General News

It actually happened. The Liberals and Nationals are breaking up, ending a decades-long partnership of political convenience that has been necessary for conservatives to hold power. The Nationals leader, David Littleproud, informed the Liberal leader, Sussan Ley, mid-morning on Tuesday that the country party wouldn’t sign a new coalition agreement. The first and obvious question…

The “very brutal and distressing” shooting of a young plumber in his driveway has all the hallmarks of a targeted hit, New South Wales police say. Two people are on the run after the shooting in Condell Park, in Sydney’s south-west, on Monday night, that left the 23-year-old man dead. CCTV shows the victim returning…

The United Nations special rapporteur on torture has urged Queensland’s parliament to vote down the government’s headline youth crime legislation, calling it “incompatible with basic child rights”. The Liberal National government ran on a slogan of “adult crime, adult time” at last October’s election. It passed legislation to sentence children convicted of 13 offences the…

Columbia University student Mohsen Mahdawi, released just over two weeks ago from federal detention, crossed the graduation stage on Monday to cheers from his fellow graduates. The Palestinian activist was arrested by immigration authorities in Colchester, Vermont, while attending a naturalization interview. He was detained and ordered to be deported by the Trump administration on…

The spotted lanternfly, a leaf-hopping invasive pest first detected in the US a decade ago, has steadily spread across the East coast and into the midwest with little getting in its way. But now researchers are deploying a new weapon to slow its advance: specially trained dogs with the ability to sniff out the winged…

The murder of a Colombian model and influencer, now being investigated as a possible femicide, has triggered widespread outrage and renewed criticism of the country’s failure to protect women. María José Estupiñán, a 22-year-old student, model and influencer from the north-eastern city of Cúcuta, was killed on 15 May. According to the police, the suspect…

French plans to build a maximum-security prison wing for drug traffickers and Islamic militants near a former penal colony in French Guiana have sparked an outcry among residents and local officials. The wing would form part of a $450m (£337m) prison announced in 2017 that is expected to be completed by 2028 and hold 500…

A Microsoft employee disrupted a keynote speech by the company’s chief executive with a pro-Palestinian protest at the company’s annual developer conference on Monday. Joe Lopez, a Microsoft firmware engineer who worked on parts of the company’s cloud-computing platform, Azure, was escorted out the Build conference by security nearly immediately after he confronted Satya Nadella….

The second week of Sean “Diddy” Combs’s racketeering conspiracy and sex-trafficking trial began on Monday morning with the singer Dawn Richard returning to the witness stand. Combs, 55, is facing charges of sex-trafficking, racketeering conspiracy, and transportation to engage in prostitution. He was arrested in September 2024 and has pleaded not guilty to all of…

News that the US has lost its last triple-A credit rating and fresh concern over the US federal government’s burgeoning debt pile unnerved markets on Monday, with long-term borrowing costs rising and stocks struggling. Credit ratings agency Moody’s dealt a blow to Washington on Friday when it stripped the US of its top-notch rating, downgrading…