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As public hearings wrap up at Australia’s Royal Commission into Anti-Semitism and Social Cohesion, Melbourne’s top local official has made an urgent push for federal financial support to boost security at religious gatherings across cash-strapped municipal jurisdictions.

Appearing before the inquiry on Monday, Lord Mayor Nicholas Reece emphasized that Melbourne is home to Australia’s largest Jewish community, a group that has been woven into the cultural, social and civic fabric of the city since its founding. He then detailed his firsthand experience responding to a 2023 firebombing attack on a Melbourne synagogue, carried out while families were gathering inside for Shabbat dinner.

Reece described the scene as one of the most distressing he has ever witnessed: children and families displaced onto the street, emergency responders from the fire service and Victoria Police surrounding the site, and the entire area cordoned off as an active crime scene. “This is not the Melbourne I have known for most of my life,” he told commissioners, adding that the act of violence was terrifying and entirely unacceptable in a democratic Australian city. The attack, he confirmed, has been linked to an extremist conspiracy originating overseas.

Beyond addressing immediate security needs, Reece also weighed in on the role of local government in debating complex global conflicts, referencing an hours-long council motion held during his time as acting mayor about the Gaza war. He called the process deeply challenging and a poor use of local government resources. While Reece acknowledged that local councils have a legitimate role in international engagement – from supporting cultural exchanges for international students to fostering university partnerships – he argued that nuanced, high-stakes geopolitical conflicts fall outside the core remit of local government.

Instead, Reece recommended that the federal Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) take the lead in facilitating community input on these global issues, modeling the work of community forums previously run by the Australian Agency for International Development (AusAID). He clarified that he does not oppose councils hosting open community debate on any topic, but DFAT is far better positioned to collect and address community perspectives on international matters.

Turning back to security for multicultural religious events, Reece noted that the Melbourne City Council has already been forced to add security measures to major public celebrations for Hanukkah, Ramadan, and Diwali to address rising concerns about social fracturing and the threat of antisocial or violent incidents. So far, the extra precautions have not been needed for active incidents, which Reece called a positive outcome, but the need for the measures themselves underscores the growing risk facing faith communities.

Most critically, Reece stressed that the vast majority of Australian local governments operate under severe resource constraints, with little to no budget available to cover the extra costs of enhanced event security. “I cannot overstate how resource constrained local government is,” Reece told the commission. “Most councils don’t have financial capacity to provide that safety support at some of those events. One of the things the Commission might like to consider is if we do want to see more celebration of faith events, social, multicultural events … then that might be something that requires some funding support in order to deliver.”

Reece also shared shocking data on the scale of persistent antisemitic vandalism across Melbourne over the past two years: his council has removed more than 3,000 pieces of offensive graffiti, with between 800 and 1,000 of those tagged with explicitly antisemitic messaging. In total, the council has cleared nearly 4,000 square meters of antisemitic graffiti, posters, and stickers, he said. To address the ongoing crisis, the city has launched a rapid response program that aims to remove hateful vandalism within one hour of it being reported, though the service does not cover most private property outside of pre-arranged automatic arrangements for public transport assets like trains and trams.

Earlier in the hearing, Tony Jackson, president of the Southbank Elsternwick Rotary club, told commissioners he felt he had failed his members after hearing widespread reports of fear and anxiety among club members about rising antisemitism in the local community. The Royal Commission, overseen by Commissioner Virginia Bell, is drawing to a close after months of public testimony from community leaders, officials, and residents across Australia.

In a rare high-level diplomatic meeting mediated by the United States and hosted by Jordan, Syria and Israel have convened talks focused on rolling back recent cross-border violence and preventing Israel’s growing standoff with Turkey from spilling onto Syrian territory. The Sunday negotiations mark the first formal direct dialogue between the two sides in several months, building on an earlier January agreement to establish a joint intelligence-sharing framework as they edge toward a broader regional security deal.

The talks come on the heels of two key destabilizing events: an Israeli airstrike earlier that week on the abandoned Abu Duhur airbase in northwest Syria, and a deadly targeted strike in southern Syria just one day before the negotiations. Israel justified the Abu Duhur attack by claiming it aimed to block an impending deployment of Turkish forces to the site, a claim Ankara has firmly denied. A day before the Jordan meeting, Israel carried out another strike targeting an alleged militant in southern Syria, leaving one person wounded and drawing condemnation from Damascus as a blatant violation of Syrian sovereignty.

According to a diplomatic source quoted by Syrian state news agency SANA, the Syrian delegation was led by Foreign Minister Assad al-Shaibani and included the heads of both general and military intelligence, while the Israeli side was headed by Roman Gofman, director of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency. Sources confirmed to Agence France-Presse that core agenda items included the creation of a joint US-supervised special operations room based in Jordan, tasked with preventing unintended confrontations on Syrian soil, particularly those that could draw in third-party actors like Turkey.

The overarching goal of the dialogue, the Syrian foreign ministry source noted, is to de-escalate tensions following a string of recent Israeli bombardments on Syrian territory that have raised the risk of broader conflict in southern Syria. Discussions also centered on bridging gaps between Ankara and Jerusalem to ensure that the ongoing public feud between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan does not draw Syria into the crossfire. Tensions between Turkey and Israel have surged since the Abu Duhur strike, with the two leaders exchanging sharp public criticism in recent days.

The airstrike on the abandoned airbase drew unusual pushback from the United States, with US Syria envoy Tom Barrack describing the attack as an unnecessary escalation that undermines, rather than advances, regional stability. Since the December 2024 overthrow of longtime Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad by Islamist forces that Israel classifies as jihadist, Israel has launched hundreds of strikes across Syrian territory. It has also deployed troops into the UN-patrolled buffer zone on the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights, maintained a permanent military presence in a self-declared security buffer in southern Syria, and repeatedly pushed for a full demilitarization of the southern region.

Sunday’s talks are part of a broader US-brokered process that began with earlier negotiations in Paris in January, where the two sides first agreed to set up a US-supervised communication cell to reduce bilateral friction. An Arab diplomat based in Damascus confirmed earlier that the proposed joint operations room in Jordan would oversee both security coordination and border management efforts. While US President Donald Trump has actively pushed for a formal security agreement between Israel and Syria’s new transitional authorities, Israeli leadership remains deeply distrustful of Damascus’s new governing institutions, slowing progress toward a final deal.

The Golan Heights, which Israel captured from Syria in the 1967 Arab-Israeli War and unilaterally annexed shortly after, remains a core long-standing point of contention between the two states. The annexation has only been recognized by the United States and, earlier this month, Colombia, with most of the international community continuing to regard the territory as occupied Syrian land.

As Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine enters its fourth year and a dramatic new escalation of deadly aerial assaults drives civilian casualties to their highest levels since the opening months of the war, Ukraine hosts key European allies in Kyiv on Monday for an urgent emergency summit focused on securing life-saving air defence supplies and tightening international pressure on Moscow.

The high-stakes gathering of the so-called Coalition of the Willing, a Franco-British-led forum coordinating international support for Ukraine, is co-chaired by the leaders of Britain, France and Germany. It comes as new UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham makes his first overseas trip to Kyiv since taking office at 10 Downing Street, with other leaders joining the talks remotely and European Union Council President Antonio Costa also travelling to the Ukrainian capital for the negotiations.

Monday’s summit coincides with Ukraine’s Independence Day, which marks four and a half years since Russia launched its large-scale invasion on 24 February 2022. In pre-summit comments, Burnham underscored unwavering Western solidarity with Ukraine, saying: “Russia should be in no doubt of our resolve. We will not back down until there is a just and lasting peace.”

Diplomatic efforts to end the conflict – Europe’s largest land war since World War II – remain effectively frozen. Moscow has demanded sweeping territorial and political concessions that Kyiv has rejected as a surrender that would only set the stage for future Russian aggression.

Over recent weeks, Russia has unleashed a barrage of ballistic missile attacks across Ukraine, concentrating strikes on the capital Kyiv that have reduced residential apartment blocks to rubble and killed dozens of civilians. The surge in attacks has pushed monthly civilian death tolls to levels not seen since the first three months of the 2022 invasion. After every assault, which forces tens of thousands of Kyiv residents to shelter in the city’s metro system, basements and other emergency refuges, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has repeated urgent public appeals for expanded air defence support from the West.

As part of the summit, Burnham is set to announce that the British government will authorize defense contractor MBDA to declassify technical information needed to allow Ukraine and France to establish domestic production of long-range SCALP cruise missiles. The announcement follows a pledge from French President Emmanuel Macron over the weekend that Paris will deliver a new shipment of interceptor missiles to Ukraine. “It is crucial to provide Ukraine with all the necessary means to defend its skies and thwart this aggression,” Macron wrote on social media platform X.

Russia’s barrage of dozens of ballistic missiles poses a uniquely difficult challenge for Ukrainian air defences: the weapons travel at extremely high speeds along a steep, high-arching trajectory that makes them far harder to intercept than slower cruise missiles or attack drones. Ukraine’s domestically produced air defence systems cannot shoot down these ballistic projectiles, leaving Kyiv almost entirely dependent on advanced Western systems – most notably US-made Patriot interceptors – to shield its population and critical infrastructure.

But global stockpiles of Patriot interceptors have been stretched thin after the United States redirected large volumes of missiles to its own military campaign against Iran, leaving Ukraine facing catastrophic shortfalls. Ahead of Monday’s summit, Zelensky publicly disclosed the extent of the deficit, revealing closely held supply figures that highlight the severity of the crisis. He told reporters that deliveries of Patriot interceptors to Ukraine have fallen by half since 2023: over the full course of 2023, Ukraine received 675 missiles, compared to just 364 in 2025, even as Russian missile strikes have increased in frequency and intensity. Current projections put 2026 deliveries at only 264 interceptors, Zelensky added, noting that Ukraine is seeking a minimum of 300 extra missiles to prepare for the coming winter, when Russia typically intensifies attacks on energy infrastructure.

The United States has been unable to meet Ukraine’s requests for larger shipments, as it prioritizes building up its own stockpiles for its ongoing campaign against Iran. By contrast, Zelensky noted that Russia maintains the industrial capacity to produce roughly 100 new ballistic missiles every month, allowing it to sustain its current high pace of strikes.

In response to the intensified Russian aerial campaign, Ukraine has stepped up its own long-range strike operations targeting Russian energy infrastructure and logistics hubs, including oil refineries and commercial storage warehouses deep inside Russian territory.

The Coalition of the Willing was originally conceived as a group of nations prepared to deploy peacekeeping troops to Ukraine if a ceasefire is reached. It has since evolved into a key coordinating forum for marshalling European support for Ukraine, filling a growing gap in commitments amid ongoing uncertainty over long-term US support for Kyiv following Donald Trump’s return to office.

A 21-year-old defendant has formally entered a not guilty plea and confirmed he will defend a manslaughter charge at a scheduled 2025 trial over the fatal one-punch assault on senior Australian Labor Party strategist Tim Picton outside a Western Australian nightclub. Brodie Dewar made his first court appearance before the West Australian Supreme Court on Monday, where he denied the allegation of unlawfully killing 36-year-old Picton.

The violent incident unfolded in the early hours of December 27 last year, just outside a popular Perth venue. Picton was rushed to a local hospital immediately after the assault, where medical teams placed him in an induced coma to treat his injuries. Despite initial emergency interventions, the senior Labor figure succumbed to his injuries and died several weeks after the attack.

On Monday, Justice Joseph McGrath confirmed the trial timeline, scheduling a 10-day court hearing set to begin in July 2025. The two-week proceeding will hear all evidence related to the case as Dewar contests the manslaughter charge.

Before relocating to Western Australia, Picton built an extensive career across Australian Labor politics. He previously served as president of South Australian Young Labor, and held advisory roles for federal Labor parliamentarians Amanda Rishworth and Don Farrell, as well as working in the office of former Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews. At the time of his death, he was a key strategist in WA Labor, and was widely recognized for his critical work contributing to former WA Premier Mark McGowan’s landslide election victory in 2021. He is also the brother of current South Australian State Development Minister Chris Picton.