Global Pulse

标签： Oceania

大洋洲

  • Queensland urged to back-pedal on 10km/hr e-bike speed limit

    Queensland urged to back-pedal on 10km/hr e-bike speed limit

    Plans to enforce a uniform 10km/h speed limit across all regions of Queensland for electric bikes and electric scooters are set to be softened after a state parliamentary inquiry delivered a series of amended recommendations on the controversial safety legislation.

    Originally, the Queensland government tabled a new safety bill that would implement a blanket 10km/h speed restriction for all e-mobility riders across the entire state, a policy that immediately drew fierce public pushback. Opponents of the original proposal argued that the overly restrictive limit would force many commuters to shift from low-traffic shared paths onto crowded, high-speed main roads, while also adding significant unnecessary time to daily work and errand commutes across the region.

    After reviewing thousands of submissions and hearing testimony from stakeholders, the bipartisan parliamentary committee tasked with examining the bill tabled its final report Friday, calling for major revisions to the speed limit provision. Instead of applying the 10km/h cap across all public paths and roads, the committee recommends the restriction only be enforced in zones with heavy foot traffic — such as central business districts, shopping strips, and parklands — as well as within 10 meters of any pedestrians on shared footpaths. The panel also proposed that multi-use shared paths remain exempt from the 10km/h rule unless local authorities install dedicated signage indicating the limit, and suggested officials consider raising the cap to 15km/h in cases where riders are passing within 10 meters of pedestrians.

    Beyond speed regulations, the original legislation includes two other key provisions that have proven contentious: a full ban on e-bike and e-scooter use for anyone under the age of 16, and a requirement that all riders hold at minimum a learner driver’s license. Disability advocacy groups raised urgent alarms over the licensing rule, noting that many people living with permanent disabilities or chronic medical conditions are ineligible for driver licenses, and the requirement would create an insurmountable barrier to accessing these affordable, lightweight mobility devices that many rely on for daily transportation.

    In response to those concerns, the committee added a recommendation for targeted exemptions to the licensing rule, covering people who cannot obtain a license due to disability, medical impairment, or age-related eligibility restrictions. Despite the proposed changes to the speed limit, the committee has endorsed the overall passage of the bill, meaning new targeted regulations for e-mobility users are almost certain to take effect in Queensland in the coming months.

    Committee chair Jim McDonald emphasized in the foreword to the final report that the entire inquiry was centered on balancing public safety for all vulnerable road and path users, including riders, pedestrians, and people in motor vehicles. “The evidence presented to the committee was confronting and enlightening, and we acknowledge the heartbreaking experiences of those who have lost loved ones in e-mobility incidents,” McDonald wrote.

    He added that the combination of the original bill and the committee’s revised recommendations will deliver a clear, practical regulatory framework that improves safety for everyone sharing Queensland’s roads, pathways, and public spaces. The framework, he said, is designed to cut down on preventable injuries and save lives, while still maintaining accessible riding opportunities through targeted, proportionate restrictions rather than a one-size-fits-all statewide rule.

  • Japan confirms year’s first fatal bear attack, two more suspected

    Japan confirms year’s first fatal bear attack, two more suspected

    Just months after Japan recorded its deadliest year on record for human-bear conflicts, the East Asian nation has officially confirmed its first fatal bear attack of 2026, with two additional suspicious deaths under investigation that experts link to hungry bears emerging from winter hibernation. The 2025 crisis, which saw a staggering 13 fatal bear attacks and more than 200 injured people—more than double the previous annual record of six deaths—sparked national alarm, forcing the Japanese government to deploy military troops to assist with trapping and culling aggressive animals that wandered deep into human-populated areas. Incidents ranged from bears roaming near schools and breaking into residential homes to rampaging through supermarket aisles and wandering through popular hot spring resort districts, bringing the long-simmering human-wildlife conflict to the forefront of national public discourse.

    According to Japan’s Ministry of the Environment, the first confirmed fatality of 2026 was a 55-year-old woman whose body was discovered on April 21 in Iwate Prefecture, a rural region in northern Japan’s Tohoku area. Police confirmed to AFP that two additional sets of human remains have been recovered this week: one found Thursday in another part of Iwate, and a second recovered Tuesday in a Yamagata Prefecture forest. While police have not officially ruled on the cause of death, local media and wildlife experts have linked both deaths to bear attacks.

    Public broadcaster NHK identified one of the two deceased as 69-year-old Chiyoko Kumagai, who went missing after traveling to a mountain forest to harvest edible wild plants, a popular seasonal activity in rural Japan. After launching a large search operation Thursday around the forest where Kumagai’s parked car was found, rescuers located her body shortly after 8 a.m. local time. NHK reported that Kumagai suffered extensive claw injuries to her face and head consistent with a bear attack, and local officials confirmed that licensed hunters would begin increased patrols of the high-risk area starting Friday.

    Wildlife scientists have traced the steady rise in bear conflicts across Japan to a combination of interconnected environmental and demographic shifts. A 2025 Japanese government survey found that the national brown bear population has doubled over the past 30 years to roughly 12,000 individuals, while the population of Asian black bears—responsible for the vast majority of attacks on humans, and common across most of Honshu, Japan’s largest main island—has grown to 42,000. Experts note that warming temperatures have boosted food supplies for bears, including acorns, deer, and wild boar, creating ideal conditions for population growth even as rural human populations decline.

    This population boom has created what experts describe as “overcrowding” in Japan’s mountainous regions, which cover roughly 80 percent of the country’s total land area. Overcrowding forces younger, bolder bears to stray beyond mountain boundaries into rural villages and towns, where many quickly develop a taste for easy access to farmed crops and cultivated fruits such as persimmons. Compounding this issue, a poor acorn and nut harvest in 2025 pushed large numbers of bears out of the mountains and into populated areas in search of food, leading to last year’s record number of conflicts. Depopulation and population aging in rural Japan have also left large swathes of former farmland abandoned, creating extra habitat for bears and expanding their range closer to remaining human settlements.

    While 2026 forecasts for natural bear food sources are more favorable, local media reports show that bear sightings this spring have already hit record levels as animals emerge hungry from hibernation. The Yomiuri Shimbun reported that the number of confirmed sightings in April across Miyagi, Akita, and Fukushima prefectures was roughly four times higher than the same period in 2025. Koji Yamazaki, one of Japan’s leading bear experts and director of the Ibaraki Nature Museum, warned that Tohoku region residents must remain vigilant through the spring, despite his prediction that 2026 will ultimately see fewer conflicts than 2025’s historic high.

    “I’m not sure yet why we’re seeing this kind of unprecedented damage so early in the spring,” Yamazaki told AFP. “Given that all the incidents have occurred relatively close to settlements and the bodies have been severely damaged, I suspect a bear has eaten them.” Yamazaki added that the Tohoku region has one of the densest bear populations in the country, following 20 years of consistent population growth, and that abandoned land from depopulation and aging has only worsened the overlap between bear territory and human communities. For context, brown bears— which can grow to more than 500 kilograms and run faster than the average human—are limited almost exclusively to Hokkaido, Japan’s northernmost main island, while smaller black bears are widespread across Honshu and linked to most deadly attacks.

  • Inside the jails where Russia breaks Ukraine prisoners ‘like dogs’

    Inside the jails where Russia breaks Ukraine prisoners ‘like dogs’

    A bombshell investigation by Agence France-Presse (AFP), built on first-hand testimonies from three former Russian prison staff, surviving Ukrainian detainees and family members of the missing, has pulled back the curtain on a widespread, state-backed system of brutality inflicted on thousands of Ukrainian prisoners of war and civilian detainees held in Russian-controlled detention facilities.

    The harrowing accounts paint a picture of routine, unpunished abuse that senior Russian leadership explicitly authorized, with detainees describing even the most physically and psychologically resilient men being “broken like dogs” under relentless violence and dehumanization. AFP has verified the identities of the former prison officers, who have all fled Russia since speaking out, and changed their names in reporting to protect their safety.

    Multiple sources confirm that the scale of abuse exploded after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, following years of mistreatment that began when conflict broke out in eastern Ukraine in 2014. As of early 2024, Ukrainian data puts the number of Ukrainian prisoners of war held by Russia at roughly 7,000, with an additional 15,378 civilians illegally detained across Russian territory and occupied Ukrainian lands. The Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office has recorded at least 143 Ukrainian detainee deaths in Russian custody over the past four years.

    One anonymous former Russian special forces prison officer, Sergei, who resigned and left Russia after refusing to participate in the violence, told AFP that senior commanders explicitly stripped away all operational rules for guards interacting with Ukrainian detainees ahead of the invasion. “Before the first mission, the head of our territorial group gathered the staff and said that the existing rules would no longer apply when dealing with prisoners of war,” he recalled. “In other words, he gave us carte blanche to use physical force without restriction. And no one would be held responsible. The boss told us: ‘Be severe, fear nothing anymore.’” Sergei added that many of his colleagues embraced the open permission for brutality, acting on unchecked sadistic impulses without any documentation of violence. To hide the abuse, unit members did not wear identification tags or use body cameras when interacting with Ukrainian detainees, and no incident reports were ever filed after violent crackdowns.

    Alexei, a former medic at a Russian prison infirmary, described one particularly horrific case: a young Ukrainian lieutenant who was beaten nearly to death for talking back to his captors, left with extensive festering bruises across his lower body, and denied any meaningful medical care. He died of gangrene in October 2022, likely buried in an unmarked grave, and Alexei never even learned his name. Alexei confirmed that Ukrainian prisoners who resisted breaking under abuse were regularly beaten with rigid polypropylene heating pipes, and even medical staff were complicit in the mistreatment. Survivors are only given superficial wound care after beatings, and are required to publicly thank the Russian Federation for the treatment, he said. Independent investigations have documented even more extreme medical complicity: during a surgery on a Ukrainian prisoner, Russian medical staff carved the slogan “Glory to Russia” into his abdomen; the text had to be surgically removed after he was released in a prisoner exchange.

    Surviving detainee Yaroslav Rumyantsev, a 30-year-old former Ukrainian marine who surrendered at the besieged Azovstal plant in Mariupol in May 2022, shared his own first-hand experience of the systematic campaign to break detainees. After surviving a deadly explosion at Olenivka prison that killed at least 50 Ukrainian detainees, Rumyantsev was transferred to Remand Centre Number 2 in Taganrog, southwestern Russia, widely known as one of the harshest torture facilities for Ukrainian prisoners. Upon arrival, he and 250 other new detainees were bound and blindfolded, then beaten on all sides by a “reception committee” of guards with batons — a brutal tactic first used in Chechnya’s filtration camps during the Second Chechen War.

    Abuse was constant, Rumyantsev said, leaving even the strongest men cowering like beaten animals. “Men who defended their land, who went to the gym — strong men — were broken like dogs. They destroy them,” he explained. Brutal torture methods documented by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) include rape, mock executions, simulated hangings, electric shocks (including to genitalia), forced prolonged standing in painful positions, and punitive group torture: Rumyantsev described being forced to hold hands with other prisoners while guards ran electricity through the line to test how many people would feel the pain.

    Food deprivation is used as a tool of dehumanization. Rumyantsev said he was often given just two minutes to eat a meal under threat of additional beating, and other former detainees told rights groups that extreme hunger forced them to eat caught cockroaches and raw mice found in their cells. Additional arbitrary rules strip away any remaining dignity: prisoners are banned from looking guards in the eye, and Rumyantsev recalled being forced to stand in a group for 16 consecutive hours without access to a toilet, leaving many detainees to urinate on themselves.

    Beyond physical violence, the system is designed to psychologically break detainees through forced re-education and total isolation from the outside world. Detainees are regularly forced to sing Soviet songs, with punishment for singing too softly or off-key. Most are cut off from all contact with family, mirroring the isolation of Stalin-era gulags. Rumyantsev received only one letter from home shortly before his 2024 release, and said it was the only time he allowed himself to cry in captivity. “I saw those first warm words… and my eyes filled with tears. I was shaking and my friend put his hand on my shoulder and said, ‘That means you’re still a human being,’” he recalled.

    Vladimir Osechkin, director of the Russian rights group Gulagu.net (which documents abuse in Russia’s prison system and helped share two of the former officers’ testimonies with AFP), explained that the torture regime is jointly run by Russia’s FSB security service and federal prison authorities, with the complicity of the Russian judicial system. To hide the abuse, Osechkin said, Ukrainian detainees are deliberately made “invisible” within the penal system: their names are sometimes changed, they are held in segregated facilities — including entire prisons emptied of other inmates to eliminate witnesses — and their whereabouts are kept hidden from international monitors and family members.

    This isolation leaves thousands of families in agonizing limbo, waiting for any word of missing loved ones. Natalia Kravtsova’s son Artem, an Azov brigade fighter captured in Mariupol in 2022, was confirmed to be in Russian custody by the Red Cross a year after his capture, but she has had no contact with him since. She is not even sure he is still alive, and every prisoner exchange announcement brings a burst of hope that quickly shatters. “Even if you’re calm on the outside, inside you’re burning,” she said.

    Civilians are not spared the systematic brutality. In occupied Melitopol, 62-year-old schoolteacher Olga Baranevska was abducted in May 2024 for refusing to cooperate with Russian occupation authorities, and sentenced to six years in prison on fabricated explosives charges that her family calls completely baseless. Her daughter Aksinia Bobruiko, a refugee in Germany, only learned two months after her arrest that she was alive, and has almost no additional information. Bobruiko now works with the grassroots NGO “Numo, Sestry!” (“Come on, my sisters!”) founded by former detainee Liudmyla Guseynova, who spent three years in pro-Russian detention after being arrested for supporting Ukraine in 2019. Guseynova described being held in 50 days of isolated confinement in a dungeon, forced to stand all day with a bag over her head, and held in a cramped, filthy cell shared with 20 other detainees that had only a hole in the floor for a toilet and insect-infested mattresses. She recalled investigators refusing to approach her because of the stench and bedbugs covering her body.

    Official data from an October 2023 OSCE report, drawing on Ukrainian official records, found that 9 out of 10 Ukrainian detainees report being ill-treated, with 42% reporting sexual violence. Most released detainees are severely emaciated after months or years of mistreatment. Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly claimed that Russia treats detainees humanely, and Russia’s federal prison administration did not respond to AFP’s requests for comment on the investigation.

    Rights campaigners are calling for all those responsible for the systematic abuse to be held accountable before an international court. “We will find them and punish them all,” vowed Sergei, the former Russian prison special forces officer who blew the whistle on the system.

  • Indonesia volcanic eruption kills three hikers: officials

    Indonesia volcanic eruption kills three hikers: officials

    A devastating volcanic eruption on Indonesia’s Halmahera Island has claimed three lives and left 10 hikers unaccounted for, local authorities confirmed Friday. Mount Dukono, one of the Southeast Asian nation’s nearly 130 active volcanoes, burst into activity early Friday, blasting a dense column of ash 10 kilometers into the sky.

    Among the three fatalities are two foreign hikers and one local resident from the nearby island of Ternate, North Halmahera Police Chief Erlichson Pasaribu told Indonesia’s Kompas TV. Seven hikers managed to descend the mountain safely, while five others suffered injuries in the blast, according to Indonesia’s National Disaster Mitigation Agency (BNPB).

    What makes this incident particularly sobering is that the entire area surrounding the volcano was officially designated off-limits to visitors last month, after vulcanologists detected a sharp uptick in volcanic activity. Pasaribu confirmed that the group of hikers deliberately ignored multiple warnings, including public appeals on social media and physical barricades posted at the trailhead. “Local residents understand the risk and avoid climbing,” he said. “Many of these hikers are foreign tourists looking to create social media content.”

    Joint rescue teams from the regional disaster management agency BPBD and the National Search and Rescue Agency Basarnas have been deployed to conduct search operations and evacuate stranded climbers, but the mission has faced significant challenges. The mountain’s rugged terrain is only accessible by vehicle for the lower portion of the climb, forcing rescuers to carry stretchers the rest of the way. Persistent volcanic rumbling and ongoing unstable activity have further slowed progress, Pasaribu added.

    Lana Saria, head of Indonesia’s government Geology Agency, noted that the early-morning eruption was accompanied by loud booming explosions, with ash drifting predominantly northward. She warned that nearby residential areas and the city of Tobelo must remain on high alert for falling volcanic ash, which poses risks to public health and can disrupt local air and ground transportation.

    Indonesia, an archipelagic nation spanning thousands of islands across Southeast Asia, sits on the Pacific “Ring of Fire”, a geologically active zone where frequent collisions between tectonic plates create regular seismic and volcanic activity. Mount Dukono currently stands at level two on Indonesia’s four-tiered volcanic alert system. Since December, the Center for Volcanology and Geological Hazard Mitigation (PVMBG) has maintained a mandatory exclusion zone banning all visitors within four kilometers of the volcano’s active Malupang Warirang Crater.

  • Caged and fed ‘cookies’: Rescuing Armenia’s captive bears

    Caged and fed ‘cookies’: Rescuing Armenia’s captive bears

    High in the misty Caucasus highlands of Armenia, three Syrian brown bears — Nairi, Aram, and their young cub Lola — now roam spacious, natural mountain enclosures, digging dens and foraging for fresh produce that mimics their wild diet. It is a stark contrast to the life they escaped just over a year ago: confined to a cramped three-meter cage in the heart of Armenia’s capital Yerevan, forced to sit in their own waste and fed a steady diet of sugary junk food. For these three bears, the rescue was a life-changing second chance, but conservationists warn that as many as 20 more bears remain trapped in inhumane captivity across the country, held as luxury status symbols by the nation’s wealthy elite.

    The problem of captive wild predators in Armenia is not a new one, rooted in long-standing patterns of illegal wildlife trafficking and elite trophy collecting that have persisted since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Strategically positioned at the crossroads of Asia and Europe, Armenia has become a key transit and destination hub for illegal wildlife trafficking, according to global crime research. A 2023 Global Organized Crime Index report identifies persistent demand for rare and dangerous wild animals among the country’s ultra-wealthy, where owning large predators has become a display of power and social status.

    High-profile cases have brought the issue into public view for decades. In 2015, an Armenian member of parliament drew widespread international criticism after publicly acknowledging he kept six endangered Siberian tigers on his private property. The crisis reached a breaking point in 2016, when a private zoo owned by a businessman in the northern city of Gyumri collapsed into insolvency, leaving dozens of caged animals — including lions and bears — to starve to death behind locked gates.

    Today, the Frontline for the rescue mission is run by the Foundation for the Preservation of Wildlife and Cultural Assets (FPWC), a local non-profit that operates Armenia’s only dedicated bear rehabilitation center on a remote mountainside an hour outside Yerevan. Rescuers have documented appalling conditions across the country’s unregulated captive sites: bears are confined to tiny concrete cages at hotels, private backyards, and even roadside petrol stations, denied access to natural sunlight and the ability to hibernate, a critical biological need for the species. Many suffer from severe health issues caused by inappropriate diets, with widespread rotting teeth resulting from being fed cookies, sugary snacks, and even Coca-Cola by their untrained owners.

    “It became clear the moment we mapped the scale of the crisis that we needed a dedicated rescue and rehabilitation space,” explained Tsovinar Hovhannisyan, FPWC’s conservation manager. The three bears Nairi, Aram and Lola were among the most high-profile rescue operations the group has ever completed. Their owner refused to hand the animals over, claiming the bears were “happy” living with him and accusing rescuers of threatening their lives. The team waited more than eight hours in heavy rain for a court order to enter the property and seize the animals. When they finally entered the cage, Hovhannisyan recalled, the space was caked in layers of filth and reeked of waste: “It was horrible, those are memories I will not forget.”

    Now, with Armenia scheduled to host a major UN COP summit on biodiversity this October, the FPWC team is racing against time to rescue the remaining 20 known captive bears across the country. But the mission faces a critical barrier: the rehabilitation center is already at maximum capacity, home to 32 bears that can never be released back into the wild after a lifetime of captivity left them unable to hunt. The organization is currently fundraising to expand its enclosures to accommodate more rescued animals.

    Wealthy owners often see large predators like bears as a bragging right, says FPWC communications manager Ani Poghosyan. “It is a status symbol for them. Something to brag about, especially owning a big predator — it is a way to prove their power and masculinity.” Even when owners initially agree to surrender the animals, many change their mind at the last minute, leaving rescuers empty-handed after traveling to remote properties.

    For the bears that do make it to the center, the team works to recreate as wild an environment as possible. Enclosures are large enough for the animals to roam, dig their own winter dens, and climb trees, and staff provide live prey to encourage natural foraging behaviors. After years trapped in tiny cages, many newly rescued bears are initially afraid to explore the full space of their new enclosures, used to being confined to a few square meters. But over time, most begin to exhibit natural behaviors, including hibernation, something they were never able to do in their former cages.

    While the bears will never be able to survive in the wild, the center’s mission is simple: give them the chance to live out the rest of their lives as bears. “They need to dig, they need to climb, they need to smell wild plants and feel free,” said Narine Piloyan, the center’s coordinator. “They need to feel that they are wild.”

  • Rebel Wilson accused of ‘complete revision of history’ as defamation case closes

    Rebel Wilson accused of ‘complete revision of history’ as defamation case closes

    A high-profile defamation case centered on Hollywood star Rebel Wilson has wrapped its closing arguments in an Australian court, with both sides trading starkly conflicting accounts of events that unfolded on Sydney’s Bondi Beach back in 2023. The lawsuit was filed by 2021 Western Australian acting academy graduate Charlotte MacInnes, a rising young performer who landed a lead role in Wilson’s directorial debut feature *The Deb*. MacInnes accuses Wilson of spreading false, reputation-ruining claims about her across two series of Instagram posts in 2024 and 2025, and is now seeking aggravated damages for the alleged harm. At the heart of the legal battle is a specific incident that took place in September 2023, when MacInnes joined *The Deb* producer Amanda Ghost for a daytime swim at the iconic coastal spot. Court testimony confirmed that Ghost suffered a sudden, severe allergic reaction to the cold ocean water, breaking out in painful red welts and experiencing uncontrollable shaking. To help her recover, the pair retreated to Ghost’s nearby luxury rental apartment to warm up. What followed is the subject of intense dispute: MacInnes ran a bath for the ailing producer, stepped into the tub herself to get warm while both women remained in their swimwear, and Ghost joined her shortly after. Ghost’s assistant even brought hot drinks to the pair and sat with them briefly, confirming no inappropriate behavior occurred in the moment, according to the plaintiff’s legal team. In a sworn affidavit, Wilson claimed that the day after the incident, MacInnes approached her saying Ghost had pressured her into joining the bath, which left her feeling sexually uncomfortable. Wilson stated that she was deeply troubled by the account and suspected a sexual advance had taken place. Two days later, Wilson followed up with MacInnes via phone, however a text message Wilson sent to Ghost immediately after that call, which was entered into court evidence, read: “Charlotte says all good. She just meant ‘it was a bizarre situation’ not that she felt personally uncomfortable x.” MacInnes’s legal team, led by senior barrister Sue Chrysanthou, has argued that Wilson’s entire narrative of the incident is a deliberate, malicious falsification. In closing statements, Chrysanthou slammed Wilson’s account as a “complete revision of history” that defies basic logic, pointing out that Ghost was experiencing a medical emergency at the time, making any coordinated sexual advance impossible. She went as far as labeling Wilson a “fantastical liar” who invented the “terrible” claims against MacInnes for personal gain during contract negotiations for *The Deb*, where Wilson was seeking a larger payout from producers. The plaintiff’s team also added accusations that Wilson engaged in a pattern of bullying against female crew and cast members on the set of the film, a claim Wilson has repeatedly dismissed as “absolute nonsense.” An additional allegation claims that Wilson commissioned a smear website to target Ghost, a charge she also firmly denies. On the defense side, Wilson’s lawyer Dauid Sibtain SC pushed back against MacInnes’s claims, arguing that the young actress has altered her account of the incident over time to secure professional benefits from the film’s production team. Sibtain told the court that MacInnes’s career has not suffered any harm from Wilson’s social media posts — in fact, he noted, her career has flourished in the years since the incident, with her landing a major record deal and multiple additional acting roles through connections to Ghost, as he alleged she was promised in exchange for retracting any claims of harassment. The case has now completed three weeks of testimony and closing submissions, with Justice Elizabeth Raper expected to reserve her decision on the case. This is not the only legal trouble Wilson is currently navigating: the actress is already facing two separate lawsuits from *The Deb* producers, including one filed in Australia and another in the United States, both originating from disputes tied to the production of the film.

  • Food industry warns oil crisis will drive up cost of Australian groceries

    Food industry warns oil crisis will drive up cost of Australian groceries

    Australian consumers are bracing for steeper grocery bills, after a confluence of geopolitical tensions in the Middle East, spiking oil prices and global supply chain disruptions has created a ‘perfect storm’ that is raising costs across every segment of the domestic food supply network. In a stark public warning issued this week, the Australian Food and Grocery Council (AFGC) confirmed that the ongoing United States-Iran conflict has created persistent instability in global energy markets, keeping crude oil and fuel prices at elevated levels that have not receded despite widespread market expectations for stabilization.\n\nAFGC chief executive Colm Maguire explained that the ripple effects of the Middle East crisis have touched every node of the food and grocery supply chain, from agricultural production to retail shelves. ‘This is a fundamental shift in the cost of doing business. From the fertilisers used on our farms to the fuel in the trucks that transport goods and the energy powering our factories, every single link in the chain is more expensive,’ Maguire told NewsWire in an interview.\n\nThe industry body, which represents more than 200 food, beverage and grocery manufacturers across Australia, is currently conducting a granular, product-by-product assessment to quantify how the ongoing oil crisis will translate to higher shelf prices for consumers. ‘There is no simple answer to how much prices will rise, it is a very complex scenario,’ Maguire noted. ‘The inputs we are dealing with range from fertiliser and oil through to transport, energy production and plastic packaging costs. We will be facing this elevated cost environment for a considerable period of time.’\n\nUnlike broad-based pricing adjustments that can be rolled out quickly, Maguire said supermarkets cannot simply apply a uniform percentage price hike across all products to offset the oil price shock. Instead, individual producers and suppliers must calculate the unique impact of the crisis on their own operating margins before passing adjusted costs through to retailers and end consumers.\n\nThe sharp rise in fuel costs was triggered in March, when activity through the Strait of Hormuz – the critical global chokepoint through which roughly 20% of the world’s daily crude oil consumption passes – was effectively blocked, creating massive bottlenecks that cut global supply volumes significantly. Before the Middle East conflict escalated in January, benchmark crude traded at approximately $US56 ($A78) per barrel. In the months since, prices have fluctuated between $US100 and $US110 ($A138 to $A152) per barrel, with every $10 per barrel increase translating to an extra 10 cents per litre for Australian motorists and freight operators.\n\nWhile higher transport costs are the most obvious impact for most consumers, Maguire emphasized that the cost pressures extend far beyond moving goods across the country. ‘It is complex even for us. From a consumer perspective or even a leadership perspective, it is hard to understand the sheer number of products and processes that oil and petrochemicals touch,’ he said. ‘Everything from the wrapping that goes around the bread to the bottles that hold milk through to tissue boxes and nappies sees broad impacts. Early on, the focus was all on fuel and petrol prices, but the flow-on effects for oil-dependent packaging – which is incredibly important in the grocery industry – are an inevitable added cost.’\n\nFor months, Australian manufacturers, suppliers and retailers absorbed as much of these increased costs as possible to shield consumers already grappling with a widespread cost-of-living crisis, but Maguire warned that the cumulative pressure has become too great to absorb, meaning price hikes are now unavoidable for consumers.\n\nThe strain is already visible across Australia’s agricultural sector, where producer margins are being stretched to breaking point. A separate new report from Rabobank finds that Australian dairy producers are entering the 2026/27 production season with a ‘limited margin for error’ as compounding input costs continue to squeeze profitability.\n\nRaboResearch senior dairy analyst Michael Harvey said that while seasonal growing conditions have improved across most major dairy regions, these modest gains are not enough to offset the persistent upward pressure on production costs. ‘Pressure is building across the broader value chain,’ Harvey explained. ‘Processors are facing higher packaging costs, driven by a spike in global resin prices directly linked to the global oil supply crisis. At the same time, energy and processing costs have increased, as have distribution costs, reflecting higher energy and freight prices, further adding to the cost of getting products to market.’\n\nDairy producers have already begun implementing price hikes to cope with the rising pressure. In late April, Norco chief executive Michael Hampson confirmed that the farmer-owned dairy cooperative would increase milk prices by five cents per litre to cover elevated freight costs. ‘This increase is expected to add about 30c per week to the average household grocery bill, but it will deliver an additional $1m per month back to struggling farmers,’ Hampson said. The announcement came as industry groups warn that broader milk price surges are on the horizon.\n\nMajor national retailers and processors have already adjusted producer payments in response to the crisis. Woolworths announced it would increase payments to farmers supplying its private-label Farmers Own Brand by 10 cents per litre, supporting around 20 small-scale producers. Lactalis, Australia’s largest dairy company which owns popular brands including Ice, Oak and Pauls, will add an extra five cents per litre to payments for more than 800 farm suppliers starting May 1. The industry peak body Australian Dairy Farmers is calling for a permanent 20% across-the-board increase in milk prices, arguing that after suppliers, retailers and government take their respective cuts, the increase would leave producers with enough additional revenue to cover rising costs.\n\nHarvey confirmed that Australian consumers have already started seeing higher milk prices at the checkout due to these compounding input cost pressures. ‘A renewed cycle of food price inflation, including for dairy, would further test consumer resilience,’ he said. ‘Households are already adjusting their shopping behaviour, increasingly trading down to lower-cost private-label products and prioritizing value over well-known brands.’\n\nHarvey added that price increases beyond the farm gate have left processors with little remaining capacity to absorb additional cost shocks, increasing the risk of broader food inflation that could put upward pressure on interest rates in the coming months.

  • Rebel labelled ‘fantastical liar’ whose own witnesses ‘destroyed’ her credit as her blockbuster defamation trial closes

    Rebel labelled ‘fantastical liar’ whose own witnesses ‘destroyed’ her credit as her blockbuster defamation trial closes

    One of Hollywood’s most high-profile legal disputes, a defamation lawsuit brought by actor Charlotte MacInnes against A-lister Rebel Wilson over claims made during production of Wilson’s directorial debut *The Deb*, has reached its final stage after two weeks of hearings at Sydney’s Federal Court. As Justice Elizabeth Raper prepares to issue a ruling, closing arguments delivered Friday painted sharply conflicting portraits of the two stars at the center of the case.

    The dispute traces back to an incident at Bondi Beach in September 2023, when producer Amanda Ghost suffered a sudden medical episode that left her with severe hives and uncontrollable shaking. After the incident, Ghost and MacInnes — Wilson’s co-star in the upcoming musical comedy — took a bath together in swimwear to help ease Ghost’s symptoms.

    Wilson has claimed that MacInnes privately told her she felt uncomfortable following the bath, before later retracting the complaint to advance her acting career. In a series of 2024 Instagram posts, Wilson publicly shared these claims, moves Sue Chrysanthou SC, MacInnes’ barrister, described as a public takedown of the young rising actor. MacInnes has repeatedly denied ever raising a complaint of discomfort or misconduct, saying the entire narrative was fabricated by Wilson.

    In her closing submissions, Chrysanthou delivered a blistering attack on Wilson’s credibility, arguing that testimony from the Hollywood star’s own witnesses had completely undermined her version of events. “She is a fantastical liar who has made up terrible, terrible allegations against multiple people, and her own witnesses have discredited her,” Chrysanthou told the court. She further argued that any claim of sexualized misconduct was inherently illogical, given the context of the emergency incident: “On the question of inappropriate and sexual behaviour, when one accepts the circumstances of why they were in the bathroom in their swimmers, freezing, one could hardly imagine a less sexy environment for some kind of harassment to occur. Shaking and hives…it’s not exactly an environment where one would accept some kind of sexual approach. It defies logic.”

    Chrysanthou highlighted key inconsistencies in Wilson’s testimony, most notably her claim that she reported the alleged complaint to local film producer Greer Simpkin the day after the incident and was instrumental in the decision to move MacInnes out of the shared Bondi penthouse. Simpkin — called as a witness by Wilson’s legal team — testified that she first learned of the incident a full week later, when Ghost approached her to arrange the move, directly contradicting Wilson’s account. Chrysanthou called Simpkin’s testimony “devastating” for Wilson, saying the entire narrative of Wilson taking prompt responsible action as director was a deliberate fabrication, not an innocent mistake. “This is a concoction by Ms Wilson … that she apparently took responsible steps as a director and reported it to the local producer, and then took advice from her to raise it with Ms Ghost. This is not an error, this is a concoction,” she said.

    Rebuffing the claim that Simpkin’s testimony destroyed Wilson’s credibility, Dauid Sibtain SC, Wilson’s lawyer, argued the producer did not have a clear, flawless recollection of the timeline of events, and had simply given the best testimony she could offer. Sibtain pushed back against the assertion that Wilson had invented the story, arguing there was no logical motive for his client to disrupt production harmony and create conflict between Ghost and MacInnes. He maintained that Wilson is a “witness of truth” who accurately reported the complaint she received, noting “A senior producer and a junior actor being in a bath together, if anyone heard that and no other facts, one would assume a complaint would be imminent.” He also counterclaimed that MacInnes had given false testimony under oath, pointing to what he described as evasive answers about the professional benefits MacInnes had received through her connection to Ghost.

    Chrysanthou rejected the defense’s arguments outright, retorting: “That’s what she does. She is a liar who makes up stories about people, it’s hard to explain why.” She also told the court that the lawsuit had taken a devastating toll on the young actor, who has not received new acting work since the dispute became public and has suffered from severe anxiety that has disrupted her sleep and appetite. “It’s actually beggars belief my friends have suggested that my client is living her dreams,” Chrysanthou said. “No young woman dreams to be pulled into the spotlight by a celebrity…and lied about.”

    After closing arguments concluded, Justice Raper reserved her decision, with no timeline for a ruling released as of yet.

  • EU monitor says sea temperatures near all-time highs as El Nino looms

    EU monitor says sea temperatures near all-time highs as El Nino looms

    Against a backdrop of accelerating long-term human-caused global warming, the European Union’s official climate monitoring body has warned that global sea surface temperatures are on the cusp of hitting unprecedented all-time highs, as the planet moves toward the formation of a potentially powerful El Nino weather event.

  • Kawsar Ahmad, Zeinab Ahmad: Women charged after returning from Syrian camp appear in Australian courts

    Kawsar Ahmad, Zeinab Ahmad: Women charged after returning from Syrian camp appear in Australian courts

    A 53-year-old woman and her 31-year-old daughter made their first court appearance in Melbourne on Friday, just hours after being taken into custody upon their arrival back in Australia from Syria, with legal teams confirming plans to apply for bail for both defendants early next week.

    Kawsar Ahmad, who also goes by the name Kawsar Abbas, faces four separate charges linked to crimes against humanity: enslavement, possession of a slave, use of a slave, and participation in slave trafficking. Her daughter Zeinab Ahmad, alternatively recorded as Zeinab Ahmed, faces two counts of enslavement and use of a slave. Every charge carried by the pair carries a maximum 25-year prison sentence if convicted.

    The two women were among a group of 13 Australian citizens — four adult women and nine children — repatriated from northern Syria this week, landing on Australian soil on Thursday evening. They were taken into custody by authorities immediately after clearing customs at Melbourne Airport. A third daughter of Kawsar Ahmad, Zahra Ahmad, who is the widow of notorious killed Islamic State recruiter Muhammad Zahab, was allowed to leave the airport without arrest.

    Before the pair were taken into custody, chaotic confrontations broke out at the airport between supporters of the repatriated group and members of the media, as supporters escorted the group to a waiting minibus to leave the terminal.

    Investigative allegations from Australian police outline that the two women first traveled to Syria with their extended family back in 2014, and had been held by Kurdish-led forces at the Al Roj displacement camp in northern Syria since March 2019. Authorities allege that while the family was living in Syria, they held captive and enslaved multiple Yazidi women, members of an ethnic minority group native to northern Iraq who were targeted by the Islamic State for systematic enslavement and genocide.

    When the case was called at Melbourne Magistrates’ Court on Friday morning, the public gallery was filled to capacity with journalists, legal observers, and supporters of the two women. Around 10 additional attendees were forced to stand along the perimeter walls of the gallery due to the lack of available seating. Court observers noted that Kawsar Ahmad scanned the room after taking her place at the defense table, before locking eyes with her group of supporters and smiling. Both women remained in the clothing they wore when they were arrested on Thursday.

    Bill Doogue, legal counsel for Kawsar Ahmad, informed the court that the defense would formally submit a bail application on the coming Monday. Minutes later, Maya George, Zeinab Ahmad’s attorney, confirmed her team would also pursue bail for her client in line with the same timeline.