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Volatile weather predicted after storms on Saturday, with a man in his 20s struck by lightning while swimming on NSW Central CoastGet our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcastDangerous and severe “supercell” thunderstorms with the potential for giant hail and destructive winds were forecast for parts of New South Wales on Sunday, as volatile weather continued in the eastern states over the weekend.Storms dumped heavy rain across large parts of northern and eastern NSW and much of Queensland on Saturday, with strong winds recorded up to 98km/h in Goulburn and rainfall totals of between 30mm and 50mm in the Coffs Harbour area. Continue reading...

Deputy prime minister says change would be a massive step but ‘deserves proper consideration and scrutiny’ The government has said it will consider calls to change the age of consent after a woman waived her right to anonymity to publicly claim she was raped by Russell Brand as a 16-year-old schoolgirl.Mia Latter, now 37, alleged she had been orally raped by the jailed comedian when she was a teenager and he was 30 years old. Continue reading...

Trump has alternated between threats of escalating the war with new strikes and winding down hostilities, and current and former officials say he does not appear to have made up his mind about how to resolve the unpopular conflict

According to Elon Musk, several of these arrangements depended heavily on Huang's personal relationships with suppliers rather than formal contracts. His exit, he suggested, could put those deals at risk.

Filipino entry, pop and rap song Sobra-Sobra, takes 19-year-old to victory at grand final in BangkokCarmelle Collado has won the first Eurovision song contest Asia, taking the Philippines’ entry, Sobra-Sobra, to victory in Bangkok on Saturday night, at the first regional edition of the contest to be staged outside Europe.Eleven countries competed at the One Bangkok Forum in central Bangkok, and the show ran for two and a half hours including advertising. Continue reading...

Parliamentarians across factional lines share concerns about policy that legal expert says ‘paints the imprisonment of children as therapeutic’Get our daily political email, free app or daily news podcastUntil December last year, Meena Singh was Victoria’s commissioner for Aboriginal children and young people, a role in which she advocated for some of the state’s most vulnerable children.She had held the role since 2022. In all that time, she says, nobody from the Victorian government had approached her with a proposal like the one the Victorian premier, Ben Carroll, announced last week: a $204m “tough love” plan to send children who commit low- and mid-level offences to secure facilities, including the former Malmsbury youth justice centre, for schooling, drug and alcohol treatment and to learn life skills. Continue reading...

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is racing to spark a war with Iran and pull the United States into it before he loses power, according to a former Israeli leader and geopolitical expert Trita Parsi.Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak wrote in Haaretz that Netanyahu, a close ally of President Donald Trump, plans to “carry out a blatant military provocation in order to force Iran to respond on a scale triggering a war that would disrupt or prevent the establishment of a new government.”“For months I have warned publicly that the prime minister is behaving like a wounded animal and that he will not hesitate to disrupt the election, refuse to recognize their results or even launch a war of deception in order to ensure his political survival,” Barak wrote.Netanyahu’s right-wing bloc fell short of a majority in Israel’s Oct. 27 election. Israeli President Isaac Herzog tasked opposition leader Gadi Eisenkot with forming a government Nov. 7, giving him 28 days with a possible 14-day extension.Parsi, co-founder and executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, wrote Saturday that Netanyahu may have no more than three to four weeks to achieve his “lifelong dream” of getting the U.S. to bomb Iran, something he’s pressed for since at least the 1990s.“He has never been closer to this goal, but time is running out,” Parsi wrote.Parsi said former and current Israeli officials, from Avigdor Lieberman to Barak, are sounding the same alarm. He wrote that Netanyahu tried to provoke Iran by violating its airspace the weekend before the election. That same weekend, according to Barak, “a covert operation in Iran that could have ignited a war was thwarted at the last minute.”Netanyahu has been calling Trump “every day” to urge him to resume the war, a person briefed on the discussions recently told the Financial Times. War skeptics inside the White House have been scrambling to push back.Trump hasn’t ruled out war but is hesitating, Parsi wrote. Instead, he has opted to keep an economic blockade on Iran in place for a few more weeks.“But a few more weeks is exactly what Netanyahu does not have,” Parsi wrote.

Nobel Peace Prize laureate Rigoberta Menchú Tum attended the ritual.