall in less than two minutes,” she says. In hindsight, she says she should have had all of life’s important documents – birth and marriage certificates and passports – in one place. After deciding to leave, Harris only dashed into one room of the house, the kitchen, and only to get her diabetic son Evan’s insulin supply. Jan, John and Evan drove across a four-wheel drive track to the safety of a pub in town. “We could see this chimney of black smoke. That was our house,” she says. The house, and everything in it, was lost, as were 64 other homes and buildings later that day. Two years later, while living in a rental property nearby, the Harrises evacuated twice during what became known as the black summer fires that claimed 33 lives, more than 3,000 homes and burned an area almost twice the size of England. Almost 3 billion native animals were killed or displaced. Bushfires have always been a part of the Australian landscape. Aboriginal Australians used fire for thousands of years to manage the landscape. Living with the threat of wildfires is routine, especially for people in rural areas. Permanent road signs show that day’s fire risk, households have “bushfire survival plans” and public radio broadcasts alerts. In the months before fire seasons, there are reminders to clear gutters of debris, prune overhanging branches, clear the space around the home of anything flammable and to check there’s a reliable water supply if the home has to be defended. “Australia has some of the most bushfire-prone land in the world,” says Ben Shepherd, a superintendent at Fire and Rescue New South Wales. “We have always pushed the view that this is about shared responsibilities. The public has to understand the risk and what they can do to alleviate it.” That means, Shepherd said, preparing bushfire plans and discussing with the household at what stage will they decide to leave. Daily bushfire warnings range from “no rating” to “catastrophic” – on those days, fire services say people should leave the area, preferably the night before. Australia’s expertise and experience in bushfires has meant its fire services have in recent years regularly shared personnel and equipment with the United States and Canada, and vice versa. One of Australia’s large air tankers has been on the US west coast helping fight fires in recent weeks, and will be followed by almost 70 personnel next week. “Around the world we are seeing conditions we haven’t seen before,” says Shepherd. “The more we all learn from each other, the better it is for us all around the globe.” ‘This has been predicted for decades’ Greg Mullins has been a firefighter for almost 40 years and spent 14 years as the commissioner of Fire and Rescue New South Wales. He has been speaking on and off to European fire chiefs for more than two decades about the rising risk of wildfires and is “not surprised” at the scenes from the UK and Europe. In 2004, he spoke to a fire science conference in Dublin about the need “for fire services in Europe to gear up for bushfires because of the impacts of climate change”. “I was a bit of a lone voice at the time,” he says. “But everything was drying out. This is what has been predicted for decades. Heatwaves are priming the landscape for fire. “Where they were used to seeing fires on the heathlands, they were starting to get forest fires. But all the equipment was aimed at fighting fires in structures.” Fighting a fire in a forest or on hills is different to fighting a fire in an urban setting. A fire in a building will typically have a road for the fire truck and “there will be ready access to water”, Mullins says. “On the moors and in a forest, that’s not the case. In a town, you know where the fire is – it’s at number 16 – but it can take hours to find a fire in a forest and by then it can be out of control.” Routines and conventions learned over a century or more in Australia are being tested by hotter and more frequent fires. Climate change has lengthened Australia’s fire season and has already seen an increase in the number of days where the risk of fire is high. It’s a familiar narrative around the world. Dr Grant Williamson, a wildfire expert at the University of Tasmania, says there is “strong evidence that fire weather is increasing, globally, under human-driven climate change”. “Fires are and will continue to burn hotter and this effect is particularly pronounced in temperate and Mediterranean climate zones,” he says. “In terms of disastrous wildfires, fire disaster risk is greatest in affluent, heavily populated areas that include the western US, Australia and Mediterranean Europe, with a particularly sharp increase in the occurrence and impact of disasters after 2015 – 43% of the 200 most damaging wildfires occurred in the last decade.” ‘Another 10 minutes and we wouldn’t be alive’ Back in Reedy Swamp, the Harrises rebuilt on their plot of land with their insurance money. Unlike their last home, this one is bushfire rated. There is 50 metres of cleared area all around; there’s an extra water tank; no wood on the exterior of the home; gutters with guards to stop debris buildup; a firefighting pump and a wide passing area on their 500 metre drive. “I would just leave though,” says Harris. “If we’d stayed another 10 minutes last time, we wouldn’t be alive.” Harris has her own advice for people being threatened, perhaps for the first time, by wildfires. “We often don’t spend enough time just sitting with what’s happened,” she says. “It’s frightening and it’s heartbreaking. Yes it was financially difficult for us but we could navigate through that, but at huge emotional cost. “If there’s psychological help, I would say take it. People say what you have lost are just things and that’s true – but they were my things. “When an authority asks you to evacuate then, if we choose not to, are we then asking them to come and save us? That’s a really big ask. “As much as I am mournful for what we have lost, I am pretty happy to be here.”