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Ticker

Summit

World

Was China summit just political jockeying?

The leaders of China, North Korea and Russia stood shoulder to shoulder as high-tech military hardware and thousands of marching soldiers filled the streets of Beijing. Two days earlier, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping huddled together, smiling broadly and clasping hands at a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation. The gatherings in China this week could be read as a striking, maybe even defiant, message to the United States and its allies. At the very least, they offered yet more evidence of a burgeoning shift away from a US-dominated, Western-led world order, as President Donald Trump withdraws America from many of its historic roles and roils economic relationships with tariffs.

AP

Military

Australia

Submarine on show as crew stretch legs

Australian seamen and women will soon return to the briny deep after enjoying some well-earned rest and relaxation. HMAS Farncomb is docked at Melbourne’s Station Pier, the first Collins class submarine to visit the city in 2025. The electric-powered submarine’s crew of about 80 is at the tail end of their seven-day stay and preparing to dive again. Leading seaman Gerard, whose surname has been withheld by AAP for safety reasons, made the most of the time on dry land. The Victorian native took a trip to the snowfields with friends and gave his family a tour of his unique workplace. ”They were very impressed,“ the acoustic warfare analyst said. 

AAP Newswire

Security

USA

Crackdown a mixed bag in DC

In a swath of the nation’s capital that sits across the tracks, and the river, residents can see the Washington Monument, the Waldorf Astoria — formerly the Trump Hotel — and the US Capitol dome. What the people of Anacostia cannot see are the National Guard units patrolling those areas. And they don’t see them patrolling on this side of the Anacostia River, either. In this storied region of Washington, home to Frederick Douglass, the crime that President Donald Trump has mobilised federal law enforcement to address is something residents would like to see more resources dedicated to. But it’s complicated.

AP

Turkey

World

Five killed in migrant boat crash

Five people were killed and another severely wounded when a boat carrying migrants hit a Turkish coast guard vessel off northwest Turkey, a local governor’s office said, adding a search operation was underway for a missing person. In a statement, the governor’s office said a high-speed boat carrying 34 migrants and one migrant trafficker hit the coast guard vessel off Ayvalik district’s Badavut coast.

Reuters

Argentina

World

Buenos Aires polls test Milei

Voters across Argentina’s most populous province of Buenos Aires headed to the polls to choose lawmakers in an unusually high-stakes local election seen as a referendum on the performance of libertarian President Javier Milei and a bellwether for crucial midterms next month. The Buenos Aires provincial election is polarised between Milei’s recently formed libertarian party and Peronism, the ideologically flexible populist movement that has held sway in Argentina for decades. Milei, whose barely 4-year-old La Libertad Avanza party has subsumed much of the centre-right, views this a chance to embarrass the Peronist opposition led by former President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner in its historic stronghold.

AP

Migration

USA

Deal reached for Hyundai worker release

More than 300 South Korean workers detained following a massive immigration raid at a Hyundai plant in Georgia will be released and brought home, the South Korean government announced Sunday. Presidential chief of staff Kang Hoon-sik said that South Korea and the US had finalised negotiations on the workers’ release. He said South Korea plans to send a charter plane to bring the workers home as soon as remaining administrative steps are completed.

Reuters

Africa

World

Boko Haram massacres 60

Boko Haram militants killed dozens of people in a nighttime assault on a village in northeastern Nigeria that is home to residents who had recently returned from a camp for internally displaced persons, authorities said. The attack on Darul Jamal in the Bama local government area took place late Friday and killed at least 60 people, said villager Mohammed Babagana. Borno state Governor Babagana Zulum, who visited the attacked community late Saturday evening, confirmed to reporters that over 60 died in the attack.

AP

Germany

Europe

€10bn for civil protection

The German government wants to invest €10 billion ($12 billion) in civil protection and disaster management by 2029, Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt told Bild newspaper. ”We are upgrading our civil protection,“ said Dobrindt, a member of the governing conservatives’ Bavarian sister party. The plans come against the backdrop of growing geopolitical tensions, as well as the threats of extremism and so-called hybrid attacks, that might include attacks on the electricity grid and disinformation campaigns for example.

Reuters

Politics

Europe

Wealth tax key to Norway polls

Prosperous Norway is holding an election on Monday with inequality high on the list of concerns and the future of a wealth tax that has endured for over a century in doubt. There is expected to be a close outcome between the centre-left bloc led by the Labor Party of Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre, Norway’s leader for the past four years, and a right-wing bloc. Labor wants to keep the wealth tax that has been a mainstay of Norwegian policy since 1892. Of its rivals on the right, the Conservatives want it reduced and the Progress Party, which calls for lower taxes and more immigration controls, wants it scrapped. Previously a fringe issue, it has been at the heart of this campaign. Around 4.3 million people in the nation of some 5.6 million are eligible to vote for the new 169-member parliament, or Storting. Official results are expected on Tuesday. They are usually followed by weeks of horse-trading to form a coalition and agree on cabinet positions.

AP

Trade

World

Sanctioned Russian LNG leaves Chinese port

A tanker carrying liquefied natural gas from Russia’s sanctioned Arctic LNG 2 project has departed from a Chinese port, shiptracking data showed, a day after it berthed there. Sunday’s LSEG data indicated that the Russian Voskhod LNG tanker was sailing southwards after leaving anchor at an LNG terminal in the port of Tieshan in China’s southwestern region of Guangxi.

Reuters

Sweden

Europe

Mining plans threaten traditional culture

High atop the Luossavaara Mountain in northern Sweden, Sami reindeer herder Lars-Marcus Kuhmunen mapped out a bleak future for himself and other Indigenous people whose reindeer have roamed this land for thousands of years. An expanding iron-ore mine and a deposit of rare-earth minerals are fragmenting the land and altering ancient reindeer migration routes. But with the Arctic warming four times faster than the rest of the planet, herders say they need more geographic flexibility, not less, to ensure the animals’ survival. If a mine is established at the deposit of rare-earth minerals called Per Geijer, which Sweden heralds as Europe’s largest, Kuhmunen said it could completely cut off the migration routes used by the Sami village of Gabna.

AP

Conservation

Australia

Huge koala park gives logging the chop

A state government has stared down a lobbying campaign from logging advocates and will push ahead with plans for a large-scale koala national park while hitting pause on tree-felling. Critics say the move will hammer jobs and undermine the nation’s timber supply when harvesting within the proposed park’s boundaries is paused from Monday. The NSW government on Sunday revealed its long-awaited plan for the Great Koala National Park, an election promise to conserve the marsupial’s habitat. The plan will reserve 176,000 hectares of state forest - a far larger footprint than the logging industry wanted - to be connected with existing national parks to create a 476,000ha reserve, protecting more than 12,000 koalas in the state’s north.

AAP Newswire