Author: Morgan

Moldovans began voting on Sunday in parliamentary elections that could see the country neighbouring Ukraine swerve from its pro-European path towards Moscow, with the government and the EU accusing Russia of “deeply interfering”.

Moldova, an EU candidate country, has long been divided over closer ties with Brussels or maintaining Soviet-era relations with Moscow.

Most polls show the pro-EU Action and Solidarity party (PAS), in power since 2021, in the lead in the vote. But analysts say the race is far from certain.

Polling booths opened at 7am (0400 GMT) and will close at 9pm, with the results expected later on Sunday.

The pro-EU president, Maia Sandu, of PAS has called the vote Moldova’s “most consequential election” and warned against falling deeper into Moscow’s orbit.

“Its outcome will decide whether we consolidate our democracy and join the EU, or whether Russia drags us back into a grey zone, making us a regional risk,” Sandu wrote on X on Friday.

The EU has said that Moldova is facing “an unprecedented campaign of disinformation” from Russia, while the prime minister, Dorin Recean, warned of a “siege on our country”.

Moscow has denied Chisinau’s allegations that it is waging an online disinformation campaign and that it is looking to buy votes and stir unrest.

Moldova’s largely pro-Russian opposition, in turn, has accused PAS of planning fraud.

Voters in the country of 2.4 million – one of Europe’s poorest – have expressed frustration over economic hardship, as well as scepticism over the push to gain EU membership, launched after Moscow’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

A loss for PAS – which gained a majority in the last parliamentary elections – could throw up hurdles in the push towards EU integration.

At a PAS rally through the capital on Friday, people shouted “We want to be in Europe” and “My country is not for sale”.

In the lead-up to the vote, prosecutors carried out hundreds of searches related to what the government says are “electoral corruption” and “destabilisation attempts”, and have made dozens of arrests.

On Friday, the electoral commission excluded two pro-Russian parties from the race over financing irregularities. The opposition has slammed the decisions.

The government has accused the Kremlin of spending hundreds of millions of euros in “dirty money” to interfere in the campaign.

“It’s the biggest effort, and these are the most important elections since the Republic of Moldova became independent” in 1991, Recean told AFP at the PAS rally on Friday.

Foreign interference and threats of stirring up unrest are “the most significant risks”, according to Igor Botan, the head of Moldovan thinktank Adept.

“We didn’t have such phenomena before in our electoral campaigns,” he said.

Turnout will be decisive – especially in the large and powerful diaspora, which tends to vote PAS, and in the breakaway region of Transnistria, which leans pro-Russian, analysts say.

Approximately 20 political parties and independent candidates are running for the 101 parliamentary seats.

The former president Igor Dodon of the Socialists, one of the leaders of the pro-Russian opposition, said he was “convinced the opposition will have a majority”.

On foreign policy, he said he would “continue discussions, negotiations with the EU, but we will also re-establish relations with the Russian Federation”.

“Moldova is ruled at the moment by a dictatorial regime, which under the EU cover violates democratic norms,” he said, in turn accusing “the west” of interference and PAS of trying to steal the vote.

Botan said the result is “very difficult to predict”.

“Post-election negotiations to form an alliance [to govern] are highly likely, and here too, things are unclear,” he said.

On a sunny afternoon this week the beach in the frontline Ukrainian city of Sloviansk was busy. Bathers paddled in a lake, sunbathed and sipped tea. At 3.30pm there was a sudden thunderclap. An artillery shell had crashed nearby, sending up a plume of twisting grey smoke. Ducks took off in panic. The swimmers glanced nonchalantly upwards and carried on bobbing in the salty water.

“After three years of fighting we’ve got used to booms. They don’t bother us any more,” Alyona, a pensioner in a swimsuit, explained. She pointed to a concrete box beyond a row of wooden changing cabins and outdoor showers. “If the bombs are close we’ve got a shelter,” she said. Alyona and her friend waded into the shallows. A man selling grapes sat engrossed reading a book.

Sloviansk’s residents have lived with explosions since 2014, when Vladimir Putin first began his imperial campaign to conquer Ukraine. Recently the war has become harder to ignore. Earlier this month Russian kamikaze drones reached the M-03 highway, 2km [1.2 miles] outside the city for the first time. They have swooped on buses and cars. One person has been killed and 10 injured.

On Friday workers were hanging nets between slender pine trunks and installing electronic warfare systems. This anti-drone corridor will cover the road connecting four cities in the northern part of Donetsk oblast: Sloviansk, Kramatorsk, Druzhkivka and Kostyantynivka. If Ukraine were to lose this hilly fortress belt, Russian forces could race across a flat steppe landscape, north to Kharkiv and west to the capital, Kyiv.

Sloviansk’s mayor, Vadym Liakh, said those who predicted a Kremlin breakthrough in eastern Ukraine were wrong. In August, Russian soldiers seized a string of villages around the town of Dobropillia, advancing 10 miles [15km] in two perpendicular lines. Ukrainian forces have since retaken most of these settlements, killing and capturing enemy troops – proof, Volodymyr Zelenskyy said, that Moscow isn’t winning. In other parts of the frontline the Russians are making gains.

Liakh said: “If they carry on at this pace it will take a year and a half to reach Sloviansk. Maybe longer. After that we will see what happens.” He described himself as an optimist, despite the fact the Russians are 15 miles [25km] away. “Of course we have a future,” he said. He pointed out that Moscow launched a big offensive last year to capture the city of Pokrovsk, still the scene of intense fighting. So far it has been unable to do so.

The mayor didn’t put much faith in Donald Trump’s latest apparent pivot towards Ukraine, made after talks with Zelenskyy on the sidelines of the UN general assembly in New York. “How can you take it seriously when Trump changes his mind every day?” he wondered. He said Sloviansk needed missiles and long-range weapons to shoot down hostile drones and to knock out oil refineries deep inside Russia. “It’s about results, about our own objectives, and not what they say over there.”

During his Alaska summit with Trump, Putin reportedly agreed to stop fighting if Ukraine surrendered all of Donetsk oblast including Sloviansk. The mayor said the offer was a KGB information operation to demoralise Ukraine’s defenders. In reality, Putin would take concessions and keep going, he said. “No one is going to give up Sloviansk. Not me, not our soldiers. Since when has Putin kept his word about anything?”

Liakh acknowledged that a small number of civilians – known as zhduni or those who wait – support Putin. They include some of the 6,000-odd residents who remain in Kostyantynivka, which Russia is trying to encircle, living under withering fire. Many are poor and uneducated. Some collaborate and betray Ukrainian positions, the mayor said. Others refuse to leave their homes because they are elderly and have nowhere to go.

Sloviansk map

This month Sloviansk celebrated its 380th anniversary. The city – known since the 17th century as a producer of salt and surrounded by ancient oak forests – is a symbolic Russian target. In 2014, a Russian militia occupied Sloviansk for nearly three violent and chaotic months. It murdered local politicians and kidnapped foreigners, before eventually retreating to the oblast capital of Donetsk after a Ukrainian counterattack.

Some believe Moscow wants to recapture Sloviansk for propaganda purposes: to avenge the defeat of its earlier covert invasion. There are practical reasons as well. Occupied Donetsk has run out of water. The Kremlin’s long military campaign to annex the industrial Donbas region – “historical” Russia, according to Putin – damaged a Soviet-era canal network. It connects the Siverskyi Donets river with urban settlements.

Water continues to flow in Ukrainian-controlled areas. The mayor said the Russians could fix their self-created problem by repairing pumping stations in wrecked cities such as Bakhmut, which they took in 2023, and by investing in infrastructure. “They don’t rebuild anything. They just smash everything up and plant a Russian flag on top of piles of rubble,” he said.

Residents left Sloviansk after Putin’s full-scale invasion. Many later came back. Today’s population is 50,000. The number is swollen by soldiers and people displaced from nearby areas swallowed up by fighting. The city has the region’s last maternity hospital, where 40 to 50 babies are born each month. Schools remain shut, working online. The authorities have not yet ordered families with children to leave. “Life goes on,” the mayor said.

The local economy is booming, thanks to an influx of well-paid military personnel. Real estate agents rent two-bedroom flats to soldiers for $35 (£26) a day. They hire them for when wives and girlfriends come to visit. New shops and cafes have opened up. Sloviansk boasts a bakery and an Italian restaurant, Palermo, serving pasta and Milanese soup.

There are even weddings. In Sloviansk’s park, a wartime couple, Petro and Olena, posed for photos on a picturesque bridge and under a willow tree. Petro, a soldier, said he and his new bride had dated for a year. “I have a week’s leave. Then I go back to the front,” he said. Nearby, small children played on a slide. A football match was under way in a five-a-side pitch, with six players. Teenagers strolled down an avenue of white mulberries.

The park has a rusting ferris wheel, a collection of parrots and a petting zoo. Sofia Karasova said she had come to feed carrots to the donkeys with her soldier boyfriend Oleksandr. “I believe in my country and my people. We have right on our side. The Russians are bad,” she said. She added: ‘I’m hopeful. Mostly they occupy smaller places than Sloviansk. For sure they are trying to squeeze us. We need more help from western countries.”

Parts of the city have been badly damaged. In Polyova Street, a Russian airdropped bomb flattened two houses. Inna Valentinovna said she was at home with her dog on 14 August when the strike took place. Several cottages burned down. “There was a ginormous bang. My windows blew in. For now I don’t want to leave,” she said. Down the road was school number 18, boarded up after a previous rocket attack.

In July two bombs demolished Sloviansk’s cake factory, killing 17-year-old Gleb Plokhoi who lived in the house next door. His mother was badly injured. Another missile struck Sloviansk’s Hotel Ukraine. The city was once home to eight sanatoriums, offering therapeutic mud treatments. All have been hit. The Slovianskyi spa complex has been shredded. An ambulance minus wheels is propped up outside its mangled entrance. A woman was injured in this week’s strike near the lake.

In between bombardments, Sloviansk enjoys moments of magical calm. At night residents switch off lamps to avoid attention from marauding drones. With no light pollution millions of stars illuminate a dark velvet sky. Dawn begins with the cooing of collared doves; dusk brings a pulsing symphony of cicadas and a choir of doleful yapping dogs. In summer, sand martins flit above the city’s lakes, framed by an old salt factory and a tall brick chimney.

The war has become so routine that nobody pays attention to air raid sirens. Alarms are broadcast from speakers on the roof of Sloviansk’s city administration building, once – in 2014 – the redoubt of trigger-happy Russian gunmen. It is unclear if they will return. Svitlana Vunichenko, an adviser to the mayor, said in the meantime people had to work, bring up their families and enjoy themselves. “You have to live,” she said.

After more than three decades, police have identified a dead suspect in an infamous 1991 murder case in which four girls were slain at a yogurt shop in Austin, Texas.

Austin police revealed Friday that Robert Eugene Brashers had been identified as a suspect in the murders through “a wide range of DNA testing”. Brashers, who had a lengthy criminal history, died by suicide in 1999 at age 40 during a standoff with police in Missouri.

The Austin police’s announcement follows August’s release of a widely watched HBO docuseries that was based on the quadruple homicide and garnered renewed attention to the case.

The case’s victims were Amy Ayers, 13; Eliza Thomas, 17; and sisters Jennifer and Sarah Harbison, 17 and 15, respectively, who were bound, gagged, shot in the head and then set on fire inside an I Can’t Believe It’s Yogurt store in a strip mall. At least one of the girls had been sexually assaulted, authorities have said.

Jennifer and Eliza were working at the shop that night and preparing to close up when Sarah and Amy, her best friend, arrived to meet them for a ride home. According to investigators, someone snuck into the store through the back door around closing time, attacked the girls and set the store on fire. The girls, who were shot execution-style, were discovered by firefighters with their bodies bound by underwear and their mouths gagged with cloth.

According to the autopsy report, Ayers was wearing small white earrings; Sarah had on a gold necklace and a Mickey Mouse watch; and Jennifer wore a high school ring as well as a Timex watch. The fire had severely charred three of the four girls, rendering them unrecognizable.

The case, which shocked Austin and the US, saw hundreds of potential suspects over the years but remained unsolved until recently due to a lack of solid evidence. At the time, the store had no video surveillance, and most potential evidence was destroyed in the fire.

In 1999, investigators arrested four men in connection with the murders, including Robert Springsteen and Michael Scott, who were teenagers at the time of the crime. Springsteen and Scott initially admitted guilt and implicated one another but later retracted their confessions, saying that they had made their statements under police pressure.

Nevertheless, the two men were tried and convicted. Their convictions, however, were later overturned when new DNA evidence identified a different male suspect, leading a judge to order their release from custody in 2009.

The newest suspect, Brashers, has been connected to several other cases, including the 1990 strangulation of a woman in South Carolina, the 1998 shooting of a mother and daughter in Missouri and the 1997 rape of a 14-year-old girl in Tennessee, according to the Associated Press.

In its statement Friday, Austin police said the case remains an open and ongoing investigation, adding: “Our team never gave up working this case. For almost 34 years, they have worked tirelessly and remained committed to solving this case for the families of Jennifer Harbison, Sarah Harbison, Eliza Thomas and Amy Ayers, all innocent lives taken senselessly and far too soon.”

Police said investigators “have been in touch with the families”.

“We ask for your patience as we continue this process and remain mindful of the many people whose lives have been deeply affected by this case,” police added.

Anthony Albanese has comprehensively shut the door on the prospect of a referendum to make Australia a republic while he is prime minister, despite acknowledging his personal desire for an Australian head of state.

Albanese said there would only be one referendum during his time as the nation’s leader, during an interview on the ABC Insiders program on Sunday after his meeting with King Charles in Balmoral, Scotland.

“I think I’ve made it clear that I wanted to hold one referendum while I was prime minister, and we did that,” he said, referring to the 2023 Indigenous voice to parliament referendum.

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“We did that. And I think [now] we’re concentrating on cost of living, and on making a real practical difference to people’s lives.”

Asked by host David Speers, whether he thought it was strange to visit the king of Australia in Scotland, Albanese said King Charles “is fully aware that I support an Australian as our head of state”.

The last prime minister to visit the British monarch at Balmoral castle was Paul Keating in 1993, who told Queen Elizabeth there was a “growing feeling” that Australia should have its own head of state, and that his view was that the nation should be a republic by the centenary of federation in 2001.

But a 1999 republic referendum under John Howard’s prime ministership fell far short of approving the change.

On Sunday Albanese confirmed he had not discussed future plans to make Australia a republic with the king.

Albanese has long been an advocate for an Australian republic, but has slowly backed away from constitutional change.

In October 2023, after the voice referendum failed, Albanese ruled out another referendum during his first term.

“I made it very clear that this was the only referendum that I was proposing in this term. I made no commitments about any further referendums,” he said during a press conference.

In July 2024, Albanese scrapped the ministerial portfolio for a republic.

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Albanese has said since the May election there wouldn’t be another referendum in this term, but as recently as Friday had kept the door ajar to the prospect of a vote in the future.

“I’ve said very clearly, I have no plans to have a referendum during this term,” he told reporters during a press conference in London.

When pushed for whether he believed Australia would become a republic in his lifetime, he said, “That’s a matter for the Australian people, but I respect his majesty.”

The Australian Republic Movement urged the government to keep the issue on the national agenda. The co-chair, Nathan Hansford, said a visit to Australia’s head of state “shouldn’t require a flight to Balmoral”.

“We call on the prime minister and all parliamentarians to keep this on the national agenda and set out a path to a referendum. Keep the conversations going and let Australians decide.”

Widespread UN sanctions against Iran have come back into force for the first time in a decade, after last-ditch nuclear talks with western powers failed to produce a breakthrough.

The sanctions, which came into effect late on Saturday and three months after Israel and the US bombed Iran, bar dealings related to Tehran’s nuclear and ballistic missiles program and are also expected to have wider effects on its troubled economy.

European and US diplomats stressed immediately after the resumption of sanctions that diplomacy was not over.

The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, urged Tehran to “accept direct talks, held in good faith”.

He also called on UN member states to “immediately” implement sanctions to “pressure Iran’s leaders to do what is right for their nation and best for the safety of the world”.

The British, French and German foreign ministers said in a joint statement they would continue to seek “a new diplomatic solution to ensure Iran never gets a nuclear weapon”.

They also called on Tehran “to refrain from any escalatory action”.

Iran has allowed UN inspectors to return to its nuclear sites, but the president, Masoud Pezeshkian, said the US had offered only a short reprieve in return for handing over its whole stockpile of enriched uranium, a proposal he described as unacceptable.

An 11th-hour effort by Iran’s allies Russia and China to postpone the sanctions until April failed to win enough votes in the security council on Friday, leading to the measures taking effect at midnight on Sunday GMT.

Germany, which triggered the return of sanctions alongside UK and France, had “no choice” as Iran was not complying with its obligations, the foreign minister, Johann Wadephul, said.

“For us, it is imperative: Iran must never acquire a nuclear weapon,” he told the UN general assembly.

“But let me emphasise: we remain open to negotiations on a new agreement. Diplomacy can and should continue.”

Russia made it clear it would not enforce the sanctions, considering them invalid.

The sanctions “finally exposed the west’s policy of sabotaging the pursuit of constructive solutions in the UN security council, as well as its desire to extract unilateral concessions from Tehran through blackmail and pressure,” the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, said.

Iran has long contended that it is not seeking nuclear weapons.

The sanctions are a “snapback” of measures frozen in 2015 when Iran agreed to major restrictions on its nuclear program under a deal negotiated by former US president Barack Obama.

The US already imposed massive sanctions, including trying to force all countries to shun Iranian oil, when Donald Trump withdrew from the deal in his first presidential term.

Iran and the US had held several rounds of Omani-brokered talks earlier this year before they collapsed in June when first Israel and then the US attacked Iranian nuclear facilities.

Iran recalled its envoys from UK, France and Germany for consultations on Saturday, state television reported.

“The current [economic] situation was already very difficult, but it’s going to get worse,” said an Iranian engineer who asked to be identified only by his first name, Dariush.

“The impact of the renewed sanctions is already evident: the exchange rate is increasing, and this is leading to higher prices,” the 50-year-old told AFP, lamenting a standard of living that is “much lower” than it was “two or three years ago”.

The dollar was trading at about 1.12m rials on the black market on Saturday, a record high according to several currency tracking websites.

The US already enforces unilateral sanctions on Iran and has put huge pressure on third countries to stop buying Iranian oil, although China has defied it.

Brussels-based thinktank International Crisis Group said Iran seemed dismissive of the renewed UN sanctions as it had already worked out how to cope with the US ones.

But it noted that the snapback was not easy to reverse as it would require consensus at the security council.

“It is also likely to compound the malaise around an economy already struggling with high inflation, currency woes and deepening infrastructure problems,” it said.

The family of Lindsay and Craig Foreman, a British couple detained in Iran on espionage charges, have said their health is deteriorating in prison.

The pair, both 52 and who previously split their time between Spain and England, were seized in Kerman, central Iran, and taken into custody in January while on an around-the-world motorcycle tour.

Iran said in February the Foremans were accused of entering the country “posing as tourists” to gather information. The couple, from East Sussex, deny the allegations.

Lindsay’s son, Joe Bennett, said that the family have “real concerns” about the pair’s health, and that his mother has been on a drip in prison and Craig has had several illnesses including stomach bugs and the flu.

Speaking to BBC News, Bennett said: There are real concerns around my mum and Craig’s health.

“Craig is constantly ill, multiple rounds of stomach bugs, flu, dental problems, without the correct medical care.

“It’s to my understanding that my mum was on a drip last week. Unsure as to why, but obviously very, very concerning for us as a family.”

This comes as the couple face court today in Iran, and the family said it is “deeply worrying” that the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) appears not to have been kept informed.

Bennett told Sky News that the family was “anticipating to hear” any news after a court appearance, and “it might be seven to 10 days after today’s hearing” before they get an update.

The family have known little about the couple’s whereabouts or condition throughout their detention, but last month learned through the Foreign Office that Lindsay has been transferred to Qarchak women’s prison near the capital.

Human rights groups have repeatedly criticised the dire conditions reported at Qarchak prison.

Craig was believed to have been moved to Tehran’s infamous central prison, also known as Fashafouyeh, which is about 30km (18 miles) south of the capital and has a similar reputation.

The FCDO warns all British and British-Iranian nationals not to travel to Iran because of a “significant risk of arrest, questioning or detention”.

A spokesperson said previously: “We are deeply concerned by reports that two British nationals have been charged with espionage in Iran. We continue to raise this case directly with the Iranian authorities.

“We are providing them with consular assistance and remain in close contact with their family members.”

The international community is on the brink of securing a peace deal for Gaza that could finally bring an end to two years of conflict and a humanitarian crisis that has claimed thousands of lives, Yvette Cooper has suggested.

The new foreign secretary, who has just returned from a UN summit, said that they had “reached a moment where the world wants to end this war” after US president Donald Trump indicated a peace deal was within reach.

In an interview with the Guardian before the Labour party conference in Liverpool, Cooper urged the Israeli government to “urgently change course” away from its renewed military offensive on Gaza. Israel’s leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, said at the UN his country “must finish the job”.

However, the senior Labour politician declined to conclude that Israel was committing genocide in the territory, despite pressure to do so from inside her party, repeating the government’s position that was down to a legal process.

She admitted that “words seem hollow” in response to the catastrophic situation on the ground and said the priority must be trying to use new momentum behind a peace deal to end the “screams and pain” of Palestinian children.

Cooper, believed to be one of the cabinet ministers who privately pushed Keir Starmer to recognise the Palestinian state, said that while she understood the horror many felt about the humanitarian situation it was her job to focus on ending the war.

The White House is understood to be backing a plan that would have Tony Blair head a temporary technocratic administration of Gaza. Cooper twice declined to say whether the former UK prime minister was the right person to lead the transitional authority.

While Blair has good relations with the Gulf states after serving as Middle East envoy, and a route to the White House through Jared Kushner, the main architect of the plan and Trump’s son-in-law, he remains a controversial figure in the wider region over his role in the 2003 Iraq war.

“I feel like there is a consensus, a real, huge consensus building, and there was real energy and determination [at the UN] around peace. I think we’ve reached a moment where the world wants to end this war,” Cooper said.

The “beginning of the process” was a ceasefire, the restoration of humanitarian aid and the release of all the hostages, she added. However, she acknowledged the process was fragile and there were many obstacles ahead.

“We can’t pretend this isn’t incredibly hard, and how long the crisis has been going on makes it challenging. But there was no doubt that there is a real sense of determination and energy behind trying to get an end to the war and to try and get not just an immediate ceasefire, but a proper plan for the future.”

Just days before hosting Netanyahu in Washington, Trump told reporters on Friday that it was “looking like we have a deal on Gaza”. Cooper acknowledged the US president would play an instrumental role in bringing Israel on board.

The 21-point White House plan for peace is, diplomats say, compatible with the plan for Palestine endorsed by the UN last week, with agreement on no mass displacement from Gaza, no role for Hamas and no West Bank annexation.

But Foreign Office insiders are understood to be uneasy about aspects of the Trump plan, including what role Blair might play.

“Tony Blair has been one of the people adding proposals to this process, and that’s been really important, but there have been lots of other processes as well,” Cooper said. “There’s still a huge amount of work to do. At this stage, there’s a sense of consensus building but we’ve got to keep that on track.”

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Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, was the last world leader Cooper met before she moved from being shadow foreign secretary in 2011, and the first when she became UK foreign secretary earlier this month.

She has not yet met Netanyahu, although she was in New York when he made his remarks at the UN. “There is no military solution to this that works, there is no way that the security of Israel is remotely strengthened by this further Gaza City offensive,” she said.

“For security for Israelis, as well as security for Palestinians and as well as dealing with this devastating humanitarian crisis, I think the Israeli government urgently needs to change course.”

The UK Foreign Office makes regular internal assessments of whether there is a serious risk of genocide by Israel in Gaza, but earlier this month said it had not concluded that was currently the case.

“Every time we talk about whether it’s humanitarian crisis or whatever words that we use actually feel hollow, because what it’s really about is the screams and pain of a toddler, and that’s what’s really at the heart of this, and that’s what has to end. The war has to be brought to an end,” Cooper said.

“I think the reason that there is just such a sense of distress is because everybody can see the horror of what has happened and the fact that it feels like nothing’s being done. It feels like nothing is changing. It feels like everything is just getting worse …

“The challenge for us now is that there is a moment, and we have to make sure that that moment, through international action, is turned into a peace process.”

Turning to Russia, and the drones and jets being flown over Poland and Scandinavian countries, Cooper accused Vladimir Putin of “deliberate provocation” and attempts to destabilise Europe.

The foreign secretary urged the US to “go much further” on sanctions on Russian oil and gas, after Trump said a week ago he was ready to do so, but only if Nato countries met certain conditions. “There has to be a much more concerted effort,” she added.

The government is expected to announce on Sunday a programme to build 12 new towns across England in a bid to address the country’s housing crisis.

The housing secretary, Steve Reed, will unveil the initiative at Labour’s annual conference as it begins in Liverpool. The prime minister, Keir Starmer, described the proposals as “national renewal in action”.

It comes as the new towns taskforce, established in September last year, publishes a report with a raft of recommendations for fresh developments across the country. Labour is keen to present the proposals as a rejection of what it sees as the “quick fix” politics of Reform.

Reed will tell delegates that the project is modelled on the “housing boom” overseen by Clement Attlee’s postwar Labour government, which built more than one million homes between 1945 and 1951. Reed’s project will rely on public and private funding but the total anticipated cost is unclear. The taskforce is expected to say that, collectively, the new towns could deliver “up to 300,000” homes over the “coming decades”.

Reed, who became housing secretary just three weeks ago following the resignation of Angela Rayner, will say he will do whatever it takes to get Britain building to “restore the dream of home ownership” to thousands of families across the country.

He will say on Sunday: “We will fight for hard-working people, locked out of a secure home for too long by the Conservative government of blockers. This Labour government won’t sit back and let this happen. I will do whatever it takes to get Britain building. We’ve got to ‘build, baby, build’.

“That’s the way we put the key to a decent home in the pocket of everyone who needs a secure and affordable home. And not just homes, but communities, and not just communities but entire towns.

“This party built new towns after the war to meet our promise of homes fit for heroes. Now, with the worst economic inheritance since that war, we will once again build cutting-edge communities to provide homes fit for families of all shapes and sizes.

“I am launching the next generation of new towns taking the lessons from the postwar Labour government housing boom, mobilising the full power of the state to build a new generation of new towns.”

Locations under consideration include Tempsford, Bedfordshire, Crews Hill, north London and Leeds South Bank, though final decisions are yet to be made.

Each new town is expected to have at least 10,000 properties as well as GP surgeries, schools, green spaces and transport links. The taskforce will suggest that about 40% of the dwellings should be affordable homes, with 20% earmarked for social housing, it is understood.

Academics say Britain faces a shortage of about 4.3m homes, and there are record numbers of people living in temporary accommodation. Labour has pledged to build 1.5m new properties before the next general election, although analysts have cast doubt on whether this target is achievable.

The Australian defence force says it has “no place” for rightwing extremists, despite one of its members remaining in the service for more than eight months after police found he had been involved in a gathering of the National Socialist Network, a neo-Nazi group.

Separately, the 25-year-old Sydney man was charged in August with possessing alleged violent extremist and child abuse material on his mobile phones after being arrested in Holsworthy. He will face court again next month.

The Australian federal police charged the man after it received intelligence that he attended an NSN gathering in Marsfield, in Sydney’s north, in late 2024.

Footage of the gathering, seen by Guardian Australia, shows about a dozen men clad in black exercise clothing in a public park. It is believed they had been conducting a “training” session.

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“Further inquiries indicated the man may be in possession of the illicit material,” the AFP said in a statement.

“Search warrants were executed at various locations in February, April and August 2025. Items seized included mobile phones which allegedly contained violent extremist and child abuse material. Forensic review of the devices allegedly revealed the presence of the material, including video artefacts of terrorist attacks and videos depicting minors performing sexual acts.

“The man is alleged to be a member of several online chat groups where the illicit material was discussed and disseminated.”

He has been charged with one count of possessing violent extremist material and one count of possessing child abuse material.

It is believed he remains an ADF member, but defence would not confirm this, nor when it became aware he was an associate of the NSN.

“There is no place within defence for behaviours or associations that are inconsistent with defence values,” an ADF spokesperson said.

“Defence has a zero tolerance policy for criminal behaviour.”

Administration and disciplinary processes can occur in situations where a defence member is charged with or convicted of a civilian offence, as opposed to within the military justice system. The ADF would not comment on whether the man was already subject to such a process.

The ADF also did not comment on whether state and federal law enforcement and intelligence bodies shared information with them about members suspected to be involved in groups such as the NSN.

In 2021, a new Asio framework was developed to share information with the armed services about potential extremist links.

The ADF also declined to comment on whether it monitors employees’ possible involvement with these groups, and how it educates its members about the risk of far-right groups.

Last year, Guardian Australia revealed there had been at least 16 investigations into defence personnel allegedly engaging with extremism or supremacism since 2022.

In October 2021, the ADF tightened its vetting procedures in an attempt to prevent nationalist and racist violent extremists from joining amid concerns former personnel were linked to local white supremacist groups.

Asio also warned in its annual report that year that “some nationalist and racist violent extremists seek to join the Australian defence force to obtain training and capability.”