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  • Lebanon, Israel to hold new talks in US as ceasefire nears end

    Lebanon, Israel to hold new talks in US as ceasefire nears end

    As a fragile ceasefire between Lebanon and Israel approaches its scheduled expiration, the two long-adversarial nations are preparing to convene a new round of US-mediated peace negotiations in Washington, set to kick off Thursday. The talks come against a grim backdrop of intensifying Israeli airstrikes that have claimed dozens of lives just one day before negotiations get underway, deepening skepticism that a lasting truce can be reached.

    On Wednesday, Lebanon’s Ministry of Health confirmed that 22 people, among them eight children, were killed in a wave of intensified Israeli attacks across the country. Lebanon’s state-owned National News Agency (NNA) reported that the strikes targeted roughly 40 locations across southern and eastern Lebanon, sending civilian communities into renewed panic. This latest escalation brings the total death toll from Israeli strikes during the current ceasefire period to more than 400, according to an Agence France-Presse tally compiled from official Lebanese government data.

    The current truce first went into effect on April 17, and was extended for three weeks during the last round of talks held at the White House on April 23. During that previous meeting, then-President Donald Trump announced the ceasefire extension and publicly predicted that he would host a landmark first summit between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Lebanese President Joseph Aoun in Washington before the truce expired. That planned summit never materialized: Aoun pushed back, stating that a full security agreement and a complete end to Israeli attacks would be required before any high-level meeting could take place. The extended ceasefire is now set to expire on Sunday.

    Israel has repeatedly rejected calls to halt its military campaign, vowing to continue targeting Hezbollah, the Iran-backed Shia political and armed movement. Hezbollah launched its cross-border retaliatory campaign in late February, following the assassination of Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei at the opening of the US-Israeli regional war. “Anyone who threatens the State of Israel will die because of his actions,” Netanyahu stated last week, after an Israeli strike deep in central Beirut killed a senior Hezbollah commander.

    A senior Lebanese official, speaking to AFP on condition of anonymity, outlined Lebanon’s core priority for the upcoming talks: “The first thing is to put an end to the death and destruction. We will seek the consolidation of the ceasefire.” Iran, a key external stakeholder in the conflict, has already rejected US appeals to accept a peace deal on Washington’s terms, demanding a permanent ceasefire in Lebanon before any agreement to end the wider regional conflict can be reached. The ongoing Middle East war has already spilled across national borders, roiling global energy and commodity markets and disrupting daily life for hundreds of millions of people across the region.

    In a separate development that added to regional tensions this week, Netanyahu’s office announced Wednesday that the Israeli prime minister had made an unannounced secret visit to the United Arab Emirates, where he met with UAE President Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan. UAE officials quickly issued a public denial, rejecting all reports of the visit and adding that no Israeli military delegation has been received on Emirati soil. The UAE has faced repeated attacks from Iran during the wider regional war.

    Since Israel launched its large-scale offensive against Hezbollah in early March, more than 2,800 people have been killed in Lebanon, according to Lebanese official data, with at least 200 of the dead being children. Hezbollah has confirmed that the toll includes its fighters. Israel has heavily bombed majority-Shia areas of Lebanon, including the southern suburbs of Beirut, and has reoccupied a stretch of border territory that it held from the 1982 Lebanon invasion until its full withdrawal in 2000.

    The US, which is brokering the latest talks, has publicly backed Lebanon’s claim to full sovereignty over all its territory, while simultaneously pressuring Lebanese authorities to disarm Hezbollah. “The United States recognizes that comprehensive peace is contingent on the full restoration of Lebanese state authority and the complete disarmament of Hezbollah,” a recent State Department statement read. “These talks aim to break decisively from the failed approach of the past two decades, which allowed terrorist groups to entrench and enrich themselves, undermine the authority of the Lebanese state, and endanger Israel’s northern border.”

    This will be the third round of official talks between Lebanon and Israel, which have never maintained formal diplomatic relations. Unlike the April round, which was hosted by Trump at the White House, neither Trump nor Secretary of State Marco Rubio will attend the upcoming two-day meeting at the State Department, as the president is currently undertaking a state visit to China. Leading the US mediation team will be Mike Huckabee, the US ambassador to Israel, an evangelical pastor and open supporter of Israel’s regional military ambitions; Michel Issa, the US ambassador to Lebanon, a Lebanese-born businessman and long-time golf associate of Trump; and Mike Needham, a senior advisor to Rubio. Lebanon’s delegation will be led by special envoy Simon Karam, a veteran diplomat and lawyer who has long advocated fiercely for Lebanese sovereignty, alongside the country’s Washington-based ambassador. Israel’s negotiating team will be headed by Yechiel Leiter, Israel’s ambassador to the US, a close ally of Netanyahu with deep ties to the Israeli settler movement in the occupied West Bank.

  • Australian giant Coles misled shoppers with fake discounts, court rules

    Australian giant Coles misled shoppers with fake discounts, court rules

    One of Australia’s dominant retail giants, Coles Supermarkets, is staring down substantial financial penalties after a landmark federal court ruling found it deliberately misled shoppers through deceptive fake discount promotions.

    The case, brought by Australia’s national consumer and competition regulator, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), centered on Coles’ widely advertised “Down Down” price promotion campaign that ran across hundreds of grocery and household items between February 2022 and May 2023. The ACCC argued that the so-called discounts were anything but genuine: Coles had strategically hiked product prices temporarily before rolling out the promotional campaign, tricking consumers into thinking they were saving money when no actual discount existed.

    On Thursday, Justice Michael O’Bryan – who is also currently presiding over an identical pending case against Coles’ biggest rival, Woolworths – sided fully with the regulator. In his ruling, O’Bryan confirmed that the vast majority of the promotions in question failed to qualify as genuine discounts. Out of 14 representative product samples submitted as evidence during the trial, 13 were found to have misled the average everyday consumer. The only promotion that escaped the ruling was for Nature’s Gift Dog Food, which O’Bryan noted did not display a previous “was” price on its promotional ticket, eliminating the misleading context.

    Justice O’Bryan laid out a clear regulatory standard in his written judgement: for a discount referencing a prior higher price to be considered legitimate, the product must have been sold at that higher price for a minimum of 12 consecutive weeks immediately before the promotion launches. “The Down Down tickets for the sample products would not have been misleading if the products had been sold at the ‘Was’ price for a minimum period of twelve weeks immediately preceding the Down Down promotion,” he wrote.

    Coles, which had consistently denied all allegations of wrongdoing throughout the proceedings, said in a post-ruling statement that it is currently reviewing the court’s decision. The company emphasized that it has “always been focused on delivering value to our customers”, and added that the ruling underscores “the need for clear, practical guidance on minimum price establishment periods to ensure the retail industry can avoid unnecessary litigation in future”.

    The ruling comes amid growing public and regulatory scrutiny of Australia’s two largest supermarket chains, which together control roughly two-thirds of the country’s entire grocery market. Over the past 12 months, both companies have faced widespread accusations of price gouging and anti-competitive behaviour amid a national cost-of-living crisis that has put household grocery budgets under unprecedented pressure. The ACCC has already launched an identical fake discount case against Woolworths, accusing the chain of misleading consumers across 266 products over a 20-month period, with a ruling expected from the same judge later this year.

    The size of Coles’ penalties will not be determined until follow-up hearings at a later date, but legal and regulatory experts widely expect the fine to be substantial, sending a strong warning to the retail industry about deceptive pricing practices.

  • ‘Promised to us’: The Israelis dreaming of settling south Lebanon

    ‘Promised to us’: The Israelis dreaming of settling south Lebanon

    Nearly 18 months after a cross-border incursion that ended in forced removal by Israeli military forces, Ori Plasse still recalls the rush of what he calls a ‘homecoming’ in southern Lebanon. For the 51-year-old contract farmworker and veteran West Bank settlement activist, that short, unauthorized trip only reinforced a decades-long ideological belief: the entire region between the Nile and Euphrates rivers, including modern-day southern Lebanon, was divinely promised to the Jewish people, and Israeli civilians must claim it.

    Plasse is one of the growing ranks of Uri Tzafon – Hebrew for ‘Awake, North Wind’ – a far-right fringe settler movement co-founded in 2024 by Anna Sloutskin, a 37-year-old research biologist who lives in an Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank. Sloutskin launched the group in honor of her brother, Israel Sokol, an Israeli soldier killed in Gaza earlier that year, who she says harbored a lifelong dream of settling in Lebanon’s green, snow-capped northern landscapes.

    Today, the movement counts dozens of member families and has built a robust online presence, with more than 600 followers on its WhatsApp channel and over 900 on Telegram, where it shares invites to strategy meetings and maps marking what it claims are ancient Jewish settlements across southern Lebanon. Its core goal is unambiguous: push the Israeli border north to the Litani River, which sits roughly 30 kilometers inside current Lebanese territory, bar the return of Lebanese civilians displaced by recent conflict, and formally annex the area as part of the State of Israel.

    “The IDF goes in, conquers, and clears. And afterwards we must not withdraw, but settle,” Sloutskin explained from a hilltop lookout dedicated to her brother near the Karnei Shomron settlement in the northern West Bank. For Sloutskin, establishing permanent Israeli civilian settlement in southern Lebanon is not just an ideological quest – it is a core national security imperative that would break the cycle of cross-border attacks from the Iran-backed Hezbollah group.

    The ongoing conflict between Israel and Hezbollah has already displaced more than one million Lebanese people from the south. After Israeli forces invaded parts of southern Lebanon earlier this year, a ceasefire took hold in mid-April, and bilateral negotiations are currently underway in Washington to resolve the border dispute. The Israeli military has not ruled out keeping troops in the area long-term, but has given no timeline for a potential withdrawal.

    While the Israeli government has not publicly endorsed the movement’s plan to settle southern Lebanon, it has already greenlit massive expansion of illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, where far-right cabinet ministers have openly called for full annexation of the territory. More than 500,000 Israelis currently live in settlements across the West Bank (excluding East Jerusalem) that are deemed illegal under international law, alongside roughly three million Palestinian residents.

    Sloutskin claims the movement already has quiet backing from some sitting Israeli lawmakers and even cabinet ministers. Last month, the group posted a photo of a meeting between Sloutskin and Environmental Protection Minister Idit Silman, with a caption confirming the territorial takeover agenda was raised during the discussion. Plasse added that the movement plans to court more political support ahead of Israel’s general elections scheduled for later this year, though he acknowledged that most politicians have so far offered only vague, non-committal responses.

    The movement has already attempted small-scale, direct action to advance its goals. A year and a half ago, Plasse and a small group of activists crossed into Lebanon through an open border gate to plant trees and pitch a tent, hoping to jumpstart a new settlement outpost – a tactic that echoes the rapid growth of informal outposts across the occupied West Bank. He was quickly escorted out by Israeli soldiers, but he calls the experience transformative. In February 2025, the group organized another tree-planting event along the border, posting photos of smiling children beside Israeli flags and protest placards. Two participants crossed the border fence during the event, prompting a public condemnation from the Israeli military, which called the incident a criminal act that endangered both civilians and service members.

    At his home in northern Israel’s Moshav Sde Yaakov, Plasse keeps a shipping container stocked with supplies for future settlement construction: mattresses, sleeping bags, plastic sheeting, and a vintage book of maps showing Israel’s claimed borders stretching from Egypt to Iraq. He also proudly displays a certificate of appreciation for Gaza settlement activism, signed by high-profile far-right Israeli officials including National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir and Knesset Deputy Speaker Limor Son Har-Melech.

    Though settling southern Lebanon remains a fringe position within Israeli society today, both Sloutskin and Plasse say they are confident their agenda will gradually move into the mainstream. In their view, popular pressure from grassroots activists is what will ultimately drive territorial change. “Ultimately, it has to be the people who want it,” Sloutskin said. “The people must lead.”

  • AFL 2026: Alastair Clarkson won’t add to the ‘undue speculation’ surrounding Carlton

    AFL 2026: Alastair Clarkson won’t add to the ‘undue speculation’ surrounding Carlton

    The sudden mid-season departure of Carlton head coach Michael Voss has sent shockwaves through Australian rules football, triggering widespread industry disruption that veteran North Melbourne coach Alastair Clarkson has labeled deeply concerning and destabilizing for the entire competition.

    Voss stepped down from his role with the Blues with immediate effect last Friday, a move that quickly ignited rampant rumors across the league. The discussion has centered primarily on who will fill Carlton’s vacant head coaching position, with most league figures openly speculating about untried assistant coaches across the competition being linked to the role. Clarkson, however, has opted to step back from the hype, arguing that the constant speculation places unfair pressure on clubs, coaches and their families across the sport.

    “As fellow coaches, we just don’t like what it does to the industry when a coach departs mid-season,” Clarkson told reporters. “It’s not just bad for the coach himself and his family – it creates uncertainty for the entire club that loses a leader. This situation creates a ripple effect that extends all the way through the competition. We’re already seeing it in the constant questions about which assistant coaches could be in the running for the opening.”

    Clarkson pushed back on suggestions that his own assistant coaches at North Melbourne would be early candidates for the Carlton job, while acknowledging that his coaching staff’s strong work would likely go underappreciated until the Kangaroos climb the league ladder. “We’ve got some great assistant coaches at this footy club,” he said. “Unfortunately, the reality right now is that their excellent work isn’t going to get the full recognition it deserves until our team starts climbing up the competition standings. Once that happens, I have no doubt our assistants will be in very high demand for top roles.”

    Beyond coaching speculation, Clarkson also addressed rampant rumors that North Melbourne would make a move for star Carlton defender Jacob Weitering if he chooses to seek a trade in the upcoming player transfer window. He argued that this sort of cross-league rumor-mongering is exactly the harmful fallout that makes mid-season coaching exits so disruptive for the entire sport.

    “Same sort of thing with all the list management talk that’s popping up everywhere – that’s why this whole situation is sort of disturbing for everyone in the industry,” Clarkson explained. “When a change like this happens at one club, it generates endless noise around player movement and instability that spreads to every corner of the league. It hits the affected club hardest, obviously, but the ripple effect that touches players and coaches across every side is just an unfortunate downside of how our industry works now. You can’t avoid it entirely, but we just want to let all the dust settle and see what unfolds over the next six weeks before making any moves.”

    In other North Melbourne list management news, Clarkson confirmed that the club’s contract team has already begun work on locking in emerging tough midfielder George Wardlaw to a new deal. The head coach expressed full confidence that the young talent will re-sign with the Kangaroos, saying he sees Wardlaw as a core part of the club’s long-term future.

    “I don’t have all the details on contract negotiations right now,” Clarkson said with a laugh. “But what I do know is that George is a fantastic young player, and we’ve been thrilled with everything he’s contributed to this club so far. He still has so much room to grow and so much more to give to this team, and we’re really excited to watch him develop. His contract situation will work itself out – his management team and our list management staff will sort through the details in good time. I don’t think he’s going anywhere, and I don’t see him wanting to leave this club any time soon.”

  • Historic Swiss solar-powered plane crashes into sea

    Historic Swiss solar-powered plane crashes into sea

    One of aviation’s most groundbreaking sustainable technology experiments has met an unexpected end. Solar Impulse 2, the Swiss-engineered solar-powered aircraft that made global history in 2016 by completing the first ever fuel-free circumnavigation of the globe, has crashed into the Gulf of Mexico during a post-conversion test flight, its former owner confirmed recently.

    When it completed its landmark journey seven years ago, Solar Impulse 2 redefined what renewable energy-powered flight could achieve. Piloted alternately by Swiss explorers Bertrand Piccard and Andre Borschberg, the aircraft completed its round-the-world trip across 17 separate legs of travel. Over a total cumulative flight time of 23 days, it covered 43,000 kilometers (26,700 miles), crossing four continents, two oceans and three seas without relying on a single drop of traditional jet fuel.

    The aircraft changed hands three years after its record-setting voyage, when it was acquired by U.S.-based aerospace firm Skydweller Aero. The company had launched an initiative to convert the legendary manned plane into an autonomous long-endurance drone, designed to support a range of operations including military and scientific missions. According to an official statement released by the firm this Tuesday, the doomed flight was part of a planned controlled ditching exercise tied to a U.S. Navy test program.

    Skydweller Aero confirmed that the aircraft departed from Stennis, Mississippi on April 26 for the test flight, but crashed into the Gulf of Mexico on May 4. Despite the crash, the company noted that the test campaign had already achieved a major milestone: an 8-day and 14-minute continuous flight that proved the feasibility of perpetual solar-powered flight for military operations in real-world conditions.

    The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board has launched an official investigation into the accident to determine the root cause of the crash. Industry observers note that while the loss of the iconic aircraft is unexpected, the technological breakthroughs it enabled during its historic career will continue to inform the development of sustainable and long-endurance solar aviation for years to come.

  • Indian pharma fuels Africa’s ‘zombie drug’ and opioid crisis

    Indian pharma fuels Africa’s ‘zombie drug’ and opioid crisis

    West Africa is currently grappling with an explosive, deadly opioid epidemic that can be traced directly to unregulated, high-strength tapentadol exports from Indian pharmaceutical manufacturers, a months-long Agence France-Presse investigation has confirmed. Sold openly at roadside kiosks and unlicensed street pharmacies across the region, these cheap, unapproved pills are not only driving widespread addiction and death but are also being mixed into the devastating “zombie drug” kush, worsening an already catastrophic public health emergency.

    Unlike regulated prescription painkillers sold globally, the tapentadol flooding West African markets comes in doses so potent that no national regulatory authority anywhere in the world has authorized them for human use. Despite India’s 2025 pledge to crack down on this illicit trade after international outcry over harm caused to African communities, customs and shipment records reviewed by AFP show millions of dollars worth of these unapproved high-strength pills continue to flow out of Indian ports every month, bound for Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Ghana and other West African nations where even low doses of tapentadol are explicitly banned. Many shipments are deliberately mislabeled as “Harmless Medicines for Human Consumption” to evade border inspections.

    Public health and law enforcement officials across the region say the crisis has reached catastrophic levels. In Sierra Leone, where kush mixed with tapentadol has already been declared a national emergency, authorities collect hundreds of bodies of overdose victims from streets, open-air markets and overcrowded slums every three months — just in the capital Freetown alone. Ansu Konneh, director of mental health at Sierra Leone’s ministry of social welfare, described the addition of tapentadol to the already destructive kush cocktail as “very alarming”. Freetown-based public health researcher Ronald Abu Bangura confirmed that tapentadol is now ground into powder and mixed with kush for distribution, adding that the drug is “being misused all over the place”.

    AFP’s investigation cross-checked licensing numbers on seized tapentadol tablets across four West African nations against Indian export records, linking multiple prominent Indian pharmaceutical firms directly to the illicit trade. Gujarat Pharmaceuticals, whose manufacturing license number appeared on seized tablets in both Sierra Leone and Guinea, has been listed in export monitoring databases as a major tapentadol supplier to the region. Merit Organics, another Gujarat-based company, also had its license number found on seized shipments in Guinea. Madhya Pradesh-based McW Healthcare exported more than $1 million worth of 250mg tapentadol tablets to Sierra Leone and Nigeria after India’s February 2025 ban, while PRG Pharma shipped multiple consignments mislabeled as harmless medicines. The investigation also identified Syncom Formulations as the largest single tapentadol exporter to West Africa by value, moving nearly $15 million worth of unapproved pills into the region after the ban, most mislabeled as general harmless medicines.

    When contacted by AFP, the Nigerian importer for McW Healthcare was listed at a Lagos address that turned out to be a small camera repair shop with no valid pharmaceutical import permit, with Nigerian health authorities labeling all such shipments explicitly illegal. Notably, PRG Pharma’s director is a shareholder in Maiden Pharmaceuticals, the Indian company blamed by Gambian authorities for the deaths of 69 children in 2023 from contaminated cough syrup.

    Experts say the shift of Indian generic drug manufacturers to flood African markets with unapproved opioids follows decades of heavy regulation of opioid sales in wealthy nations, which have seen more than one million opioid-related deaths in the United States alone. For many low-income workers across West Africa, tapentadol is not initially used for recreational purposes: motorbike taxi drivers, market porters and artisanal gold miners take the drug to endure long hours of brutal, back-breaking labor, using it as a makeshift pain reliever and performance enhancer. Abubakar Sesay, a motorbike rider in Freetown who navigates bone-rattling unpaved backroads for a meager income, told AFP, “It energises my body to ride day and night. Without it, I can’t survive.” The pills are also used as an appetite suppressant for people who cannot afford regular meals, and even as a form of currency to pay ransoms for kidnapping victims. Criminal groups and extremist organizations including Boko Haram have also been documented using the drug to build courage for violent attacks.

    Nigeria’s National Drug Law Enforcement Agency reports that opioids are now the second most commonly used illicit drug in the country, after cannabis. The agency seized more than two billion high-strength tapentadol pills in 2023 and 2024 alone. Vanda Felbab-Brown, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a leading expert on transnational opioid trafficking, told AFP that weak regulation and limited enforcement capacity in West African nations has created a permissive environment for unscrupulous Indian manufacturers. “This creates opportunities for unscrupulous Indian companies to sell products that are problematic, dangerous, harmful or outright illegal to African countries,” she said. “It’s a prime situation for trafficking networks from India to try to get people hooked.”

    A recent report from the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime found that 90% of all global tramadol seizures over the past decade have occurred in West and Central Africa. After India classified tramadol as a controlled narcotic in 2018, manufacturers simply shifted to producing and exporting tapentadol, which experts note is two to three times more potent than tramadol and far more dangerous. Today, lab testing in Sierra Leone shows that nearly all pills sold on the street as tramadol are actually unregulated high-strength tapentadol, with the similar-sounding name helping the drug slip under the radar of underfunded regulators.

    Analysis of shipment data conducted by AFP confirms that nearly 75% of all tapentadol exported to West Africa since India’s 2025 crackdown is the unapproved 225mg and 250mg dosage form. Andrew Somogyi, a professor of pharmacology at the University of Adelaide, told AFP he is not aware of any country that has approved 225mg tapentadol tablets for medical use. He questioned “why a country would want that strength except to bypass regulatory and commercial restrictions”.

    India’s national drug regulator, the Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation, told AFP it has “no record” of issuing export approvals for 225mg and 250mg tapentadol, and did not respond to repeated follow-up questions about the ongoing trade. The Indian Drug Manufacturers’ Association, the country’s leading pharmaceutical industry body, defended its members, arguing that legitimate manufacturers who follow domestic export procedures cannot be held responsible for misuse or diversion after the product leaves India. Jaydip Patel of Gujarat Pharmaceuticals told AFP the company’s exports were legal because the importer provided the required authorization letter, and added that manufacturers shifted from tramadol to tapentadol because tapentadol “is easier to export because it is not classified as a narcotic”. When AFP visited Gujarat Pharmaceuticals’ facility in Godhra in January, the building was deserted, with charred tablet fragments and ash scattered across the grounds following a recent fire. None of the other named manufacturers responded to requests for comment.

    Across the region, regulatory officials have confirmed that tapentadol of any strength is illegal in their countries. Ghana’s Food and Drugs Authority says it has never issued a permit for tapentadol importation or manufacturing, while Nigeria’s food and drug agency states that any tapentadol found in the country is unauthorised and illegal. Sierra Leone only allows 50mg tramadol to be administered in licensed health facilities, meaning all tapentadol traded on the street is explicitly banned.

    Most alarmingly, officials report the drug is now spreading to children and young adults, including primary school students who split tablets into smaller pieces to mix with energy drinks for a stronger high. In Sierra Leone, where the population still carries physical and mental scars from a decade-long civil war, informal detox centers chain addicts to beds for months to force them through cold turkey withdrawal, as the country’s limited official rehab facilities are overwhelmed. Mental health director Konneh noted that many addicts do not even recognize tapentadol as a dangerous drug, because it is packaged and sold as a legitimate medication. “The tragedy is that even addicts seeking help tell us, ‘I’ve stopped taking kush, I’m just taking tapentadol tablets.’ They don’t see that to be a problem to their health,” he said.

  • Australians cut spending on petrol and travel as interest rate hikes bite

    Australians cut spending on petrol and travel as interest rate hikes bite

    After a period of relentless interest rate increases and skyrocketing global fuel prices, Australia’s household spending has dipped – but not nearly as sharply as many economic analysts had warned, new data from the country’s largest lender Commonwealth Bank (CBA) reveals.

    CBA’s latest monthly spending tracking shows Australian households cut their overall spending by 1.2% in April compared to March, a decline driven largely by a sharp pullback in fuel expenditure following emergency government intervention. The federal government in early April rolled out a temporary $2.5 billion cut to fuel excise, alongside a GST rebate, to ease the pressure of March’s record-high fuel prices that pushed crude costs from $US60 a barrel at the start of March to over $US100 a barrel by month’s end. Treasury projects crude prices will remain above $US80 ($A110) a barrel through the next financial year, keeping cost pressures alive for motorists.

    Belinda Allen, CBA’s head of Australian economics, noted that while broad spending has softened amid rising borrowing costs and geopolitical uncertainty from the Iran conflict, the slowdown has not turned into the dramatic consumer retrenchment many forecasters predicted. “To date, weakness in sentiment due to the conflict in Iran and higher interest rates is not yet translating into a sharp pullback in discretionary spending,” Allen explained. “Petrol price movements continue to have a big impact on the month-to-month swing in household spending, and we expect households to do much of the heavy lifting over coming months in slowing spending and cooling inflation.”

    The April spending data captures the impact of the Reserve Bank of Australia’s (RBA) back-to-back rate hikes in February and March, but does not yet reflect the third rate increase implemented in May, which lifted the cash rate to 4.35% following three consecutive cuts in 2025. The overall spending trend aligns with recent remarks from RBA Governor Michele Bullock, who has pushed back on narratives of an imminent consumer collapse, noting that plummeting consumer confidence has not translated to equally sharp spending cuts.

    “Confidence has been low for some time but the consumers have been continuing to spend,” Bullock said in March. “So there’s this issue about the relationship between consumer confidence in these surveys and what people actually do. I think the consumer confidence numbers for some time have been reflecting basically concerns about how much things cost.”

    Breaking down April’s spending figures, CBA found a split performance across sectors: six of 12 tracked spending categories recorded growth, while the other six contracted. Even after removing the large monthly drop in fuel spending, overall household spending still dipped by a mild 0.2% seasonally adjusted. The hardest-hit category outside transport was recreation spending, which fell 2.6% month-on-month, marking the second-weakest performance of all sectors. On an annual basis, recreation is the only category still recording negative growth.

    Allen attributed the recreation decline primarily to cutbacks in travel-related spending, a trend tied to broader economic uncertainty and cost-of-living pressures. “It appears households may be lowering their travel-related consumption in the face of higher costs and uncertainty from the conflict in Iran. This is picked up in the broader recreation category,” she said. “Declines in annual spending growth were recorded in travel-related categories such as online travel bookings, ticketing services, travel agencies, commercial airlines and accommodation.”

    These travel and recreation cutbacks were partially offset by continued growth in hospitality spending, which rose 0.2% in April and 6.2% over the 12 months prior, showing persistent consumer demand for in-person dining and leisure services despite broader economic headwinds. The softer-than-expected spending pullback suggests Australian households are adjusting gradually to higher borrowing and energy costs, rather than facing the severe economic contraction many experts predicted just months earlier.

  • Man City ease past Palace to keep pressure on Arsenal

    Man City ease past Palace to keep pressure on Arsenal

    The English Premier League’s 2024-25 title race has tightened to a stunning climax, after Manchester City secured a comfortable 3-0 victory over Crystal Palace at the Etihad Stadium on Wednesday that cut Arsenal’s lead at the top of the table to just two points with only two matches remaining for City.

    With a grueling fixture schedule stretching into the final weeks of the season, Pep Guardiola made the call to rotate his squad heavily, making six changes from the starting 11 that defeated Brentford 3-0 over the weekend. Star striker Erling Haaland and dynamic winger Jeremy Doku both started the match on the bench, while Crystal Palace manager Oliver Glasner also made several adjustments to his own lineup ahead of his side’s upcoming UEFA Conference League final. Despite the rotated squad, City never looked troubled on a damp evening in Manchester, taking firm control of the contest before halftime with two quick goals and adding a third late on to cap the win.

    The opening goal arrived in the 32nd minute, crafted by Phil Foden’s exquisite backheel pass that put Antoine Semenyo in on goal. Semenyo finished calmly, slotting the ball past Crystal Palace goalkeeper Dean Henderson into the far corner to break the deadlock. Eight minutes later, Foden was once again the architect, setting up Egyptian forward Omar Marmoush to score his third Premier League goal of the season, putting City 2-0 up going into the halftime break. The second half was a largely uneventful affair, though defender John Stones – who is set to leave the club at the end of the campaign – received a raucous standing ovation from the Etihad crowd when he came on as a late substitute. Minutes after Stones’ introduction, the match’s final goal arrived: young French midfielder Rayan Cherki carried the ball from his own half to set up Savinho, who finished cleanly past Henderson to put City three goals up.

    The result leaves City on 77 points, two points behind leaders Arsenal, but Guardiola’s side hold a narrow advantage in goal difference of plus one, having scored seven more goals across the campaign than the Gunners. The title race has swung dramatically over the past fortnight: City had clawed back ground to put themselves in pole position, but a costly 3-3 draw at Everton last weekend restored Arsenal’s comfortable lead. Just two days before City’s match against Palace, Arsenal survived a late scare to beat West Ham 1-0, after a stoppage-time equalizer for the Hammers was ruled out following a lengthy VAR check, keeping the Gunners in the driving seat.

    City now turn their attention to a major cup test this weekend, as they face Chelsea in the FA Cup final at Wembley Stadium on Saturday, targeting a domestic cup double having already won the League Cup earlier this season. Defending his decision to rotate heavily against Palace, Guardiola emphasized the need for squad depth in a congested fixture list, saying: “When the schedule is so tight, everybody is fit, everybody needs to help.”

    Despite City’s win, Arsenal remain overwhelming favorites to claim their first Premier League title since 2004. If Mikel Arteta’s side beat already-relegated Burnley next Monday, City will need to take all three points against Champions League-chasing Bournemouth the following day to keep their title hopes alive. The final matchday of the season falls on May 24, when Arsenal travel to face Crystal Palace, while City – who currently hold a 14-match unbeaten run in league play – host Aston Villa at home.

    Speaking after the final whistle, Foden insisted City will not give up their title bid, noting that anything can happen in the final stretch of the campaign. “It’s a team game at the end of the day. If you want to win titles and trophies it’s about a full squad and everyone playing their part,” Foden told Sky Sports. “The aim is to keep pushing and keep them on their toes. We’ve seen a lot of things can happen on the final day. I’ve experienced it many times when the game doesn’t go your way. We just have to keep pushing and doing our part.”

    For Crystal Palace, all focus now shifts to their first major European final, as they prepare to face Rayo Vallecano in the UEFA Conference League final in Leipzig on May 27. The match will be Glasner’s final game in charge of the south London club.

  • AFL 2026: Western Bulldogs will ‘tread carefully’ with Tim English

    AFL 2026: Western Bulldogs will ‘tread carefully’ with Tim English

    The Australian Football League’s Western Bulldogs are moving deliberately and cautiously with star ruckman Tim English’s return to competitive play, after a fresh head knock reignited long-standing concerns over the athlete’s repeated concussion history.

    English’s latest injury occurred during last weekend’s victory over Port Adelaide, when he collided in a training drill with teammate Matthew Kennedy. Speaking to reporters on Thursday morning, Bulldogs head coach Luke Beveridge emphasized that the club would prioritize the athlete’s long-term health over a rapid comeback, stressing that no timeline for his return has been finalized.

    “We haven’t got an update for you today, we’ll wait and see how he goes over the next week and what his availability will be,” Beveridge told reporters. “I think because of his history — he’s been out of action at different times and spent a whole pre-season a couple of years ago non-contact — we’ll tread carefully.”

    English’s history of head injuries dates back to 2021 and 2022, when he sustained multiple concussions that forced him to sit out all contact drills during the 2024 pre-season to prioritize recovery. Without their starting ruckman, the Bulldogs have been forced to throw two inexperienced young tall players, Lachie Smith and Louis Emmett, into the rotation earlier than club officials had planned.

    Beveridge acknowledged that the club’s recruiting team is actively exploring the option of adding a supplementary ruckman via the upcoming mid-season draft, to ease the pressure on the club’s underprepared young talent. “Obviously, Lachie Smith has played a bit recently and dipped his toe in the water,” Beveridge said. “Louis Emmett has played some minutes there as a young player who is probably not ready for the ruck position, definitely not ready to be frank, but he’s a competitor and he’s done his best for us. It’s something that we’re thinking about, but is there a player available? And our recruiters are working through that at the moment.”

    The Bulldogs are also taking a measured approach to the return of veteran midfielder Tom Liberatore, who has not seen game action since Round 6. While Liberatore also has a recent concussion, Beveridge noted that the primary barrier to his comeback is a knee injury, with the head injury listed as a secondary concern.

    “He’ll be a while, Tom … he’s a fair way away with that knee,” Beveridge said. “Concussion I think is secondary at the moment, for me, we’re not really talking about it, we’re talking about the knee. He’ll have some tests along the way around the concussion, but I think it’s mainly just about the knee at the moment.”

  • France blames stomach bug for new cruise outbreak, lifts lockdown

    France blames stomach bug for new cruise outbreak, lifts lockdown

    In the wake of a sudden illness outbreak aboard a British cruise ship anchored off western France, local authorities have cleared asymptomatic passengers to disembark, after confirming that a common gastrointestinal virus — not the internationally concerning hantavirus linked to a recent fatal outbreak on another vessel — is the cause of the illness. The incident, which sparked initial public alarm following the death of a 92-year-old British passenger, has been brought under control through targeted precautionary measures.

    The Ambition, operated by UK-based Ambassador Cruise Line, carrying 1,233 passengers (the vast majority from Britain and Ireland) and 514 crew members, first reported a spike in gastrointestinal symptoms among passengers when it docked in Brest, Brittany, on Monday. The 92-year-old passenger died before the ship reached the Brittany port, and initial reports of his death alongside dozens of sick passengers triggered swift action: French officials ordered a full temporary lockdown of the vessel, which later sailed to its scheduled stop in Bordeaux, where it remained anchored while health officials conducted testing.

    Local government and regional health authorities confirmed in an official statement Wednesday that testing ruled out any connection to the hantavirus outbreak that killed three people on the Dutch-flagged MV Hondius, an incident that had already stoked global public health anxiety. They confirmed the outbreak on the Ambition is a viral gastrointestinal infection, with no severe cases recorded among those affected. Officials also clarified that the 92-year-old passenger’s death was caused by a heart attack, and no link has been found between his death and the gastroenteritis outbreak. Per international conventions, the man’s body remains on the vessel pending next steps.

    French authorities noted that the full lockdown was implemented out of an abundance of caution, specifically to prevent unnecessary public panic amid ongoing attention to the Hondius hantavirus incident. As of Wednesday, asymptomatic passengers were permitted to leave the ship, while those showing symptoms of the virus remain in isolation aboard the vessel. The cruise line confirmed that cases of illness began rising after new passengers boarded in Liverpool, UK, on Saturday, during the ship’s scheduled itinerary.

    The Ambition departed the Shetland Islands, Scotland, on May 6, made stops in Belfast and Liverpool before arriving in Bordeaux, and was originally scheduled to sail from Bordeaux to Spain before returning to Liverpool on May 22. Passengers aboard the ship described a calm atmosphere despite the temporary lockdown, with many continuing routine activities. “We are onboard with extra sanitation guidelines in place. It is not as bad as it was during Covid. People just going about as normal,” Seos Guilidhe, a 52-year-old passenger from Belfast, told AFP via Facebook while playing bingo aboard the ship Wednesday, before confirming that restrictions had been lifted and asymptomatic passengers were allowed to disembark. For infected passengers, however, the experience has been far less comfortable: “Two of us in one cabin with the bug is a challenge,” one infected passenger wrote on social media.