A fire that broke out on a Virgin Australia flight from Sydney to Hobart is believed to have been caused by a power bank in a passenger’s carry-on luggage, prompting the airline to consider changes to its battery policy.
The Virgin flight VA1528 was making its descent into Hobart on Monday when the fire started in an overhead locker, a spokesperson for the airline said.
The Piano Man singer, who announced in May he’d been diagnosed with the neurological condition normal pressure hydrocephalus, has spoken about its effects
Billy Joel has opened up about his health, after cancelling his scheduled concerts mid-tour in May. At the time, the 76-year-old singer announced that he’d been diagnosed with normal pressure hydrocephalus (NPH).
Speaking to Bill Maher on his Club Random podcast this week, Joel said he felt “good”.
Trump’s border tsar vows to ‘flood the zone’ with Ice officers, 700 marines redeployed and president’s megabill estimated to pile $3.4tn on to national debt. Key US politics stories from Monday 21 July
The Trump administration is targeting US sanctuary cities in the next phase of its deportation drive, after an off-duty law enforcement officer was allegedly shot in New York City by an undocumented person with a criminal record.
Tom Homan, Donald Trump’s hardline border tsar, vowed to “flood the zone” with Immigration, Customs and Enforcement (Ice) agents, saying: “Every sanctuary city is unsafe. Sanctuary cities are sanctuaries for criminals and President Trump’s not going to tolerate it.”
Homan vows to escalate Ice operations after off-duty officer allegedly shot by undocumented person in New York City
The Trump administration is targeting sanctuary cities in the next phase of its deportation drive after labelling them “sanctuaries for criminals” following the shooting of an off-duty law enforcement officer in New York City, allegedly by an undocumented person with a criminal record.
Tom Homan, Donald Trump’s hardline border czar, vowed to “flood the zone” with Immigration, Customs and Enforcement (Ice) agents in an all-out bid to overcome the lack of cooperation he said the government faced from Democrat-run municipalities in its quest to arrest and detain undocumented people.
The White House confirmed that Trump called Netanyahu to ‘rectify’ the situation after ongoing clashes in the city of Sweida
Donald Trump was “caught off guard” by Israeli strikes on Syria last week, the White House has said, adding that the US president called Benjamin Netanyahu to “rectify” the situation.
Israel launched strikes on the capital Damascus and the southern Druze-majority city of Sweida last week, saying it aimed to put pressure on the Syrian government to withdraw its troops from the region amid ongoing clashes there.
The South Australian premier has said the state’s algal bloom catastrophe, which has caused mass deaths among hundreds of marine species, should be described as a natural disaster despite the Albanese government declining to do so a day earlier.
Speaking to the ABC’s News Breakfast program, Peter Malinauskas warned “politicians can do themselves a disservice when they get caught up in technicalities”.
Transparency International condemns ‘massive’ pressure on NABU while G7 ambassadors express ‘serious concerns’. What we know on day 1,245
Ukrainian security services arrested officials from the country’s main anti-corruption agency, the NABU, on Monday and conducted dozens of searches in a crackdown that the agency said went too far and had effectively shut down its entire mission. The SBU said it had arrested one of the officials as a suspected Russian spy and others for alleged ties to a banned party. But NABU, which has embarrassed senior government officials with corruption allegations, said the “vast majority” of cases involved unrelated allegations such as years-old traffic accidents.
Anti-corruption watchdog Transparency International said the searches conducted without court orders showed that authorities were exerting “massive pressure” on Ukraine’s corruption fighters. Ambassadors of G7 nations in Kyiv issued a statement saying they had “serious concerns and intend to discuss these developments with government leaders”. Anti-corruption campaigners have been alarmed since Vitaliy Shabunin, a top anti-corruption activist, was charged earlier this month with fraud and evading military service. Volodymy Zelenskyy’s office denies that prosecutions in Ukraine are politically motivated.
Russia and Ukraine will hold new peace talks on Wednesday in Istanbul, said Zelenskyy, the Ukrainian president. It is a follow-up to two earlier rounds that made little progress on ending their war. Zelenskyy has offered to hold direct talks with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin.
Russia has broadcast footage from inside a plant assembling the deadly attack drones it fires at civilian targets in Ukraine on a daily basis. The video was published on Sunday by Zvezda, a TV channel owned by the Russian defence ministry, showing workers with their faces blurred assembling jet-black triangle-shaped attack drones. “This is the world’s largest factory producing unmanned combat aerial vehicles, and the most secretive one,” said plant director Timur Shagivaleev, who has been sanctioned by the US. The plant is near the town of Yelabuga in the central Russian region of Tatarstan. Russia’s Geran drones are based on Iranian Shahed drones.
The French foreign minister, Jean-Noel Barrot, arrived in Kyiv on Monday for a surprise visit while rescuers were still sifting through the rubble from a massive drone and missile barrage against the Ukrainian capital. Six districts of Kyiv came under attack on Monday, sparking fires at a supermarket, multiple residential buildings and a nursery, authorities said. The entrance to a metro station where civilians were sheltering from the barrage was damaged. “This inhumane, cynical and cruel violence has no military purpose,” Barrot said.
Barrot visited the Chornobyl power plant, the site of the world’s worst nuclear accident. In February, Ukraine accused Russia of using an explosive drone to damage the confinement arch protecting the structure – prompting France to pledge €10m to help fix it. Barrot said Russia “targets energy infrastructure in defiance of international law, security and nuclear safety”.
Staff quarters attacked three times and four people detained, three temporarily, as IDF tanks enter Deir al-Balah
The World Health Organization (WHO) has said the Israeli military attacked its staff residence and main warehouse in Deir al-Balah on Monday, compromising its operations in Gaza.
The WHO said its staff residence was attacked three times, with airstrikes causing a fire and extensive damage, and endangering staff and their families, including children.
Federal judge rejects justice department recommendation that Brett Hankison be give no prison time
A federal judge on Monday sentenced an ex-Kentucky police officer to nearly three years in prison for using excessive force during the 2020 deadly raid on Breonna Taylor’s home, declining a justice department recommendation that he be given no prison time.
Brett Hankison, who fired 10 shots during the raid but didn’t hit anyone, was the only officer on the scene charged in the Black woman’s death. He is the first person sentenced to prison in the case that rocked the city of Louisville and spawned weeks of street protests over police brutality five years ago.
We’re collectively trying to decide through digital telepathy what makes it OK to ruin someone’s life. That is an impossible task
By now we’ve all seen the video: a couple locked in an intimate embrace at a Coldplay concert. Within milliseconds, the woman turns her face and the man ducks. The crowd gasps. Chris Martin quips: “Either they’re having an affair or they’re very shy.”
Within 24 hours, the internet had done what it does best: turned sleuth. The names of the pair were quickly revealed. LinkedIns found. Both were senior executives at a New York data firm, he, the CEO; she, the head of HR. Both married. With children.
Miski Omar is a writer and director based in Sydney
Adviser to former PM said Bush’s pursuit of regime change in Baghdad could also cause ‘regime change in London’
The stark terms in which the US was warned that invading Iraq without a second UN security council resolution could cost Tony Blair his premiership have been revealed in newly released documents.
Blair’s foreign policy adviser, David Manning, warned Condoleezza Rice, the then US national security adviser: “The US must not promote regime change in Baghdad at the price of regime change in London.”
State and city officials had called presence of marines provocative during protests against Ice raids in the city
The Pentagon’s chief spokesperson, Sean Parnell, confirmed to the Guardian on Monday that the entire deployment of 700 active-duty US marines is being withdrawn from Los Angeles more than a month after Donald Trump deployed them to the city against objections of local leaders.
The redeployment of the marines comes a week after 2,000 national guard troops were withdrawn from the city. The troops were sent to the city last month by the federal government after violence broke out on the fringes of protests against immigration enforcement sweeps in LA.
Ice hockey player Gary Kelly died at Ibiza Rocks Hotel as did fellow Scot Evan Thomson, who fell to his death on 7 July
An Ibiza hotel and music venue has cancelled a number of music events after the deaths of two British men on its premises in the space of two weeks.
Gary Kelly, 19, who was a professional ice hockey player for the Dundee Stars, died at the Ibiza Rocks hotel on Monday. His club paid tribute to the “hugely talented and charismatic individual” who “had a great future ahead of him”.
About 200,000 pages of surveillance records released despite objection from slain civil rights leader’s family
The Trump administration has released records of the FBI’s surveillance of Martin Luther King Jr, despite opposition from the slain Nobel laureate’s family and the civil rights group that he led until his 1968 assassination.
The release involves an estimated 200,000 pages of records that had been under a court-imposed seal since 1977, when the FBI first gathered the records and turned them over to the National Archives and Records Administration.
In three-hour Channel 5 talk, ex-president’s son says ‘fuck him’ of actor over op-ed calling on Joe Biden to step down
Hunter Biden has given a profanity-laced, three-hour interview to the US outlet Channel 5 that is remarkable for its no-holds attack on actor George Clooney, denial that he was the source of cocaine found in the White House and thoughts on why his father bombed in his debate with Donald Trump before dropping out of his presidential re-election run.
“Fuck him!” the younger Biden said of Clooney, whose remarkable New York Times opinion piece last July called on the Democratic party for which the actor is a financial donor to find a new presidential nominee.
Federal Reserve video says project is ‘modernization’ of two buildings that have not had major renovations since 1930s
The US Federal Reserve is pushing back against claims from the White House that it is undergoing extravagant renovations with a video tour showing the central bank’s ongoing construction.
The video, posted on the Fed’s website, includes captions explaining that the project is a “complete overhaul and modernization” of two buildings that have not had major renovations since the 1930s.
The president launched a broadside at Washington’s NFL team as well as the Cleveland Guardians. But the teams and their fans have largely moved on
Haven’t the fans of the Washington Commanders and Cleveland Guardians suffered enough?
For decades, each team had to endure the twin indignities of on-field futility and off-field scorn. Until last year, when they enjoyed a resurgence under rookie quarterback Jayden Daniels, the Washington NFL team had won exactly only one playoff game in the 21st century. Cleveland’s baseball team have been competitive this century, but they once went 41 years between playoff appearances (from 1954 to 1995) and came out on the losing end in the “whose drought will end?” World Series of 2016, in which the Chicago Cubs won the championship for the first time in 108 years at the expense of Cleveland, whose epoch without a World Series win now stands at 77 years.
Says United are ‘the team whose shirt I wore growing up’
Rashford to complete Barcelona loan on Wednesday
Bryan Mbeumo said he had joined “the club of my dreams” after completing a £71m move to Manchester United, where the Cameroon international has signed a five-year deal, from Brentford.
The 25-year-old was intent on moving to Old Trafford after learning of United’s interest at the start of the summer. United made a number of bids for the forward, who scored 20 Premier League goals last season, and eventually struck a deal worth an initial £65m with a further £6m in add-ons.
The England striker is finally grabbing the limelight, but her route to stardom began long before she became a Lioness…
Above all, she remembers the beach. She would wake every morning to a view of the sea, spend her days splashing in the surf, playing football on the sand with her brothers. They would talk into the night, eating and drinking, the waves crashing below them. These are her earliest and most treasured memories: Nettuno, the coastal town an hour south of Rome, where her nonna still lives and which Alessia Russo still describes as her favourite place in the world.
The story goes – and so fondly is it recounted in the Russo family that it has long since passed into lore – that one day Alfonso was up from Sicily, visiting Rome with a friend, when he saw a girl stepping on to a train at the railway station. No, not just a girl. The girl. Two fairly major issues: he didn’t know her, and it wasn’t his train. But Alfonso was a true romantic, the train was about to leave the station, and above all he knew that some moments in life just need to be seized.
Attorney general says detainees from Cecot prison returned under deal with US suffered a range of abuses
Venezuela’s attorney general, Tarek Saab, said on Monday that his office would investigate El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, and two other officials for the alleged abuse of Venezuelans detained in the country.
More than 250 Venezuelans held in El Salvador’s notorious Cecot prison returned to Venezuela on Friday under the terms of a prisoner exchange agreed with the US.
Actor who played Theo Huxtable in long-running sitcom reported to have drowned while on vacation in Costa Rica
The Cosby Show actor Malcolm-Jamal Warner has died, according to multiple sources. He was 54.
Warner accidentally drowned off the coast of Cocles beach near Limón, Costa Rica, on Saturday afternoon, local police confirmed to ABC News. The alert stated that two men were swept out to sea by high currents; one man was rescued and brought to a hospital in critical condition; Warner was recovered on Sunday, according to the Costa Rican outlet La Teja, citing Costa Rican Red Cross officials.
This precious resource should never have been privatised, and tougher regulation won’t solve the problem
Labour could have chosen the public interest over the profit motive, as it set about its promised reorganisation of the water industry in England and Wales. Polling last year showed a higher level of support for publicly owned water companies than railways. Yet while train companies are being renationalised as contracts expire, ministers ruled out a reversal of 1989’s water privatisation before they commissioned Sir Jon Cunliffe, a former central banker, to report on how they could improve this failing industry through tougher regulation.
This newspaper regrets that the question of ownership was taken off the table. Water is among the most precious of all natural resources and the pro‑market logic for the sell-off was bogus. In the absence of competition, regional monopolies were created and, in the decades since, businesses have enriched themselves while failing to fulfil their responsibilities. No other European government has followed suit in offloading vital infrastructure including pipes and reservoirs, and enabling investors to extract wealth by loading up balance sheets with debt.
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Teenagers already shoulder adult responsibilities. They deserve a say in shaping the society they’re growing into
Elections are imperfect reflections of public sentiment. But they are the least worst means to distribute political power. Each vote does count, however unsatisfactorily, under Westminster’s electoral system – except when people are denied one. For too long, those missing out have included 16- and 17-year‑olds. These teenagers are old enough to work, pay tax, join the army and make medical decisions. Yet they are judged too young to help decide who governs them.
The government proposes to resolve that anomaly. The decision to lower the voting age by the 2029 general election marks the largest extension of the franchise in more than 50 years. It is a long-overdue reform that brings England and Northern Ireland into line with Scotland and Wales. In democracies, those affected deserve a say. Opponents claim teenagers are too immature to vote. Political insight isn’t bestowed by a birthday. Foolishness and wisdom are spread across age groups. Younger people vote less reliably – but many adults also don’t bother. Apathy is no bar to suffrage.
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