‘Uncertain times’: Albanese warns months ahead ‘may not be easy’ in rare address to nation about Middle East crisis

Actor and comedian known for voicing Gene Belcher, as well as roles in Flight of the Conchords and Archer, has suffered serious injuriesBob’s Burgers voice actor and comedian Eugene Mirman has suffered serious injuries after crashing his car into a toll plaza in New Hampshire, before he was pulled from the fiery wreckage by a state trooper assigned to protect the state’s governor.The crash happened just before noon Tuesday when a northbound electric vehicle struck the Bedford toll plaza and caught fire, New Hampshire state police said. Republican governor Kelly Ayotte and her security detail came upon the crash soon after, and a trooper and two others pulled Mirman from the burning car through a window, said New Hampshire state police colonel, Mark Hall. Continue reading...

Lawyers for accused had argued names of family members should be suppressed due to fears for their mental and physical safetyFollow our Australia news live blog for latest updatesGet our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcastThe alleged Bondi attacker has been denied a suppression order over his family member’s names and home and work addresses after a collective of media organisations won a challenge against the bid.In the Downing Centre local court on Thursday, judge Hugh Donnelly decided to deny the request for a 40-year suppression order, ending an interim suppression order that was granted for Naveed Akram’s mother, brother and sister in early March which banned the publication of their names and addresses. Continue reading...

President is expected to offer a timeline for end of the war, and speak about his threat to withdraw the US from Nato as he faces falling poll numbers and global energy crisisTrump says he is ‘absolutely’ considering withdrawing US from Nato Israel hits Iran with waves of attacks and says it killed top Hezbollah commanderWelcome to our continuing coverage of the crisis in the Middle East, as Donald Trump prepares to address America for the first time since the US-Israel war on Iran was launched.The president will deliver the prime-time speech at 9pm ET from the White House.Iran has rejected Donald Trump’s claim that its leadership asked for a ceasefire, calling the US president’s statement “false” and “baseless”. Trump made the claim in a post on Truth Social, which said: “Iran’s New Regime President, much less Radicalized and far more intelligent than his predecessors, has just asked the United States of America for a CEASEFIRE! We will consider when Hormuz Strait is open, free, and clear. Until then, we are blasting Iran into oblivion or, as they say, back to the Stone Ages!!!”Trump also said he is “absolutely” considering withdrawing the US from Nato, warning that the matter was “beyond reconsideration” after the refusal of US allies to join the US-Israeli war against Iran. The president’s threats, his most determined to date, have left the alliance facing its worst crisis in its 77-year history, a former US ambassador has said. Here’s our story.Meanwhile, in an open letter to the American people, Iran’s president Masoud Pezeshkian said relations between Washington and Tehran were “misunderstood” and that Iran was not an aggressor. The Iranian “harbor no enmity toward other nations, including the people of America, Europe, or neighbouring countries,” he said, adding that portrayals of Iran as a security threat were inaccurate, and Tehran was acting in self-defence – not aggression.In Tehran, Kamal Kharazi, a top foreign policy official and former Iranian foreign minister, has been severely injured in an airstrike on his home in the Iranian capital. His wife was reportedly killed in the attack. Kharazi, considered a moderate politician and veteran policy expert, also served as an adviser to the assassinated former supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Reports suggest his targeting is being viewed as an attempt to derail diplomacy. Continue reading...

Talks, convened by the UK, will examine ‘all viable diplomatic and political measures’ to get critical waterway openFollow our Australia news live blog for latest updatesGet our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcastAustralia will join talks with 35 nations, convened by the United Kingdom, to explore ways to reopen the strait of Hormuz, the government confirmed on Thursday.The UK prime minister, Keir Starmer, announced the meeting on Wednesday, which will exclude the United States, to discuss “all viable diplomatic and political measures” to secure the waterway and restore freedom of navigation. The meeting is expected to take place at about 10pm AEDT on Thursday. Continue reading...

Nurul Amin Shah, 56, who was visually impaired, was left outside Buffalo Tim Hortons on cold night and later diedAuthorities have ruled that the death of Nurul Amin Shah, a 56-year-old Rohingya refugee from Myanmar who was left by immigration agents at a restaurant in Buffalo, was a homicide.Shah, who was visually impaired, died on 24 February, five days after US Border Patrol agents dropped him off in the parking lot of a Tim Hortons on a cold winter night without notifying his family or attorney. Continue reading...

The quake was at a shallow depth of 10km in the Northern Molucca Sea region, the USGS saidA magnitude 7.8 earthquake has struck the Northern Molucca Sea region in Indonesia, the United States Geological Survey said.The quake on Thursday was at a shallow depth of 10km (6.21 miles), it said. Continue reading...

Jayson Joseph Michaels allegedly planned attack on police headquarters, Parliament House and mosquesFollow our Australia news live blog for latest updatesGet our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcastA man accused of plotting a mass casualty terror attack targeting public buildings and places of worship believed his assault would be worse than the Bondi beach mass shootings, a court has heard.Jayson Joseph Michaels detailed his alleged plan for a violent assault on Western Australia police headquarters, WA Parliament House and mosques in a diary, the Perth magistrates court was told during a failed bid for bail on Wednesday. Continue reading...

Measure that would fund homeland security but exclude money for ICE could conclude lengthy funding lapseAn end to the partial shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) may be in sight, after Congress’s Republican leaders on Wednesday agreed to advance legislation that would fund the majority of the agency’s operations, with the exception of those involved in immigration enforcement.The pact may conclude the longest such funding lapse in US history, which last month caused security lines to stretch for hours at some airports as employees of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), a subagency of DHS, quit their jobs or called out of work after going weeks without pay. Continue reading...

Opposition leader calls for the prime minister to give more details about the fuel crisisGet our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcastGood morning and welcome to our live news blog. I’m Martin Farrer with the best of the breaking stories before Natasha May takes the helm.Anthony Albanese used a rare address to the nation to attempt to allay public fears over dwindling fuel supplies, vowing to keep petrol prices down by shoring up international supplies and ramping up local production. Continue reading...

Most justices seemed skeptical of the administration’s argument, despite Trump’s unprecedented appearanceIt was a surreal morning at the US supreme court.For more than two hours, the nation’s highest court considered arguments over whether Donald Trump – via an executive order – could tear down an idea that has been fundamental to the story and trajectory of the United States: that almost anyone born on US soil is an US citizen. Continue reading...

Nearly 2,000 internal files were briefly leaked after ‘human error’, raising fresh security questions at the AI companyAnthropic accidentally released part of the internal source code for its AI-powered coding assistant Claude Code due to “human error”, the company said on Tuesday.An internal-use file mistakenly included in a software update pointed to an archive containing nearly 2,000 files and 500,000 lines of code, which were quickly copied to developer platform GitHub. A post on X sharing a link to the leaked code had more than 29m views early on Wednesday, and a rewritten version of the source code quickly became GitHub’s fastest-ever downloaded repository. Anthropic issued copyright takedown requests to try to contain the code’s spread. Within the code, users spotted blueprints for a Tamagotchi-esque coding assistant and an always-on AI agent, per the Verge. Continue reading...