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BBC News. Hello, I'm Jerry Smit.

Polls are closing in eastern Australia in the country's closely fought general election. Both party leaders, the center-right Liberal Prime Minister Scott Morrison and his rival Bill Shorten from the opposition Labor Party were out early at polling booths. Voting is mandatory in Australia as Howard Griffiths explains climate change has been voters' main concern. Climate change hasn't just been the key issue here. It's been really the dominant issue of the campaign. Some people talking about a kind of real gear change in how Australia thinks about that issue. Perhaps maybe in the wake of the hottest summer on record，bush fires in places that haven't experienced them before, floods and extreme weather in places that haven't experienced them before. So whereas in the last election three years ago, only nine percent of voters said that was their number one issue that jumped up to twenty-nine percent above the economy.

Reports in the Austrian press suggest the governing coalition could be on the brink of collapse after a video emerged to the country's far-right Vice Chancellor, apparently promising public contracts in exchange for campaign support. The footage was secretly filmed shortly before the Austrian election in 2017. The Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz is expected to make a statement later today.

A court in Pakistan has dismissed a case against a well-known journalist Shahzeb Jillani for lack of evidence. Mr. Jillani face charges of cyber terrorism, hate speech and defamation. Jill McGivering reports. The charges against Shahzeb Jillani, who has previously worked for the BBC, related to two television reports about enforced disappearances and civil military relations and a tweet about a military intelligence officer. The most serious charge, cyber terrorism carries a prison sentence of up to fourteen years that was recently dropped in favor of the lesser charge of defamation. The judge will deliver a written judgment on Monday, but set in court that the case was dismissed because of lack of evidence. Campaigners have expressed concern that stringent cyber terrorism laws are being misused to stifle government critics.

The Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has welcomed what he said was the beginning of talks with the opposition in Norway after months of confrontation. Representatives of the two sides are in Oslo, signalling a fresh approach to resolving a political crisis that escalated last month after the opposition leader Juan Guido called on the Venezuelan military to oust Mr. Maduro. His call went unheeded.

Archaeologists in eastern England have described a Roman coin on earth during road works as an artifact of incredible rarity. The coin found in a ditch at a small Roman farmstead depicts the emperor Ulpius Cornelius Laelianus. He usurped the throne in 269 AD and briefly ruled a breakaway empire.

BBC news.