Pope Leo XIV chosen as new leader of Catholic Church
New Caledonia's giant geckos are the latest sensation in the global pet trade but conservationists warn their social media-fuelled popularity is putting the endangered species at risk.
A human rights advocate describes new amendments to Vanuatu's constitution defining only males and females as childish.
Since its inception in 2020 Tonga's national airline has been at the centre of controversies with alleged mismanagement and ongoing financial issues.
Landowner and member of parliament for the Ioro constituency where the Panguna mines are located, Theonila Roka Matbob says Rio Tinto provided no clear commitments in their most recent AGM.
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News.com.au
6 hours ago
- News.com.au
US missile in Australia sparks fierce China response
China has accused Australia of being a 'tool' after hosting a secret prototype United States hypersonic missile system during recent war-games. 'Australia has not only already been a tool of the US Indo-Pacific strategy, but is increasingly becoming both a strategic and tactical weapon for Washington across multiple aspects,' East China Normal University Australia analyst Chen Hong told the Beijing-controlled South China Morning Post. The accusation comes after the US Army deployed its experimental new Dark Eagle Long Range Hypersonic Weapon outside the continental US for the first time. Two mobile missile launchers were carried by heavy lift aircraft to the Northern Territory and then moved to undisclosed locations by road as part of Exercise Talisman Sabre 2025 manoeuvres in recent weeks. Shanghai Fudan University strategist Xin Qiang told the SCMP the missile's deployment to the multinational exercise was a 'flexing of military muscle'. 'I think China will certainly maintain a high level of alertness and attention to this,' Mr Xin said. 'The military and security rivalry or competition between China and the US in the Indo-Pacific is likely to further intensify.' Australia's Talisman Sabre exercise is a biennial event. This year, it drew together 40,000 soldiers, sailors and aircrew from 19 nations in a range of exercises designed to improve interoperability and military preparedness. It kicked off on July 13, while Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was visiting China. 'Mines bigger than yours' Retired People's Liberation Army senior colonel and prolific media commentator Zhou Bo told the SCMP that the symbolic presence of the new Dark Eagle LRHW missile in Australia had not been missed by Beijing. The missile is capable of reaching Chinese-occupied territory from the Northern Territory. A June US Congressional Research Service report published last month says the truck-trailer-based system has a range of 2800km and can travel faster than Mach 5 (five times the speed of sound, or 6170km/h). That means it could reach Beijing's illegal South China Sea island fortresses from Australia in less than 30 minutes. But Mr Zhou, now part of Tsinghua University's Centre for International Security and Strategy, dismissed the missile's significance. He told the SCMP that China has had better hypersonic missiles for longer. 'In terms of weapons comparison, it's not a case of them having something we don't,' he said. 'What we have may even be better than theirs.' He pointed to the DF-17 hypersonic missile as having similar performance to the Dark Eagle. It has been in service since 2019. Mr Zhou added that the newer DF-27 could fly three times as far. Dark Eagle is expected to formally enter US Army service by the end of this year. It's one of the first operational outcomes of a decades-long race to catch up with Beijing's and Russia's hypersonic advances. A US Army Dark Eagle unit, called a battery, is made up of four launchers carrying a total of eight missiles. These are supported by command and engineering vehicles. The high speed of the missiles is hoped to make them capable of evading the heavy missile, gun and laser defences on China's island fortress stepping stones between Vietnam and the Philippines. Dark Eagle is already three years late after a series of cost blowouts, testing delays and technical difficulties. But the US Army said in a recent press release that the Talisman Sabre deployment had 'validated' its capabilities, including that of communicating with its command centre while travelling over the horizon at hypersonic speeds. 'The Dark Eagle is truly ready to go,' Dark Eagle Bravo Battery commander Captain Jennifer Lee said in an army statement. Wedge diplomacy The deployment of Dark Eagle to Australia during the Prime Minister's visit to Beijing has drawn the Chinese Communist Party's ire. 'What makes us alert and concerned is that there seems to be an increasingly evident rift or divergence between Canberra's diplomatic and military spheres,' Mr Chen told the SCMP. The Albanese Government says it is pursuing a policy of engagement with China, while at the same time addressing increasing security tensions in South East Asia. 'I'm afraid that … the main intention of the US (is) to exert a certain deterrence against China, to demonstrate the unity and interoperability of its alliances, as well as the credibility of its stated security commitment to the region – to project this posture and attitude,' Mr Xin said. Several participants in the Talisman Sabre exercise are concerned for their own security in the face of Beijing's aggressive territorial claims. Japan is experiencing increasingly frequent Chinese military and civil incursions into the waters around its Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea. And the Philippines is engaged in an almost daily struggle to maintain its sovereignty and access to parts of the Spratly Islands, a few hundred kilometres off its shores. And Australia, which has been part of an international policing effort in the South China Sea since the end of World War II, has had several dangerous encounters with Chinese aircraft and warships there in recent years. Beijing claims ownership of the entire East and South China Seas, despite UN treaties dividing the waters according to agreed formulas between their coastal states. China now has the world's largest navy, a modern and growing air force, and an arsenal of advanced missiles designed to attack US aircraft carrier battle groups. In response, the US has been responding to calls by its allies – Japan, the Philippines and Australia – to strengthen its own defensive posture along what is dubbed the First Island Chain. This string of islands between Japan and Papua New Guinea is what Beijing has declared to be its primary sphere of influence. Beijing reacted angrily earlier this year when the Philippines invited US anti-ship missile batteries to exercise on its shores. Japan's plans to buy similar missiles have also been met with ire. It will conduct a joint war game with the US in September, designed to test allied abilities to defend its remote Sakishima Islands from air and sea attack.
Sky News AU
13 hours ago
- Sky News AU
Nationals Senator Matt Canavan mocks green crusade of Australia's largest aluminium smelter which resulted in likely collapse of mammoth facility
Nationals Senator Matt Canavan has mocked the green energy crusade of Rio Tinto-owned Tomago aluminium smelting facility, which has now forced it to its knees. In early June Rio Tinto-owned Tomago facility, Australia's biggest aluminium producer, was seeking billions of dollars in public funds to avert collapse as energy costs plagued local industry. The NSW government confirmed it was in discussions to stave off the potential collapse of the mammoth smelter as it struggled with crippling power bills and poor availability of renewable energy, with Mr Minns stressing the facility was a strategically important asset for both the state and the country. However, Tomago smelter workers were informed on Monday that the facility would be forced to close its doors in 2028 or sooner unless a new affordable energy contract was negotiated with the assistance of both the state and federal governments. Queensland Nationals Senator Matt Canavan posted a side-by-side panel to X of a 2021 report outlining Tomago's push to switch to a predominantly renewable based power supply by 2029, and the Newcastle Herald's article citing the facilities imminent failure with the caption, 'how it started … how it is going.' In a statement to Mr Canavan railed against the Albanese government's renewable energy agenda and said the policy was driving the nation's industrial and manufacturing base into the ground. 'Soaring power prices from Labor's failing net zero ideology is bringing Australian manufacturing to its knees,' Senator Canavan said. He said that unless energy prices eased, Tomago would join a long list of large-scale industrial facilities nationwide that would shut down for good. 'Tomago, our nation's largest aluminium smelter, joins manufacturers from right around the nation in shutting unless energy costs come down,' Senator Canavan said. 'Net zero is just not working." The producer is located north of Newcastle, uses about 10 per cent of NSW's power supply and makes about 37 per cent of Australia's primary aluminium. The collapse of the massive company could lead to more than 1,000 people losing their jobs, while 5,000 indirect workers could also suffer as a result. Smelter workers were told by management on Monday that the facilities closure was not a matter of 'if, but when' due to sharp power price rises, according to the Newcastle Herald. The owners of the facility - the smelter is also part owned by CSR and Hydro Aluminium - have been conducting direct negotiations with NSW Premier Chris Minns and federal authorities to secure a lifeline believed to be in the billions, with the bailout set to be more complex than simply a direct government subsidy. Rio Tinto's Chief Executive Jakob Stausholm earlier this year flagged concerns about the producer's electricity costs, as he warned power price contracts beyond 2028 would render Tomago unviable. Premier Minns said in early June that it was 'difficult to speculate about what next steps are' with the NSW government facing calls from unions and industry groups to safeguard the facility's future. However, the Albanese government has pushed ahead with its plan to move the country's $5.1 billion aluminium industry onto a renewable energy grid to meet its target of lowering emissions by 43 per cent by 2030. In January the Prime Minister pledged to provide $2 billion in production taxation credits for Australia's four largest aluminium smelters to aid in the renewable energy transition.
ABC News
17 hours ago
- ABC News
Calls for independent investigation after volunteer medic killed with hands up in Syria
Syrian rights activists renewed their calls for an independent investigation into violence last month after footage emerged of government forces killing a volunteer medic in a hospital. The week of bloodshed began on July 13 with clashes between local Druze fighters and Bedouin tribes in the Druze-majority Sweida province. Syrian authorities have said their forces intervened to stop the clashes, but witnesses, Druze factions and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHT) have accused them of siding with the Bedouin and committing abuses against the Druze, including executions. Brutal videos have previously circulated on social media, with some appearing to show civilians killed at the hands of armed men in military or security forces uniforms. Local news outlet Suwayda 24 on Sunday published what it said was surveillance footage from the main hospital in Sweida city on July 16, showing a group of people who appear to be staff crouched on the floor in a corridor. Several armed men are seen standing in front of the group, most wearing military garb and one dressed in an interior ministry uniform. A brief scuffle breaks out with a man who Suwayda 24 identified as "one of the volunteers with the medical team" at the hospital. The forces then shoot the man, whose body is dragged off, leaving a smear of blood. Syrian authorities did not immediately respond to a request for comment. One 30-year-old man who appears in the video told AFP by telephone that he had responded to the hospital's call for volunteers and confirmed that "the incident occurred on July 16". A doctor at the hospital, speaking on condition of anonymity, also confirmed to AFP that the video was taken inside the facility. The SOHT also published the footage, calling it a "shocking field execution" carried out by "members of the defence and interior ministries". It urged accountability and "an independent, impartial international commission of inquiry" into the violence in Sweida. Fadel Abdul Ghany, head of the Syrian Network for Human Rights, urged authorities to act immediately and called on an existing UN body tasked with looking into rights abuses in Syria to "investigate the violations committed by all parties involved in Sweida". In a statement on X, he said a committee announced by the authorities last month to investigate the Sweida violence "lacks credibility". Mohammad al-Abdallah, executive director of the Syria Justice and Accountability Centre, said UN investigators "must enter Sweida immediately", noting medical personnel should be protected under international law. Others also took to social media to call for accountability, including Samih Choukaer, a prominent Syrian Druze musician who strongly opposed now-ousted ruler Bashar al-Assad. "In a country that respects itself, every video documenting these crimes is in itself enough to bring down a government," he wrote. AFP
