Bangladesh thrashed Australia by nine wickets on the fourth day of the series-opener in Darwin to complete one of Test cricket’s greatest upsets.
After bowling the hosts out for 284 and needing 57 to win, Mominul Haque cut Beau Webster to the boundary for the winning runs to seal the nation’s first Test victory in Australia.
The moment sparked jubilation among Bangladesh players and staff as they celebrated arguably their greatest victory in 26 years of competing in Test cricket.
Australia are the top-ranked Test nation while Bangladesh haven’t played a series under the five-day format in the country since a 2-0 defeat in 2003.
The visitors were on top of the match throughout, but it was spinner Mehidy Hasan Miraz who took the spotlight on day four as he took 5-66 to dismiss Australia for 284, leaving just 57 runs needed to win.
All-rounder Cameron Green showed fight with a valiant 104 but after being bowled by Hasan Mahmud, Australia’s faint hopes of saving the Test all but disappeared.
Seamer Mahmud was named player of the match after claiming 6-55 in the first innings and 3-56 in the second.
“This is the biggest win so far for Bangladesh in any format,” captain Najmul Hossain Shanto said.
“Going forward we want to do something special in the future. I’m very happy, proud of myself and the way the boys played. We did a lot of hard work.”
Speaking on ABC, commentator Jim Maxwell described the result as one of the most “embarrassing defeats that Australia have ever suffered in Test cricket”.
Spinner Mehidy Hasan Miraz took the crucial wicket of Steve Smith as Bangladesh moved closer to a historic first Test victory in Australia on day three in Darwin.
Smith, so often Australia’s talisman, chipped a leading edge straight back to the off-spinner to depart for 44 and leave his side 122-4 in their second innings.
Australia safely batted out the rest of the session but they face a tough task to save the match after closing on 161-4, still 67 runs behind Bangladesh’s first innings total.
Their hopes of saving the first Test rest in the hands of Cameron Green, who remained unbeaten on 43 and Alex Carey, on 19.
Earlier Bangladesh added 75 to their overnight score of 351-6, with Miraz scoring 65 and Josh Hazlewood claiming 6-89 to claim his 300th Test wicket.
Miraz guided the tail superbly for his 65 from 154 balls as the Bangladesh lower order frustrated Australia’s tiring bowling attack.
“The way we showed character and played the last two, three days I think is outstanding. So, really happy to see them play like this,” Bangladesh captain Najmul Hossain Shanto said.
After being dismissed for 426 shortly after lunch, Bangladesh seamer Hasan Mahmud stunned the hosts when he claimed both openers cheaply.
The 26-year-old, who took a career-best 6-55 in the first innings, bowled Jake Weatherald for 0 and Travis Head for 17 as both players chopped on to their stumps.
Marnus Labuschagne and Smith steadied the ship, before the former was bowled by Taijul Islam for 31.
Smith batted sensibly for his 44 off 88 balls but his wicket left Bangladesh confident of victory as they roared in triumph on the Marrara Oval pitch.
All-rounder Green’s place in the side had been questioned prior to the series, but he defended well alongside wicketkeeper Carey as the pair reached the end of the day to give the hosts a slither of hope going into day four.
Australia have never lost a home Test to Bangladesh, only losing once to the Tigers in six previous Tests – at Mirpur in 2017.
For the tourist industry, 2026 has been a rocky year, with war, EU border delays, climate and economic woes gnawing away at holiday plans. But while much of Britain is feeling the loss of visitors from the Middle East and beyond, one part is thriving.
Scotland is reeling in ever more visitors, with strong annual growth and a 15% rise in flight bookings to Scottish airports in June and July, compared with a drop in bookings to London and the rest of England in recent months, according to VisitBritain figures.
With heatwaves gripping much of Europe, the hope of finding cooler climes farther north may have increased Scotland’s allure – although tourism chiefs say dashing Highland warriors and kilted football fans may have more to do with it.
Long-term plans to increase direct flights from North America have come to fruition in the last two years, bolstering the traditional US-led foreign tourist base.
A rise in visitors from continental Europe, possibly looking to escape the heat, has added to the mix. And more Britons have chosen to holiday at home rather than face the border confusion and delays under the EU’s entry-exit system.
In Edinburgh, where August has long been the busiest time of the year, Princes Street was this week particularly teeming with tourists, gathered around bagpipers and being targeted with leaflets by cheery fringe promoters.
The Gilded Balloon, one of the main venues during the Edinburgh fringe. Photograph: PA
Festival sales are up 30%, according to Marc Crothall, the chief executive of the Scottish Tourism Alliance. “Edinburgh is jumping, which is great. And that’s a massive draw for international visitors,” he said.
Not all were here for the world’s biggest arts festival: Zanet Garcia, from Mexico City and on her second day in the country, had no idea it was on. “I was really confused by it all. I had never heard of the fringe and I didn’t know what it was,” she said with a laugh. “But everyone has been so friendly.”
Garcia chose Scotland because of her interest in Scottish mythology, sparked by books and TV shows that were huge UK exports, such as Harry Potter and Outlander, and had visited locations connected with them. She was taking in traditional national attractions too, fresh from the Johnnie Walker Experience – “I don’t even drink whisky” – and with tickets to the military tattoo.
An earlier visitor to the Johnnie Walker Experience in Edinburgh, the Tory leader, Kemi Badenoch. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod/The Guardian
The majority of tourists are from the UK. But it is the big-spending foreigners who are more likely to stay longer, chalk up the visitor attractions and pack in the experiences. An average overseas visitor to Scotland spent just over £900 in a week in 2024, compared with just over £300 in three nights for a British holidaymaker.
According to data from the Moffat Centre for travel and tourism at Glasgow Caledonian University the biggest jump this year has been in visitors touring by campervan rather than staying in hotels.
Numbers are up but spending per head is down, Crothall said, describing the overall picture as “healthy but by no means booming”.
The holidaying Briton is more likely, he said, to be pursuing free visits to museums and walking in the countryside, with the cost of living still a big issue. “Instead of the three course meal, it’s the one. The 5% VAT and free travel helps, but it’s not magic,” Crothall said.
A scene from an earlier series of the TV show Outlander has helped spark an interest in Scottish mythology among visitors. Photograph: Starz! Movie Channel/Courtesy
Although Scotland has suffered its own heatwaves, and devastating wildfires in the Cairngorms, it remains cooler than the southern UK. “We hope and suspect that we’ll see more European visitors given the climate conditions,” Crothall added.
Conclusive data linking the heat to changing tourism habits is not yet available, said Vicki Miller, the chief executive of VisitScotland. “But certainly we’ve seen this year strong demand from Europe including Spain and Italy, which is potentially the climate impact,” she added.
What the research does show, however, is just how many visits, such as Garcia’s, were inspired by the screen. Online searches spiked on the back of reality TV hit The Traitors, although Ardross Castle – the main location for the UK and US versions of the show – is not open to visit. Castles that have featured in Outlander – a long-running hit in the US and parts of Europe – have also become big draws.
Ardross Castle, where The Traitors is filmed, is not open to visitors, but castles that have featured in Outlander have been big draws. Photograph: Peter Jolly/Shutterstock
“We know that 36%-37% of international visitors are inspired by film or TV,” said Miller. “And people’s memories are long: they remember Braveheart or Local Hero as well.”
Sport has also pulled in visitors, from this year’s Commonwealth Games in Glasgow to big golf tournaments, along with the reflected glory from travelling Scottish football fans.
Interest from Germany increased after it hosted Euro 2024, when the Tartan Army were voted the best supporters at the football tournament: a mixture of “friendliness, banter, and donations to local charities – they capture hearts, they’ve been fantastic ambassadors”, Miller said.
Scotland fans cheer in the stands before their team’s World Cup match against Morocco at Boston stadium in June. Photograph: Justin Setterfield/Getty Images
At this year’s World Cup, when Scotland played in the US, VisitScotland “painted Boston tartan” to capitalise, she said, prompting local online searches for Scottish holidays to double.
While Scotland hopes to reap the fruits of a long-term strategic approach, including more direct flights – 100,000 more seats annually from the US alone – and promoting visits in all seasons, many are still feeling the pinch from reduced spending.
On the streets of the Scottish capital, Dexter, working at Edinburgh Bus Tours, was rueful. “I’ve been here seven years and the crowd is going down. Tips have gone, big time. I used to be able to go on vacation just on my tips, now that’s not the case,” said the tour guide, who is originally from Nevada, US.
He said the tourist tax – a 5% levy introduced in July on accommodation in Edinburgh – “has hurt”, on top of the cost of living: “People have got no money.”
Leon Thompson, the executive director of the trade body UKHospitality Scotland, concurred. “People are in their cost of living crisis and that is a challenge,” he said.
Thompson added that companies were feeling the impact of business rates, national insurance contributions and VAT, and were anxiously awaiting tourist levies to be introduced by other Scottish local authorities after Edinburgh.
“Scotland will always be a popular destination, but we can’t be complacent. We can’t allow ourselves to be priced out of what is the global visitor market,” he said.
BEACHGOERS are being warned to stop trying to visit closed UK beach.
Local authorities have said that a number of Brits have been putting themselves in danger by ignoring signs at a beach that has been closed for two months.
Selwicks Bay near Flamborough Lighthouse has been closed for two monthsCredit: East Riding of Yorkshire Council
Selwicks Bay near Flamborough Lighthouse in Yorkshire has been closed for several weeks now after an inspection revealed that steps down the cliff side were damaged.
Since the closure, there has been a barrier at the entrance of the steps.
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Now the local council is urging visitors to not climb over the barrier or ignore signs near the beach.
Councillor Nick Coultish, the council’s cabinet member for culture, leisure, tourism and planning, said in a statement: “We don’t want to restrict access to this beach, but these steps are in a dangerous condition, so we had no choice but to close them.
“Please don’t ignore the barrier and closure signs, because there is a real risk that someone could get seriously hurt if the steps give way.
“This won’t be a quick repair, unfortunately. The damage means we may have to rebuild them.
“We look forward to reopening these steps when they are made safe, but until then please don’t use them.”
The steps are the only way to reach the beach, so until new steps are built the beach will remain closed.
The spot is also popular with paddle boarders and the council is concerned that they could become stranded or have to turn back as there isn’t a way to get up from the beach.
Engineers are currently planning a solution for the beach, but the council has said this may take some time.
When Sebastian Dollinger and his colleagues first drove into Yosemite National Park, they felt like they were entering the world at its finest — a prehistoric beauty of hulking rocks with every waterfall flowing in the valley.
It reminded Dollinger, who lives in Sweden, of the Swiss Alps in summer.
The moment didn’t last long.
As the group, in the park in early May for a fashion shoot for California luxury brand Robert Talbott, neared Mirror Lake in Yosemite Valley, Dollinger’s party felt like it had been overtaken by a massive swarm of bees as droves of other tourists buzzed around them, he said.
A tourist stands in front of an overlook near Yosemite Valley during a sunrise in mid-June in Yosemite National Park.
Tourists wait at the Yosemite Falls bus stop.
“I could have taken up climbing and gone up El Capitan just to escape the people,” Dollinger said, referencing Yosemite’s famous rock wall, “but I’m just a creative director.”
This summer, Yosemite is seeing a significant uptick in visitation, driven by the park’s internationally known splendor, its popularity on social media and a lack of its politicized reservation system. As droves of tourists flock to Yosemite, it raises the question: Is it still possible to have a fun time there despite the crowds?
Hopefully, yes, but that answer comes with a few heavy asterisks. Park-goers and local business owners say it’s crucial for those venturing into Yosemite this summer to plan their excursions outside peak times to avoid the worst of the crowds, and even then, pack their patience. The best-laid plans can still result in visitors facing significant lines at the park’s gate and restaurants, crowded hiking trails and a relentless search for parking.
By the end of June, Yosemite had seen at least 183,000 more visitors than last year, according to preliminary park visitor data. Just over 2 million people visited the park by the end of June, a 10% increase compared with last year’s visitation data.
Crowds pose for photos on the Mist Trail.
The increase in visitors is, in part, because the National Park Service is not using a timed-entry reservation system this year.
The National Park Service announced in February — after the agency under the Biden administration studiedextensively how to best implement a reservation system — that officials would instead use “targeted management.” This has included sending congestion alerts to visitors’ mobile phones and encouraging visitors to venture outside the valley, as it represents only a fraction of its almost 1,200 square miles of parkland.
When asked how the agency planned to address overcrowding in Yosemite this summer, a National Park Service spokesperson who declined to give their name to The Times said in an emailed statement that temporary traffic delays can occur during peak times but aren’t evidence of “operational failure.”
“They reflect the reality of managing one of the nation’s most visited national parks while keeping visitors safe and protecting park resources,” the spokesperson said. “Claims of widespread ‘overcrowding’ are not an accurate characterization of current park operations. Visitors have benefitted [sic] from expanded access for months now, and we are seeing operational efficiency from managing traffic only when and where necessary, rather than blanketing the park with restrictions for entire seasons.”
Dozens of tourists hike their way up the Mist Trail in mid-June, one of the more popular trails in Yosemite National Park.
Visitors like Dollinger say this new approach is not working.
“After we hiked for about three hours, we met a couple from Japan, and when I talked to them they were almost in tears,” said Dollinger, who has visited other state and national parks in California. “They saved for five years to do this trip, flew to San Francisco from Tokyo, stayed in San Francisco and hired a car, and went to the park for five days, which I can only describe as hell.”
Not every Yosemite visitor that The Times spoke to for this story had as bad of a time as Dollinger, but no one disputed crowds being an issue.
Chidumebi Ajaero, who lives in L.A., said he was “very concerned” when he and his friends left for their trip in mid-April over how crowded the park would be.
It was Ajaero’s first time to visit Yosemite after moving to California about 2½ years ago from Houston. He has been to other national parks and said he knows they can get “quite chaotic” when busy.
Tents set up in Upper Pines Campground on a June weekend in Yosemite National Park.
Ajaero and his friends arrived in Yosemite on a Friday afternoon and were surprised to find there was no line to enter the Big Oak Flat entrance.
They set their campsite up at Upper Pines, a campground in the valley, and headed out early on the Mist Trail, which takes hikers to Vernal and Nevada falls via its large stone steps. There were a considerable amount of people on the trail with them, he said.
“It’s not until you get to the waterfall itself and you have the steps, and everybody is taking pictures,” Ajaero said. “There’s actually a line to move up. You’re just waiting for your turn to step up” to capture the waterfall.
Ajaero said he’s glad he went before Memorial Day, when visitation started to increase more significantly.
But because of how curated Yosemite Valley is, with a grocery store, souvenir shops and restaurants, Ajaero said it felt more like an amusement park than his trips to Joshua Tree National Park, where visitors are far more on their own.
Hikers walk on a boardwalk designed to prevent erosion in sensitive meadows.
“I didn’t love it as much as the other because of the commercialized feeling of it, and just the fact it never felt you were alone in Yosemite,” he said. “I think there’s too much going on.”
How developed Yosemite should be for its visitors has been a debate since the park’s existence.
Michael W. Childers, author of “The Mountains Are Calling: Tourists and the Unmaking of Yosemite National Park” (Nebraska), said people often use the metaphor of not wanting to turn the park into Disneyland, but a more apt comparison is how closely Yosemite resembles a resort.
Concessionaires have been in Yosemite since its beginnings, as the federal government didn’t have the money to construct its own amenities in the 1850s, he said. Yosemite Hospitality, a subsidiary of hospitality giant Aramark, manages much of Yosemite’s lodging, dining and activities (including the park’s Starbucks inside the valley).
Childers, an associate professor of history at Colorado State University, said his concern is that, since the late 1970s, conservative intellectuals have pushed to privatize the park even further.
He said the chaos being created by the Trump administration through cutting park staff and ending the reservation system is “very intentional” in the quest to argue the only way to manage the park is to privatize Yosemite.
“If you privatize the entirety of a national park, that means that your only one measuring stick is profit, and arguably, national parks are not solely designed for profit,” said Childers, an environmental historian of the American West. “They’re for experience. They’re for democracy. They’re for preservation of natural resources.”
Vehicles stop to pay the fee at the El Portal entrance gate.
Vehicles line the road near El Capitan in Yosemite National Park.
One of park officials’ most significant management challenges started when tourists began entering Yosemite by automobile. Since 1913, people could enter in a personal vehicle, but visitation numbers remained reasonable until 1926 when the “All Year Highway,” a segment of the 140 Highway, opened.
This new thoroughfare created an easy and direct route to reach the park by car that avoided steep mountain roads, according to park history. The road’s opening resulted in a near doubling of total cars visiting the park in just one year, park staff said in an Instagram post.
“The summer of 1927 has clearly demonstrated that parking is one of the most urgent, menacing problems of the entire Yosemite Valley,” said Don Tresidder, president of the Yosemite Park & Curry Co., that year, according to the park.
And has thus remained for 100 years.
The first attempt in recent years to get a handle on car traffic was the reservation system, implemented initially to spread guests out during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 but rolled out in 2021, 2022 and 2024 as the park service tested how to best employ it to cut down on traffic and help more visitors enjoy the park.
“Over the past decade, many parks have seen significant increases in visitation and crowding in popular areas, especially during peak seasons,” the agency wrote in 2024 as it sought public comments on park management. “In some parks, the level of demand is exceeding the capacity for which infrastructure was designed or is outpacing the National Park Service’s ability to sustainably support visitation.”
The park service planned to use visitor feedback and research to guide how reservations would be rolled out in 2025. Environmental and park advocates argued for the reservation system, saying that it not only protected the wildlife and land, but also that it waspopular among guests.
But when Trump started his second term in office, not only did park management strategy change, so did the way the federal government viewed the park service. Hundreds of park workers were laid off, although some got their jobs back. Others took buyouts, and overall there was a 24% decline in permanent workers, according to the National Parks Conservation Assn.
One of the reservation system’s biggest critics is Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Elk Grove), who said the system was decimating the economies of local gateway communities, the term used for the small mountain towns around Yosemite.
Parking lots are filled to capacity during peak hours, creating traffic congestion in Yosemite National Park.
“This is not to say that crowding in the valley hasn’t been a big problem, but the solution is better management and more capacity, not restricting access,” McClintock said on the House floor in June, noting the park had more parking, rooms and campsites before the 1997 flood destroyed infrastructure that he said wasn’t replaced.
Under the timed-entry system, visitors could still enter the park without a reservation if they arrived early — before 6 a.m. in 2021 and 2022 and 5 a.m. in 2024 — or after 4 p.m., and would be required to pay an entry fee for a three-day pass allowing them to reenter outside of peak hours.
But entering the park early or late in the day still wasn’t doable for everyone, including Ronny Shields, a father of two children from Ventura.
Shields, a lifelong Southern California resident, struggled to book a reservation when Yosemite implemented the system until he finally snagged one in 2024. His family had a great time and was eager to return.
In early June, Shields, his wife and kids, ages 4 and 7, made the trek back to Yosemite, staying outside the park at Tenaya at Yosemite in Fish Camp. Shields had researched and found information online suggesting the nearby southern entrance was less crowded.
His family arrived on a Saturday afternoon and entered the park without a wait. They found the valley was quieter than they’d ever seen it as people left.
Tourists stand in a meadow with a perfect view of Yosemite Falls.
For the rest of their trip, they entered the park before 8 a.m. or after 3 p.m., except for one day when they entered later in the morning and waited 40 minutes to enter. The other times, they found no wait.
Once inside the park before 8 a.m., their first stop was the Bridalveil Fall Trail, a short trek that takes visitors right to the base of the thundering cascade. When Shields and his family left the trail about 9:30 a.m., they noticed other guests couldn’t find parking.
They faced the same problem after they went to get food and then tried to park near the Lower Yosemite Falls trailhead. After 20 minutes, they found a spot — and joined the masses.
The trail “doesn’t feel like a hike — it feels like you’re in a crowded mall, but I think that’s the nature of the beast because it’s very short and very scenic,” Shields said.
Comparing his two visits to Yosemite, Shields said he preferred not having to deal with the reservation system, but that came with some caveats. He noticed far more visitors, although he’d expected even more. He saw more trash, several guests going off trail and trampling plant life, and far fewer park rangers to tell them to stop.
He said he didn’t see any park staff in the outdoor areas, and instead, he and his wife made sure to take their kids into the park’s buildings so they could speak to the rangers.
Tourists swim and play in the Merced River in Yosemite National Park.
“It’s nice for the kids to be able to ask questions and learn from people that love it,” Shields said. “Even I learned something.”
Jennifer Liu, a Moreno Valley resident, was at the park the same time frame as the Shields family and was able to mostly avoid the crowds on her backpacking trip through the park’s backcountry.
Liu meandered through the park using a few different trails, including the Sunrise Lakes route, to reach her ultimate destination: Half Dome on her birthday. She left her backcountry campsite about 4:30 a.m. to reach Half Dome by 6 a.m., catching the sunrise at 8,800-feet elevation from the granite monolith.
“I got lucky — the clouds cleared out and there was a nice sunrise,” she said.
Not in a hurry, Liu stayed at the top for four hours. Her fellow hikers sang her happy birthday, and she witnessed a couple get engaged.
Sunset over the Half Dome lookout in Yosemite National Park.
“By 10, when I headed back down, that’s when the crowd was starting to pick up,” Liu said, adding that she was grateful there was still space to navigate the dome’s cable system without being rushed by others.
As a means of crowd control, the National Park Service has attempted to funnel people out of the valley, where the majority of tourists spend their time and into its less frequented locations.
Park officials have tried to rebrand Hetch Hetchy, a massive reservoir surrounded by glacier-carved rock walls, by claiming that “many have compared Hetch Hetchy’s grandeur to the more well-known Yosemite Valley,” according to a recent update on the park’s website. (Previous versions of the Hetch Hetchy page made no such claim, according to archived versions of the website viewed through the Internet Archive.)
The park service doesn’t cite a source for such claims. California naturalist John Muir compared the two valleys’ beauties, but that was before Hetch Hetchy Valley was transformed by the O’Shaughnessy Dam into a massive reservoir.
“John Muir lost the fight over Hetch Hetchy, and the dam was built. And people who live in San Francisco today drink the water of Hetch Hetchy,” historian William Cronon said in the Ken Burns national parks documentary. “Muir died feeling that he’d been defeated by that, and that was a great tragedy at the end of his life.”
Still, Hetch Hetchy has long been whispered among Yosemite regulars as a place to find a little quiet.
That’s changed too.
An empty road under El Capitan in Yosemite Valley National Park.
“We used to have these secret spots we could tell people about,” said Elisabeth Barton, owner of Yosemite Basecamp in Groveland, which offers lodging, trips by local outfitters, gear and more. “‘Go to Hetch Hetchy,’ you’d say quietly and look over your shoulder. ‘Go to this waterfall’ or ‘Do this hike.’ … One of the things we’re noticing is, very quickly on a weekend, [the park] is sending out that alert that Hetch Hetchy is full or that Hetch Hetchy has ‘extreme visitation.’ It’s weird.”
Barton, whose company runs a visitor center in downtown Groveland, said there’s not much she and her team can recommend for people coming Thursday through Sunday into the park. It will be crowded regardless.
On a recent Saturday, Barton met a hiker who was devastated he couldn’t easily enter the valley without dealing with crowds. Barton let him in on a less popular trip that involved a great swimming hole, fish tacos at Whoa Nellie Deli, an adventure around Mono Lake and a drive through a stunning mountain pass. She recommended that he take a long way to reenter the park, enabling him to see the valley at a time he’d miss the crowds.
He called her a week later and told her to never recommend that to anyone ever again. He’d had a great day until he tried to reenter the park and instead waited four hours at the Tioga Pass in a line that stretched for miles. “You’re right, it was beautiful,” he told her, “but to what end?”
“I just wasn’t prepared for that,” Barton said. “It just broke me.”
Even sacred sites — with signage directing visitors away from the area — have been trampled by crowds.
The American Indian Council of Mariposa County, also known as the Southern Sierra Miwuk Nation, fought for decades to establish Wahhoga Village, which is an ancient village site and the last place that Indigenous people lived in Yosemite Valley before being driven out by the National Park Service.
Today, Wahhoga Village includes a traditional roundhouse, traditional cedar bark houses known as umachas and the only cabin that the park service didn’t burn when it evicted the remaining families from the site in 1969.
Wahhoga is not listed on Yosemite maps and is not intended to be used by those who aren’t either authorized or invited by the council to be there, said Deborah Tucker, a council member whose father advocated for years for Wahhoga.
But, Tucker said, in recent weeks, tourists have been found picnicking in the site. Hikers were tromping right through the middle of the village, led by a user-generated route on a popular outdoors adventure app, she said.
And while there, someone peed all over the village’s grinding stones, which are used for processing acorns into flour, along with other foods, said Tucker, whose father is Paiute and Shoshone and her mother was Choinumni, a branch of Yokut, tribes indigenous to the region.
Tourist beat the heat and float on tubes in a river in Yosemite National Park.
Under the current administration, “it’s a free-for-all,” Tucker said. “You can come up there and do what you want, park where you want and you’re disrupting not just sacred sites but other park sites that the park service has [established],” leading to littering and other pollution, noise that harms the birds and speeding cars that threaten the safety of bears and other wildlife.
Tucker said because the current administration seems fixated on money over conservation, she hopes that when people visit the park this summer, they will at least hold themselves accountable, showing respect for the land and its inhabitants.
“Clean up after yourself, maybe clean up after one another, and don’t take anything home with you that you didn’t bring,” Tucker said when asked what she’d say to the park’s visitors. “Enjoy that experience, and [you’re] welcome to come back again.”
The scheme was introduced in 2024 to try and combat overtourism in peak monthsCredit: GettyThose who do not buy a ticket can be hit with a €300 fineCredit: Getty
Under the current system, day-trippers who book less than four days before their visit pay €10, while those who reserve more than four days in advance pay €5.
Visitors entering before 8.30am or after 4pm are exempt, as are residents, people born in Venice, students and workers.
Tourists staying overnight in hotels or rental accommodation also do not have to pay.
Tickets are purchased online and checked at key entry points, including the railway station.
Those caught without one can face fines of up to €300.
The city is also expanding the scheme, increasing the number of chargeable days from 54 to 60 this year.
Opponents argue the scheme has done little to reduce visitor numbers.
Official figures show average daily visitor numbers fell only slightly during the summer, from 16,676 in 2024 to 13,046 in 2025.
Venturini insists the goal is not to put a cap on tourism altogether.
He said: “We need to keep an eye on the total number of visitors to Venice, but we do not want to put a maximum limit on tourists, so instead we can aim to get them to spread out and avoid coming on those days when we face the prospect of 80,000 visitors.
“That means getting the Italian parliament to approve higher prices, let’s say €30 or €50.
“That will cover the cost of services for tourists, including removing the growing amount of rubbish, but we could also offer ticket holders discounts for museums.”
The idea of charging visitors even more has provoked strong opposition.
Critics argue that if Venice is serious about reducing overcrowding, it should instead focus on limiting the number of properties being rented out through Airbnb.
Former mayor Massimo Cacciari said: “There is no other Italian or European city that you have to buy a ticket to enter, as if it were a museum.
“This is barbarous, uncivil and in my opinion anti-constitutional.”
Constitutional expert Ludovico Mazzarolli also told Corriere della Sera that a €50 entry fee could conflict with the Italian Constitution’s principle of free movement within the country.
Venice is not the only city trying to manage surging visitor numbers.
The Leeds winger’s 25 tries put him nine clear of the next best, Leigh’s Josh Charnley on 16.
In addition to leaving his mark on the game he left plenty on Warrington’s bruised defence, including Josh Thewlis who felt the full force of Sivo as the winger powered past him to score his second.
When Warrington took two points early in the piece, Ewan Irwin kicking the goal, it was presumably in the belief this could have been a tight affair.
But two tries in two minutes from Sivo and Brodie Croft, who has signed a three-year deal with Warrington starting next season, blew that plan out of the water and a third eight minutes later, Harry Newman gathering a high kick as Thewlis hesitated, really put the visitors in command.
Warrington were perhaps a touch unlucky that the Newman try stood with the Leeds centre looking a shade in front of the kicker when the ball went up but had that gone in their favour it would not have made much difference to the result.
Jake Connor kicked two of the conversions to give Leeds a 16-2 half-time lead and the direction of the game was set.
Miller, returning to the side after a three-match suspension was excellent, pulling the strings at full-back.
It was the Australian whose pass put in Chris Hankinson just three minutes after the restart and he then engineered a penalty when blocked by James Bentley two minutes later which Connor converted.
After Sivo secured his hat-trick shortly before the hour, Warrington staged a belated comeback in the final 20 minutes.
Matty Ashton finished off a nice move to give the home side their only try six minutes from time but it was too little too late and proved just a momentary pause in the Leeds celebrations.
