A botched attempted carjacking targeting a father waiting to pick up his daughter from school in one of Melbourne’s most affluent suburbs has been laid out in detail at Melbourne Magistrates’ Court, with investigators revealing how the two accused offenders spent hours hiding in suburban shrubbery before their eventual arrest. The court proceedings on Wednesday centered on 40-year-old Boris Ristic’s bail application, one of the two men charged over the February 24 incident. According to Detective Acting Sergeant Terry Harvey, the victim had parked his luxury Mercedes-Benz on Wellington Street in Kew just after 4:30 p.m. when a white Mitsubishi Triton pulled up alongside his vehicle. Two men exited the truck, which then drove off from the scene, and brandished a knife to threaten the victim into surrendering his car keys, Harvey told the court. Prosecutors allege Ristic was the man who tried to drive off with the stolen Mercedes, but he was unable to shift the vehicle into gear. For roughly one minute, witnesses and the victim reported hearing the car engine rev repeatedly before the two frustrated suspects gave up and ran away down Wellington Street. Initial searches by police failed to locate the pair, but a breakthrough came just before 9 p.m. when a local resident on nearby Scott Street contacted emergency services. After checking her home security system, the resident spotted two unidentified figures entering the front yard of the property across from her home and hiding in dense front-yard bushes. The two men did not leave their hiding spot until approximately 8:50 p.m., the court was told. Police immediately cordoned off the neighborhood and quickly arrested 33-year-old Maker Jal in the backyard of a Scott Street property. Investigators say they found the victim’s Mercedes-Benz key in Jal’s possession, alongside a small quantity of methamphetamine. Ristic was captured only after a short manhunt, during which he allegedly jumped over multiple residential fences and hid on rooftop areas before being detained by the Critical Incident Response Team. Near Ristic’s arrest location, officers discovered a black Tommy Hilfiger holding $1665 in cash, three Valium tablets, a small bottle of Fireball cinnamon whiskey, and a replica firearm, Harvey confirmed. Lucien Richter, Ristic’s defense lawyer, has challenged the prosecution’s case, pointing out key inconsistencies in witness testimony. The victim described both suspects as Black men, while Ristic is Caucasian, Richter noted. He also argued that no evidence directly linking his client to the attempted carjacking was found on him at the time of arrest, adding that the CCTV footage of the incident is heavily obscured, making positive identification unreliable. Ristic, a professional painter with no prior criminal record, has the full support of his family, with his mother offering to put up a $20,000 surety to secure his bail. Richter told the court his client already has confirmed work waiting for him and is rooted in a stable, responsible family environment that would ensure he complies with any bail conditions. Magistrate Phillip Goldberg adjourned the bail application part-heard, with the next court hearing scheduled for April 15. Jal faces three charges: carjacking, theft, and possession of a controlled drug, and he is scheduled to make his next court appearance on Thursday.
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As US gasoline passes $4, Hegseth says ground war still an option
WASHINGTON — Five weeks into active hostilities between the United States and Iran, the Biden administration (correction: current Trump administration) has moved to frame skyrocketing national gasoline prices as a temporary side effect of the conflict, while top defense officials have refused to take any military option — including a full ground deployment of U.S. troops — off the table.
In his first public briefing at the Pentagon since mid-March, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told reporters Tuesday that the timeline for concluding combat operations and achieving U.S. war aims rests solely with President Donald Trump, warning that the coming days will prove decisive for the conflict. He also confirmed that diplomatic negotiations between the two nations remain active, and suggested the talks have gained momentum in recent days.
The prolonged conflict has already sent shockwaves through both global and domestic U.S. economies, with new data from automotive group AAA showing the national average price for regular gasoline in the U.S. has crossed the $4 per gallon threshold for the first time in four years. Photographic documentation from a Providence, Rhode Island gas station taken March 31, 2026 shows regular fuel priced at $3.89 per gallon, just shy of the national benchmark.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt pushed back against growing public frustration over fuel costs in an official statement, arguing that once the administration’s Operation Epic Fury concludes, gas prices will fall sharply back to the multi-year lows U.S. drivers saw before the current market disruption. She added that President Trump remains dedicated to expanding American energy production to achieve long-term energy dominance, cut household costs, and put more disposable income back into the budgets of working American families.
Within hours of the White House’s statement, Iran’s parliamentary speaker Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf seized on the price surge to criticize U.S. policy, sharing a link to a U.S. news report on soaring gas prices to the social platform X with the caption: “Sad, but this is what happens when your leaders put others ahead of hard-working and ordinary Americans.”
The primary driver of the global energy price spike is Iran’s ongoing blockade of commercial and military vessels from the U.S. and its allies at the Strait of Hormuz, a critical chokepoint that carries a large share of the world’s petroleum and liquefied natural gas exports. As of 12:45 p.m. Eastern Time Tuesday, Brent crude, the global benchmark for oil pricing, was trading at just over $119 per barrel. Open source data from MarineTraffic and United Nations estimates show between 2,000 and 3,000 cargo vessels and oil tankers, carrying roughly 20,000 crew members, remain stranded in the Persian Gulf due to the blockade.
President Trump has claimed in recent public comments that Iran has agreed to allow a small number of third-party oil tankers to pass through the strait, first saying eight to 10 Pakistani tankers would be permitted during a cabinet meeting Thursday, then raising that number to 20 during comments Sunday. But data from the Joint Maritime Information Center contradicts those claims, showing only four large, location-transmitting tankers crossed the strait on Friday and Saturday combined.
When asked about potential ground operations, Hegseth said the administration would not foreclose any military response to Iranian aggression, but declined to share specific operational details during his public briefing. “You can’t fight and win a war if you tell your adversary what you are willing to do, or what you are not willing to do — to include boots on the ground,” Hegseth said. “Our adversary right now thinks there are 15 different ways we could come at them with boots on the ground. And guess what? There are. So if we needed to, we could execute those options on behalf of the president of the United States and this department, or maybe we don’t have to use them at all. Maybe negotiations work.”
Trump echoed Hegseth’s comments on diplomatic progress during remarks to reporters aboard Air Force One Sunday, saying talks with Iran are ongoing both directly and indirectly, and that the discussions are “very good.” “We’re doing extremely well,” the president said. “But you never know with Iran because we negotiate with them, and then we always have to blow ‘em up.”
The president has repeatedly issued public threats to bomb Iran’s critical energy infrastructure, and has set a self-imposed deadline of April 6 for Iran to meet all U.S. demands before launching new strikes. On Monday night, Trump shared video of a recent U.S. strike on an Iranian ammunition depot in the central province of Isfahan to his Truth Social platform. But Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baqaei denied any diplomatic talks are taking place with the U.S., according to Iranian state news outlet Tasmin News Agency.
U.S. military buildup in the region continues: U.S. Central Command confirmed that up to 3,500 U.S. Marines and sailors arrived in the Persian Gulf region Saturday, bringing total U.S. troop levels in the area to roughly 50,000 — an increase of 10,000 from the standard peacetime deployment of 40,000. Ghalibaf warned Sunday that any U.S. ground offensive into Iran would be met with “severe punishment,” per Iranian state media. For context, the 2003 U.S. ground invasion of Iraq saw more than 300,000 American troops deployed to the region, according to historical archives from the Council on Foreign Relations.
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Trump to watch Supreme Court weigh challenge to birthright citizenship
In an extraordinary, potentially unprecedented move for a sitting U.S. president, Donald Trump will personally attend the U.S. Supreme Court’s oral arguments Wednesday for a landmark case examining the constitutionality of his controversial effort to restrict birthright citizenship.
Shortly after returning to the White House following his 2024 election win, Trump signed an executive order that would eliminate automatic U.S. citizenship for children born in the country to undocumented immigrants and parents on temporary visas. Lower courts quickly blocked the order, ruling it directly violated the 14th Amendment’s Citizenship Clause, which enshrines birthright citizenship for nearly all people born on U.S. soil.
The 14th Amendment, ratified after the Civil War, explicitly states, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.” The only narrow exceptions to this rule apply to individuals not fully under U.S. jurisdiction, such as foreign diplomatic staff and members of sovereign Native American tribes.
When reporters asked Tuesday if he planned to attend the hearing, Trump confirmed simply, “I’m going.” While Trump previously attended the 2017 investiture of his first Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch, his presence at oral arguments for a case his administration is actively defending marks an extraordinary break from modern presidential precedent.
The Trump administration’s legal argument hinges on a narrow interpretation of the 14th Amendment, claiming the provision was crafted exclusively to grant citizenship to formerly enslaved people after the Civil War, not to children of undocumented migrants or temporary visitors. The executive order is built on the claim that people living in the U.S. without legal status or on temporary visas are not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States, and therefore do not qualify for automatic citizenship.
This narrow reading has already been rejected by the Supreme Court once before. In the landmark 1898 case United States v. Wong Kim Ark, the high court ruled that a man born in San Francisco to Chinese immigrant parents was a U.S. citizen by birth, even though his parents were not eligible for naturalization under the Chinese Exclusion Act.
Many legal analysts expect the Supreme Court to reject the Trump administration’s challenge again. Steven Schwinn, a law professor at the University of Illinois Chicago, noted that the current conservative majority often relies on history and tradition to interpret the Constitution. “It would be a little surprising if, after 150 years, we suddenly discovered we were applying the Citizenship Clause all wrong,” Schwinn told AFP.
The high court currently holds a 6-3 conservative majority, with three justices appointed by Trump during his first term. The administration’s solicitor general, John Sauer, argued in court filings that citizenship requires meeting both criteria laid out in the 14th Amendment: birth on U.S. soil and being subject to U.S. jurisdiction. “Children of temporarily present aliens or illegal aliens are not ‘subject to’ the United States’ ‘jurisdiction,’” Sauer wrote, adding that a person only meets this requirement if they “owes sufficient allegiance to, and may claim protection from” the U.S. Sauer also claimed automatic birthright citizenship acts as a “powerful incentive for illegal migration” and encourages so-called “birth tourism.”
If the court rejects Trump’s bid, it will mark the second major legal defeat for the president during the current Supreme Court term. In February, the justices struck down most of Trump’s global sweeping tariffs, prompting an angry response from the president. On Tuesday, Trump doubled down on his criticism, calling birthright citizenship one of the “great scams of our time” a day after he posted on Truth Social denouncing “dumb judges and justices.”
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which is arguing in defense of existing birthright citizenship before the court, warned the Trump administration’s request would upend the nation’s core constitutional order. “The government’s baseless arguments — if accepted — would cast a shadow over the citizenship of millions upon millions of Americans, going back generations,” the organization said.
A final ruling in the case is expected by the end of June or early July 2025.
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Australia’s largest wild prawn business collapses, costing 200 jobs
After decades of growth from a small family fish and chip shop to a national seafood industry leader, Australia’s largest wild-caught prawn producer Raptis and Sons Group has collapsed, sending ripples of economic uncertainty through coastal communities across the country and leaving 200 workers unemployed.
Founded in the 1950s by Greek first-generation migrants Anna and Arthur Raptis Snr in Adelaide, the company built a sprawling fishing empire over three generations. It operated wild prawn harvests across four jurisdictions—South Australia, Western Australia, the Northern Territory and Queensland—and fin fish fisheries in waters off the NT, Queensland and New South Wales. Beyond fishing, the group owned popular seafood brands Agrios, Seaport and Ocean Pearl, ran a processing and packing facility in Brisbane, and distributed its own and third-party seafood to major national wholesale markets including the Sydney Fish Markets, as well as international buyers. Its 19-vessel fleet includes 15 boats based out of the tiny Gulf of Carpentaria town of Karumba, which has a total population of just 500 and relies heavily on Raptis’ operations to sustain its local economy.
Appointed as administrators in March, insolvency practitioners have confirmed that all efforts to secure a buyer for the struggling business have failed. The company first launched a sale process in late 2024, drawing initial interest from multiple prospective investors, but no deal was finalized to save the business. Earlier hopes that a new buyer could inject emergency funding to allow the fleet to participate in the 2025 banana prawn season, which runs from April 1 to mid-June, have also been dashed, after negotiations for interim financing collapsed without agreement.
Financial documents filed by administrator Ben Campbell reveal the full scale of the company’s liabilities. While Raptis holds more than $26 million in equity, it owes $35.2 million to the National Australia Bank. In total, 296 separate parties—including employees, local businesses and government agencies—are owed a collective $31.6 million. Company directors Jim Raptis and Christine Raptis are among the creditors owed $2.7 million in total. At the time of administration, the company employed 196 people: 123 full-time staff, four part-time workers and 69 casual employees, all of whom now face unemployment.
Industry insiders and administrators point to a perfect storm of market and operational challenges that drove the business to collapse. The core triggers cited are a severe oversupply of banana prawns during the 2022/2023 season, followed by two consecutive years of lower-than-expected catch volumes, and rapidly rising operating costs that squeezed profit margins to unsustainable levels. Most notably, a national diesel shortage that followed the global energy price shock drastically increased fuel costs for the company’s fleet, adding further financial pressure.
Veteran federal MP Bob Katter, whose electorate covers Karumba, has blamed Queensland state government policies restricting fishing licenses and the national fuel crisis for delivering the fatal blow to the historic business. He warns that the collapse is part of a broader, decades-long decline of Australia’s domestic fishing industry, driven by restrictive regulation that has already shrunk the Karumba fleet by two-thirds during his political career.
Katter argued that environmental policies supported by green activists have gutted local fishing activity, pointing out that Australia now imports 40 percent of its seafood, a share that is projected to grow as more domestic operations close. “The fuel crisis hitting the once great fishing industry of North Queensland – soon there won’t be any left,” Katter told NewsWire. “The fuel crisis is going to kill what’s left of the fishing industry that’s been killed off by the greenies. I have said continuously we will go without fuel, and now what I am telling my fellow Australians is, ‘you will go without food’.”
For small regional centers like Karumba, the collapse of the town’s largest employer leaves an uncertain future, with local businesses that rely on the fishing fleet now bracing for secondary economic shocks as jobs and economic activity disappear from the community.
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Lionel Messi shines in what could be his last Argentina home game, a 5-0 farewell friendly win
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina — Ahead of the 2026 men’s FIFA World Cup co-hosted by the United States, Mexico, and Canada, Lionel Messi delivered a performance for the history books on Tuesday night, turning what is widely expected to be his final home appearance for Argentina’s national side into a masterclass in a lopsided 5-0 friendly win over Zambia.
The 38-year-old Argentine icon, who led his nation to a third World Cup title in Qatar 2022, got the match off to a blistering start, setting up Manchester City striker Julián Álvarez for an early opener in just the fourth minute at Buenos Aires’ iconic La Bombonera stadium. Before halftime, Messi added a goal of his own in the 43rd minute, capping a first-half dominant display that sent the sold-out crowd into a frenzy. The entire stadium rose to its feet in a prolonged standing ovation for Messi, with fans chanting and cheering to urge their star to lead Argentina to another world title this summer.
Two more goals from defenders Nicolás Otamendi and Valentín Barco rounded out the 5-0 scoreline for the defending champions. The commanding win comes as a much-needed confidence boost for Argentina, which left fans and analysts with lingering concerns after a flat, underwhelming 2-1 win over Mauritania last Friday. Ahead of the Zambia friendly, head coach Lionel Scaloni issued a clear warning: a repeat of lackluster performances would lead to major changes to his 26-man World Cup squad, which must be finalized and submitted by May 30.
For this critical pre-tournament home test, Scaloni opted to field a starting lineup largely mirroring the side that claimed the 2022 World Cup trophy with a dramatic final win over France. The most notable absence was midfielder Rodrigo De Paul, who was sidelined as he continues to recover from a muscle injury, following a poor showing against Mauritania last week.
Argentina, a three-time World Cup winner with titles in 1978, 1986, and 2022, will kick off their 2026 World Cup campaign in Group J on June 16 against Algeria. They will then face off against Austria on June 22 before wrapping up group stage play against Jordan on June 27.
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Business sentiments in Japan improving despite Iran worries
TOKYO – The Bank of Japan’s closely watched quarterly tankan survey, published Wednesday, has delivered a fourth consecutive quarter of improving business sentiment among the nation’s large manufacturing firms. The key diffusion index, which measures the gap between companies reporting positive business conditions and those forecasting a downturn, edged up to 17 in March, up one point from the December reading.
This modest uptick comes despite mounting global and domestic economic headwinds, fueled by the ongoing conflict in Iran that has stirred widespread anxiety over energy supply security and broader Japanese economic growth. Unlike the manufacturing sector’s gain, sentiment among large non-manufacturing businesses, spanning retail, hospitality and other service segments, held steady at 36, matching the previous survey’s reading.
While Japan’s overall inflation rate has stayed far more muted than in many other advanced economies, upward pressure on fuel prices and a range of consumer goods has accelerated concerns across markets and households. Geopolitical uncertainty surrounding the duration of the Iran conflict and unpredictable policy signals from former U.S. President Donald Trump have added to market volatility, pushing Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 index into sharp swings over recent weeks.
A depreciating yen and soaring energy costs have combined to push up living costs for ordinary Japanese consumers, leading a growing number of analysts to forecast that the Bank of Japan could move to raise interest rates at its upcoming monetary policy meeting. The central bank wrapped up years of negative interest rates, implemented to combat decades of stubborn deflation, when it normalized monetary policy in 2024. It has held its benchmark policy rate steady at 0.75% since the beginning of the year, and its next policy board gathering is scheduled for April 27-28.
Historically, a weaker yen has been a boon for Japan’s export-led economy, which built its global reputation on high-volume shipments of automobiles and consumer electronics. When the yen depreciates, overseas earnings earned in foreign currencies translate back to larger yen denominated profits for exporting firms. But in recent decades, Japan’s economic dynamics have shifted dramatically: as a resource-poor nation, Japan now imports nearly all of its energy needs, along with large volumes of food and critical manufacturing components. A weak yen now raises import costs sharply, eroding household purchasing power and cutting into corporate margins for import-dependent firms. The U.S. dollar has continued its rapid ascent against the yen in recent trading sessions, amplifying these inflationary pressures.
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Asia stocks jump after Trump suggests Iran war could end in weeks
Global financial markets reacted with a sharp surge in Asian equities during Wednesday’s early trading session, driven by an unexpected announcement from former U.S. President Donald Trump that American military forces will complete their withdrawal from Iran within two to three weeks — regardless of whether a diplomatic agreement is reached with Tehran’s government.
In early morning trading, Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 index climbed by nearly 4 percentage points, while South Korea’s primary Kospi index jumped more than 6%. Despite this significant upward movement, both major regional indexes remain below their pre-conflict levels, prior to the outbreak of the Iran war on February 28.
While equities gained ground, oil markets continued to edge upward: June-delivery Brent Crude, the global benchmark for oil pricing, traded 1.2% higher at $105.36 per barrel, equal to approximately £79.61. This uptick follows a historic monthly surge in May-delivery Brent during March, when the contract jumped 64% — its largest one-month gain in more than three decades. That spike came after Iran threatened to block all commercial shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, a critical chokepoint that carries roughly 20% of the world’s daily oil supply.
Speaking from the Oval Office on Tuesday, Trump told reporters that Iran is “begging to make a deal” to end the conflict, but added that reaching an agreement is “irrelevant” to the United States’ planned withdrawal timeline.
Hours before Trump’s statement, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian confirmed that his administration holds the “necessary will” to reach a negotiated end to the war, but outlined that Tehran requires concrete security guarantees to prevent future cross-border aggression from resuming.
For context, global oil pricing relies on monthly futures contracts, where buyers agree to purchase crude at a set price for future delivery. When futures prices rise, the increase is almost always passed through to consumers in the form of higher gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel prices, as oil is a core input for nearly all global transportation and manufacturing activity.
Goh Jing Rong, an energy markets analyst at Singapore Management University, explained that the March 2025 price surge was the largest single monthly jump for Brent crude since the 1990 Gulf War, when Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait removed both countries’ production from global markets and triggered a historic energy supply shock. Goh added that the current rally is driven overwhelmingly by market fear: the threat of a full shutdown of the Strait of Hormuz has created widespread anxiety over potential global supply disruptions.
“Prices have also been pushed up by growing concerns over rising insurance premiums for oil tankers traversing the region, and the vulnerability of other critical shipping waterways in the Middle East,” Goh added.
In recent days, the escalation of conflict has widened after Iran-backed Houthi militants in Yemen entered the conflict, raising new fears that the group could disrupt commercial shipping through the Red Sea, another key global trade route for energy and goods.
Ole Hansen, head of commodity strategy at Danish investment bank Saxo Bank, noted that another factor pushing prices higher is aggressive bidding from oil refiners, who are rushing to build inventory and boost production amid widespread global shortages of jet fuel and diesel. “Refiners are competing to lock in crude supplies to meet existing demand gaps, which is putting additional upward pressure on benchmark prices,” Hansen explained.
The current conflict has hit Northeast Asian economies particularly hard: both Japan and South Korea rely heavily on imported energy from the Middle East, leaving them more exposed to supply disruptions and price spikes than most other developed economies.
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It’s happening: historic Moon mission set for launch
Nearly 52 years after humanity’s last crewed trip to the Moon, NASA’s groundbreaking Artemis 2 mission stands on the cusp of launch, carrying four astronauts to make history as the first crewed lunar voyage since 1972. After years of planning, multiple delays and technical setbacks have pushed the mission from its original February launch window to its targeted liftoff at 6:24 pm ET (2224 GMT) on April 1 from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
The four-person crew includes three NASA astronauts — mission commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, and mission specialist Christina Koch — plus Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen. Over the course of a roughly 10-day expedition, the crew will fly a circumlunar trajectory, orbiting the Moon without landing, echoing the path of NASA’s 1968 Apollo 8 mission. This journey carries multiple historic firsts: Glover will become the first person of color to travel to the Moon, Koch the first woman, and Hansen the first non-U.S. citizen to join a lunar mission.
Artemis 2 also marks the inaugural crewed flight of NASA’s powerful new Space Launch System (SLS), a massive orange-and-white rocket built to enable repeated U.S. missions to the lunar surface in the coming decades. The long-term goal of the Artemis program is to establish a permanent lunar outpost that will serve as a launchpad for future deep space exploration, most notably a crewed mission to Mars.
Speaking at a press conference over the weekend, Koch framed the Moon as an invaluable scientific resource: “The moon is a witness plate to our entire solar system’s formation. It’s a stepping stone to Mars, where we might have the most likelihood of finding evidence of past life, but it’s also a Rosetta Stone for how other solar systems form.”
After multiple scheduling delays that required rolling the massive rocket back to its assembly hangar for technical inspections and repairs, NASA leadership says all systems are go for launch. “The vehicle is ready, the system is ready. The crew is ready,” Amit Kshatriya, NASA’s associate administrator, told reporters at a recent briefing. As of Tuesday afternoon, agency officials confirmed that final pre-launch engineering preparations were progressing on schedule, and forecasters are predicting generally favorable weather conditions for Wednesday’s attempt.
If the launch is scrubbed on Wednesday, backup launch windows remain available through April 6, though weather conditions are expected to become slightly less favorable later in the week. Launch weather officer Mark Burger noted Tuesday that meteorologists are monitoring scattered cumulus clouds, possible light showers, and gusty winds, but added that none of the potential weather hazards are expected to be severe enough to fully rule out launch. “We should be able to find some clear air to launch Artemis,” Burger said.
Thousands of space enthusiasts have traveled to Florida from across the country to witness the historic launch, including 76-year-old Melinda Schuerfranz, a retiree from Ohio who watched earlier Apollo launches from afar decades ago. “We’re looking forward to it, we’ve never seen anything like this,” Schuerfranz told AFP, while relaxing on a Florida beach. She noted that public interest is already widespread at local businesses, but reflected that the cultural moment may feel less unified than the Apollo era, when nearly all Americans tuned in for lunar launches: “I think it was way more exciting then. Everybody tuned into it.”
Despite the momentum ahead of Artemis 2, the broader Artemis program has long been plagued by costly delays and ballooning budgets. The program is under political pressure to meet the target of landing the first woman and first person of color on the lunar surface by early 2029, the end of a second presidential term if former president Donald Trump wins re-election in 2024. The primary objective of Artemis 2 is to validate the performance of the SLS rocket and the Orion crew capsule in deep space, clearing the way for the 2028 landing mission.
That 2028 landing deadline has drawn skepticism from many space policy experts, in large part because NASA is counting on private sector development of a human-rated lunar lander. Two competing lander designs are currently under development by private companies led by billionaires Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, and the program’s timeline hinges on these projects staying on schedule.
In the broader global context, the U.S. return to the Moon is widely framed as a space race with China, which has its own crewed lunar landing program targeted for 2030. For new NASA administrator Jared Isaacman, the Artemis program pursues overlapping goals spanning scientific discovery, national security, and commercial economic opportunity, as well as intangible cultural benefits. “I guarantee after these astronauts fly around the moon, you’re going to have more kids dressing up as astronauts for Halloween,” Isaacman said during a recent television interview. “And that’s going to inspire the next generation to take us further.”
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Apartment approvals soar 191pc as Australia faces rate rises
Australia’s new residential construction sector saw a dramatic jump in project approvals during February, even in the face of consecutive central bank interest rate hikes, though the country continues to fall short of its ambitious national housing supply goal, new official data shows.
New statistics released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) reveal that total dwelling approvals climbed 29.7% month-on-month in February, hitting 19,022 projects. The strong uptick was driven almost entirely by multi-unit developments: raw data shows apartment approvals skyrocketed 191.2% to 5,398 units, marking a 29.8% annual increase compared to February 2023. Townhouse approvals also rebounded sharply, rising 73.8% to 2,981 dwellings after a 38.7% drop in January.
Despite the monthly surge, experts warn the overall pace of new home development is still not enough to meet the targets set out in the National Housing Accord, which aims to build an extra 1 million new homes over five years to address critical national supply shortages. To hit this goal, Australia needs to approve and complete roughly 20,000 new homes every month, but long-term approval trends remain well below this benchmark.
AMP senior economist My Bui noted that monthly approval data is notoriously volatile, so a longer-term perspective offers more accurate insight into the sector’s trajectory. Looking across a longer timeframe, annualized approval levels have held steady around 196,000 new homes per year. While this volume roughly balances demand amid the current slowdown in population growth, it falls far short of the 240,000 annual approvals needed to make up for the cumulative supply shortfall that built up during the rapid population growth of 2023 and 2024. Bui added that completion rates have also failed to pick up as projected, remaining flat rather than following the upward trend that earlier approval numbers suggested would emerge by 2025.
Notably, February’s approval surge occurred even after the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) implemented a 25-basis-point cash rate hike that pushed the benchmark rate to 3.85% that month. The central bank followed with another 25-basis-point increase in March, lifting the cash rate to 4.10%, and financial markets broadly expect another rate hike when the RBA’s board meets again in May.
Beyond project approvals, the total value of the nation’s residential development pipeline also hit a new record high in February. Total combined approval value across all construction types reached $20.43 billion, representing a 14.4% annual increase. Residential construction alone accounted for most of the growth, jumping 30.8% to an all-time high of $12.5 billion, with new home builds rising 35.9% to $11.21 billion. That growth was partially offset by a 1.2% dip in renovation and extension project approvals, which fell to $1.29 billion. Non-residential construction, including offices, retail spaces and industrial facilities, also saw a 4.4% drop in approvals to $7.93 billion, following an unusually strong performance in January.
As the development pipeline grows, national property market data indicates the sector has hit a clear turning point in its current cycle, with rising interest rates beginning to temper the rapid home price growth seen over the past two years. New figures from property analytics firm REA Group show national median home prices rose just 0.3% in March, pushing the national median value to $908,000. While that leaves prices 9.4% higher than one year ago – a gain of roughly $94,800 for the median property – the pace of growth has slowed significantly.
REA Group senior economist Eleanor Creagh explained that slowing price growth confirms a clear shift in market momentum, as rising borrowing costs weigh on buyer activity. “Recent rate rises will weigh on buyer sentiment, borrowing capacity, and erode already poor affordability,” she said. However, Creagh noted that persistent supply shortages are preventing prices from falling, even as interest rates rise. A resilient national labor market, ongoing population growth, and targeted support for first-time home buyers continue to keep demand strong against a backdrop of severely limited available housing stock, she added.
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War in the Middle East: latest developments
Fifty-five minutes ago, Agence France-Presse compiled the most recent round of developments in the ongoing Middle East war, a conflict that has entered its fifth week of active combat between the US-Israeli alliance and Iranian-aligned groups, sending ripples across global politics, energy markets and international diplomacy.