Jaishankar on US ties: Lack of understanding on India's cross-border terror concerns can impact relations

• Former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett warned on September 29 that mass draft evasion and the potential collapse of the Israel Defense Forces are the greatest dangers facing the country. • The Israel Defense Forces reported that its troops physically prevented harm to a Palestinian family during a settler riot in the West Bank.

• Interconnected conflicts are expanding on both sides of the Red Sea while the United States continues to provide inconsistent policy signals. • The African Union estimates that the conflict leading to the 2022 Pretoria Agreement resulted in approximately 600,000 deaths.

• UN Secretary-General António Guterres condemned a Tuesday airstrike that reportedly killed at least 50 people at a market in Myanmar’s Rakhine state. • The UN humanitarian office reported that Israeli fire hit near humanitarian convoys and UN facilities in Gaza several times in recent days.

Former police officer has pleaded not guilty to murdering Jesse Baird and Luke Davies in early 2024Warning: graphic contentFollow our Australia news live blog for latest updatesGet our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcastWarning: graphic contentA hole in a door and a bullet bent out of shape: crime scene photos shown to a jury paint a harrowing picture of Jesse Baird and Luke Davies’ final moments. Continue reading...

Exeter museum to host DJ’s ‘collaboration’ with woodland fungi and artist’s map of her own body’s mycobiomeFor one of the installations, a musician spent hours in woodland “collaborating” with fungi to create a soundscape inspired by the electricity they emit.Another is a kinetic sculpture of an extinct fungus that honours Beatrix Potter not for her tales of mischievous rabbits but for her lesser-known skills as a mycologist – a fungi expert. Continue reading...

Figure cited by minister highlights trade-offs Kyiv faces as it tries to keep normal life moving amid Russian strikesMissile alerts are costing Ukraine an estimated $45m (£34m) for every hour they bring business to a halt, according to the country’s economy minister, as Kyiv searches for ways to keep the economy running under an intensifying Russian bombardment.Russia has increasingly targeted the infrastructure underpinning Ukraine’s economy, striking industrial sites, warehouses, logistics hubs and datacentres in what Oleksandr Kravchenko, the minister for economy and the environment, described as an effort to “destroy pretty much the entire economy”. Continue reading...

National Trust says latest figures encouraging – with numbers of birds on the rise – but work still to be doneEngland’s most important tern colonies are showing signs of recovery after being hit by years of bird flu, flooding and increasingly unpredictable weather, new figures from the National Trust reveal.The trust reported record numbers of little terns at Long Nanny in Northumberland, one of the UK’s most important breeding sites for what is the country’s second-rarest breeding seabird. Continue reading...

Australian Transport Safety Bureau investigating staffing gaps as key factor in four incidents in July and AugustFollow our Australia news live blog for latest updatesGet our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcastModelling by Sydney airport’s air traffic control operators predicted elevated fatigue risks for staff at the time of a series of major safety incidents, with a review identifying runway incursions and near misses at 20% above national averages.Staffing gaps at Sydney airport are being investigated as a key factor in four incidents in July and August this year, according to the investigating authority, the Australian Transport Safety Bureau [ATSB]. Continue reading...

The 74-year-old says he is leaving to spend more time with his family, including his six grandchildrenFinancial journalist Alan Kohler, a familiar face on the ABC’s 7pm news bulletin, will retire in December after three decades as the public broadcaster’s highly-respected financial guru.Now 74, Kohler has been presenting finance, complete with idiosyncratic graphs, on the ABC for almost a quarter of a century, signing off each evening since 2002 with the catchphrase: “And that’s finance”. Continue reading...

A record 157,957 new EVs were sold nationally between January and June, according to the Electric Vehicle CouncilFollow our Australia news live blog for latest updatesGet our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcastAustralians are buying electric vehicles at record levels, with sales more than doubling year on year and occurring at a rate equivalent to one EV sold every 100 seconds.A record 157,957 EV sales occurred between January and June – an 117% increase on the same period last year, according to a new report released by the Electric Vehicle Council. Continue reading...

Group of officers known as ‘riders’ in 2000s prompted longest arrangement of its kind in US historyAfter 23 years, a district judge has released the Oakland police department (OPD) from federal oversight, marking the end of the longest arrangement of this kind in US history.In the early 2000s, a group of police officers known as the “riders” were exposed for offenses like planting evidence, falsifying reports and using excessive force against primarily young Black men. These actions led victims to file more than 100 civil lawsuits against the department. In 2003, as a part of the settlement of these cases, OPD was put on a federal court-ordered reform program. Continue reading...