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Federal court dismisses case against airline but judge says five women can refile claims for damages against subsidiary Matar

Fitch cut to negative comes as country moves away from reliance on growth from property sector

Exclusive: Aboriginal affairs minister David Harris is hopeful the process will build community trust after crushing voice defeat

Mobile units will be deployed on high streets to identify wanted people - including repeat offendersThe government is investing more than 55m in expanding facial recognition systems - including vans that will scan crowded high streets - as part of a renewed crackdown on shoplifting.The scheme was announced alongside plans for tougher punishments for serial or abusive shoplifters in England and Wales, including being forced to wear a tag to ensure they do not revisit the scene of their crime, under a new standalone criminal offence of assaulting a retail worker. Continue reading...

In today's newsletter: Despite protests and the fact that almost three-quarters of Israelis want the PM to quit, huge obstacles stand in the way of his exit Sign up here for our daily newsletter, First EditionGood morning. Almost three-quarters of the Israeli public want Benjamin Netanyahu to resign as prime minister. More than two-thirds say he is handling the war in Gaza badly. And more than half think his government is not doing enough to bring the Israeli hostages held by Hamas home.Now the ultranationalists he relies on to prop up his fragile coalition are warning that they will bring the government down if he does not go ahead with a major assault on Rafah - and the opposition leaders who joined his war cabinet, Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot, are coming under increasing pressure to step down. With tens of thousands of people joining renewed protests calling for Netanyahu's removal, his political prospects would appear to be dire.Gender identity | Thousands of vulnerable children questioning their gender identity have been let down by the NHS providing unproven treatments and by the toxicity" of the trans debate, a landmark report has found. Read the key findings, an interview with author Dr Hilary Cass, and views from young trans people and their families.Israel-Gaza latest | David Cameron has confirmed the UK government will not suspend arms exports to Israel after the killing of seven aid workers in an airstrike on Gaza last week. The foreign secretary said that he had reviewed the most recent legal advice about the situation on the ground, but this left the UK's position on export licences unchanged".Politics | William Wragg has resigned the Conservative party whip days after admitting to giving out colleagues' personal phone numbers to someone he had met on a dating app. Wragg, who represents Hazel Grove, will now sit as an independent MP.Museums | A staff member who put his own art on display at Munich's Pinakothek der Moderne has been fired. The 51-year-old man had smuggled his work in the hope of achieving his artistic breakthrough".Peter Higgs | Nobel prize-winning physicist, Peter Higgs, who proposed a new particle known as the Higgs boson, has died. Higgs was awarded the Nobel prize for physics in 2013 for his work in 1964 showing how the boson helped bind the universe together by giving particles their mass. Continue reading...

More than 350 jobs to go after Warner Bros. Discovery closes all its Newshub news operations and TVNZ cuts programs and bulletinsNew Zealand's news media has been dealt a major blow after two of its primary news outlets announced programme closures and hundreds of job losses between them on the same day, leaving the country with just one state-owned news television service and many senior journalists out of work.On Wednesday morning, Warner Bros. Discovery confirmed it would close all its Newshub news operations, including the news website, the morning television show and the 6pm television bulletin, resulting in roughly 300 job losses. Continue reading...

Proponents of legislation for bloc say it will take away far-right arguments but critics claim the oppositeThe European parliament is to vote on Wednesday on sweeping new laws to overhaul its migration policy amid renewed criticism that it is feeding the agenda of the extreme right rather than protecting vulnerable people.Ylva Johansson, the home affairs commissioner who was the driving force behind the legislation, said on Tuesday that with the reforms aimed at managing migration in an orderly way", the 27-member bloc was taking a step towards neutralising the populist far right. Continue reading...

Xylazine can cause skin ulcers and overdoses and has caused multiple deaths since 2022, warn researchersPeople buying cannabis vapes and illicit sedatives to treat pain, anxiety and insomnia risk unknowingly consuming a powerful animal tranquilliser that can cause skin ulcers and overdoses.Xylazine has been prevalent in the US for several years, where it is commonly found mixed with strong opioids, such as heroin or fentanyl, and has caused thousands of deaths. Continue reading...

Fumio and Yuko Kishida honoured with state dinner to recognise flourishing' relationship between US and Japan, says Jill BidenDry-aged rib eye steak, cherry blossoms and the music of Paul Simon will be provided for the more than 200 guests expected to attend a White House state dinner being thrown for Japan's prime minister, Fumio Kishida, his wife, Yuko.A lavish state dinner is a tool of US diplomacy, and a high honour that is used sparingly and only to America's closest allies. In the case of Japan, President Joe Biden has chosen to celebrate an ally that he sees as a cornerstone of his policy toward the Indo-Pacific region. Continue reading...

Long-running dispute, featuring bizarre' photo of visa cancellation next to a steering wheel, ends with ruling that minister can rely on department summaries

US president gives some of his strongest criticism of Israeli PM yet, saying he needs to empower' Israel's negotiators to call for a truce

A search is continuing for the missing after parts of the structure collapsed and led to flooding at Enel's power station near BolognaAn explosion at a hydroelectric plant in northern Italy has killed at least three workers and injured five others, a regional fire chief said. At least four other people are missing.The blast on Tuesday was at power company Enel's decades-old Bergi plant, south of Bologna, and happened during maintenance work, according to authorities. Regional fire chief Francesco Notaro told local media that part of the nine-story underground structure collapsed, started a fire, causing flooding at depths of up to 60 meters (200 feet). Continue reading...

Leading consultant paediatrician says unproven treatments and toxicity' of trans debate damaging outcomes

Parent of trans girl says report promotes agenda that things need to be made more difficult' for children with gender dysphoria

Cass report calls for move away from mainly medical treatment as part of dramatic shift in approach to gender dysphoria

Report by Dr Hilary Cass finds young people being let down by lack of research and evidence on medical interventions

Tareck El Aissami latest in purge of politicians, human rights advocates and critics by government of Nicolas MaduroVenezuela's former oil minister Tareck El Aissami - once one of President Nicolas Maduro's closest allies - has been arrested for allegedly participating in an international scheme that syphoned off hundreds of millions of dollars from the country's state oil company.The charges against El Aissami are part of a wider government purge that has so far led to charges being brought against more than 50 people, including some of Venezuela's most important political and business figures. Continue reading...

Released detainees include some jailed for political reasons and is UK ally's biggest amnesty since Arab springBahrain has unconditionally released more than 1,500 prisoners, including political detainees, in the biggest royal pardon since the 2011 Arab spring uprising.The amnesty followed years of campaigning inside the country and by international human rights groups but came as a complete surprise to activists. Continue reading...

Isolation and lack of health insurance also correlate to reduced mammogram rates for breast cancerWomen who are low-income, socially isolated and lack health insurance are far less likely to be up-to-date on mammograms, a breast cancer screening tool experts said is critical to reducing breast cancer deaths, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).Breast cancer is one of the most common types of cancer to afflict American women, and kills an estimated 40,000 Americans each year. Cancer overall kills 605,000 Americans a year and is the second-leading cause of death, a toll the Biden administration aims to reduce through a Cancer Moonshot initiative. Continue reading...

The UK foreign secretary's Trump dinner appeared to fail to bring support for Ukraine, and his Washington meetings don't look any more promisingWhatever happened at Mar-a-Lago between David Cameron and Donald Trump on Monday night, was clearly going to stay in Mar-a-Lago.Dinner at the Trump Florida residence was always going to be a stiff test of the UK foreign secretary's influence over the former president, presidential candidate, and the man he had previously referred to variously as protectionist, xenophobic, and misogynistic. Continue reading...

Alvaro Uribe, one of country's most powerful figures, denies working with paramilitary death squads against leftist rebelsColombia's ex-president Alvaro Uribe will face trial for witness tampering and fraud, prosecutors have announced, once again casting the spotlight on allegations that the former leader partnered with paramilitary death squads in his war against leftist rebels.Uribe has long been accused of committing a litany of crimes at the peak of Colombia's six decades of brutal conflict, but has never been brought to trial, and remains one of the country's most powerful political figures. Continue reading...

Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador condemns assault by Ecuadorian officers, who dragged out ex-vice-president sheltering in missionThe Mexican president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, has condemned what he described as a despicable authoritarian" assault on his country's embassy in Quito and released dramatic images showing Ecuadorian security forces dragging the country's former vice-president from the building.Jorge Glas, the Ecuador's vice-president from 2013 until 2018, sought shelter at the Mexican mission in December claiming he was suffering political persecution. But the 54-year-old politician was arrested there on Friday after Ecuador's president, Daniel Noboa, took the extraordinary step of ordering a raid on the embassy. Continue reading...

Foreign secretary says Britain's position on export licences is unchanged' after reviewing latest legal advice

MP will now sit as independent after admitting passing details to someone he met on dating appWilliam Wragg has resigned the Conservative party whip days after admitting to giving out colleagues' personal phone numbers to someone he had met on a dating app.Wragg, who represents Hazel Grove, will now sit as an independent MP. Earlier on Tuesday he resigned as chair of the Commons' public administration and constitutional affairs committee and as vice-chair of the 1922 Committee of backbench Tory MPs. Continue reading...

UK foreign secretary also defended his meeting with Donald Trump during a press conference in WashingtonShadow chancellor Rachel Reeves also repeatedly attacked Conservative plans over non-dom tax status. Having defended the status against calls for abolition for years, in March Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt announced it would adopt Labour's policy and scrap the status. However, the way they are planning to do so has been criticised for including a significant number of loopholes.Speaking on BBC Breakfast this morning, Reeves said:The government's plans that they announced in March about non-doms, they said they were taking our policy, well it turns out they've taken it but left a load of loopholes in it. And so if you are a non-dom you can still get out of paying inheritance tax: in the first year of their policy there's a 50% discount, we don't get 50% discounts on our taxes.People who go out and work today - teachers, plumbers, doctors, they don't get a 50% discount - why should some of the wealthiest people in the country get that discount? We would abolish that and we would put that money into frontline public services, where it belongs."You can ramp it up pretty quickly. At the start you might need to bring in extra resource but then you need to train people up within the government to do this work.This isn't rocket science, previous governments have managed to close that tax gap, as it's called.We've got to invest in and improve the customer service at HMRC because, you know, we had this urgent question in parliament just before the recess, which was about HMRC closing its phone line for six months a year. Because the service was so bad, they just decided to close the phone line. And we say, look, you have to invest in digital solutions and modernise HMRC. Continue reading...

Three arrested after young activists demonstrate outside Labour leader's home, urging him to support arms embargo on IsraelRishi Sunak has condemned pro-Palestine protesters who have staged a demonstration outside Keir Starmer's house.The demonstrators called on the Labour leader to support an arms embargo on Israel. The group, called Youth Demand, hung a banner outside Starmer's home that read Starmer stop the killing" surrounded by red hand prints, and laid rows of children's shoes at his front door. Continue reading...

Exclusive: Report finds lack of funding has led to just 6% of land being managed effectively for natureNational parks are failing to tackle the biodiversity crisis, with just 6% of national park land in England and Wales managed effectively for nature, according to the first full assessment of how well they are supporting nature recovery.National parks, which cover 10% of England and 20% of Wales and this year celebrate their 75th anniversary, are not restoring nature because of a chronic lack of government funding and because they were designed for a different era, according to the report by the Campaign for National Parks (CNP) charity. Continue reading...

Former work and pensions secretary says government should investigate responsibility for overpaymentsThe government should stop pursuing carers with huge fines until it investigates whether it is to blame for overpaying them, according to a former Conservative work and pensions secretary.Iain Duncan Smith called on the department to stop hounding people for the repayments and investigate its own responsibility for the errors, some of which have left unpaid carers with criminal records and deep in debt. Continue reading...

Habibur Masum, 25, apprehended after four-day manhunt on suspicion of murdering Kulsuma Akter, 27A man police were seeking over the alleged murder of a woman as she pushed her baby in a pram has been arrested after a four-day manhunt.Habibur Masum, 25, was wanted on suspicion of fatally stabbing Kulsuma Akter, 27, as she shopped with her friend in Bradford city centre on Saturday. Continue reading...

Jennifer and James Crumbley first parents convicted in US mass school shooting over simple actions' that could have stopped itThe parents of a Michigan school shooter have each been sentenced to between 10 and 15 years in prison for their role in an attack that killed four students in 2021 in a case that has broken new ground as the US seeks to tackle its years-long epidemic of school shootings.Jennifer and James Crumbley appeared in court Tuesday as the first parents convicted in an American mass school shooting. During their trials prosecutors said tragically simple actions" by both parents could have stopped the catastrophe. Continue reading...

Owner of 4,400 UK pubs including Slug & Lettuce chain says no guarantee it can continue as going concernThe UK's biggest pubs and bars group has warned that there is no guarantee that it can continue as a going concern, as it struggles to refinance a 2.2bn debt mountain.Stonegate Pub Company, which has a network of more than 4,400 UK pubs and bars including the Slug & Lettuce and Be At One chains, said it had not yet agreed new loans to replace debt due for repayment in June 2025. Continue reading...

Progressive New York congresswoman describes resurfacing of trauma when seeing explicit materials with her image transposed on to themAlexandria Ocasio-Cortez has described her horror at discovering - midway through a discussion with aides during a car journey in February - that she had been transposed into a deepfake porn" simulation generated by artificial intelligence and posted on X.In an interview with Rolling Stone, the progressive congresswoman said the experience of coming up close to a depiction of herself performing a sex act had shown her that being deepfaked was not as imaginary as people want to make it seem".Information and support for anyone affected by rape or sexual abuse issues is available from the following organisations. In the US, Rainn offers support on 800-656-4673. In the UK, Rape Crisis offers support on 0808 500 2222. In Australia, support is available at 1800Respect (1800 737 732). Other international helplines can be found at ibiblio.org/rcip/internl.html Continue reading...

Patrick Moriarty brings together about 100 former students of his to watch solar eclipse from his driveway in RochesterA New York state teacher hosted dozens of his former students to watch Monday's eclipse, finally fulfilling a promise he made all the way back in 1978.Patrick Moriarty, 68, a former middle school science teacher, brought together about 100 ex-students of his to watch Monday's total solar eclipse from his driveway, the Washington Post reported. Continue reading...

Security agency tells Senate inquiry that violent hate groups are still inspired by Christchurch shooting

National School Resourcing Board's review finds state schools lost more than $2bn in 2022 due to a Coalition-era loophole

Reforms that address the decline in competition can deliver big economic benefits', the treasurer will tell the ACCC

This live blog is now closed, you can read more of our Ukraine war coverage hereThree people were killed in the Russian-controlled part of Ukraine's southern Kherson region by Ukrainian shelling on Monday, the Russian-installed regional head Vladimir Saldo said on Tuesday.More details to follow as we get them. Continue reading...

All agree that billions are missing from HMRC coffers but Rachel Reeves may not be looking for it in the right placesEach year His Majesty's Revenue and Customs know how much tax they would collect if all individuals and companies paid what they owed. They also know how much they have actually collected. The difference between the two figures is known as the tax gap.In the last year for which data is available, 2021-22, the tax gap stood at 35.8bn, up 5bn on the previous year. The amount of tax owing also rose, from 642bn to 739bn, so in percentage terms the tax gap remained unchanged at 4.8%. Continue reading...

Nicaragua asks UN's highest court to halt German weapons sales to Israel, alleging it is breaching obligation to prevent genocideGermany has said Israel's security is at the core" of its foreign policy because of the history of the Holocaust, but denied accusations at the UN's highest court that is aiding genocide in Gaza by arming Israel.Nicaragua has brought a case against Germany at the international court of justice (ICJ) urging judges to order a halt to German weapons sales to Israel, alleging it is in breach of its obligation to prevent genocide and ensure respect of international humanitarian law. Continue reading...

So-called TikTok taoiseach' will become Ireland's youngest ever leader when he is formally appointed by the presidentThe vote on Simon Harris' nomination has now started.Opposition parties are throwing (metaphorical) vinegar onto the anointment of Simon Harris as Ireland's new taoiseach, saying he is a product of a centre-right coalition government that has presided over a housing crisis and fraying public services and is scared of the electorate. Continue reading...

Ramsay El-Nakla charged with abduction and extortion in case linked to man who fell from block of flatsHumza Yousaf's brother-in-law has been arrested and charged following the death of a man in Dundee earlier this year.Ramsay El-Nakla, 36, has been charged with abduction and extortion in a case linked to a man who died in hospital a week after falling from a window in a block of flats in Dundee on 10 January. Continue reading...

Israel is facing mounting international pressure to allow more aid into Gaza amid threat of famineRecent tragedies in Gaza are not a reason to walk away from Israel", the former British home secretary, Suella Braverman, said.Asked if the UK should still be selling arms to Israel, Braverman told LBC: I don't think the fact that these tragedies happen is a reason to walk away from Israel, and to stop selling arms to Israel, because of that broader battle that they are engaging with." Continue reading...

County hit by severe flooding as forecasters warn heavy rain and strong winds will continue to batter parts of UKBeach huts have been blown into the sea, more than 200 people have been evacuated and fire services have warned people affected by flooding to get to high ground as Storm Kathleen hit Easter holiday hotspots along the south coast.Evacuations in West Sussex went ahead after the River Arun overflowed its banks, with further warnings that flooding may increase throughout Tuesday. Continue reading...

Some police forces in England and Wales now ask spouses to flag dangerous traits or mental health problemsSurvivors of gun crime committed by violent and coercive partners have worked with police to create a groundbreaking scheme designed to stop more dangerous offenders being allowed licensed firearms.The women have helped police frame a questionnaire that firearms officers will put to the partners of people wanting a licence, which it is hoped will flag up issues such as a propensity to violence or mental health problems. Continue reading...

Comments by Sam Rose, of the UN body for Palestinian refugees, come amid fears Israel plans to squeeze agency out of Gaza

Prosecution dropped day before trial of Dimitris Legakis, who was arrested working at a crime scene in SwanseaThe Crown Prosecution Service has admitted it was wrong to press on with a case against a news photographer arrested as he tried to lawfully take pictures at a crime scene.Judge Walters at Swansea crown court described the case against Dimitris Legakis, which was dropped on the eve of his trial, as disturbing" and said it seemed the high point" of the prosecution was that a police officer took offence" against someone whose job was to take photographs. Continue reading...

Bill, which passed the state senate and must still pass the house, is similar to one in Texas put on hold by an appeals courtLouisiana's Republican-controlled senate advanced a bill on Monday that would empower state and local law enforcement to arrest and jail people in the state who entered the US illegally, similar to embattled legislation in Texas.Amid national fights between Republican states and the Democratic president, Joe Biden, over how and who should enforce the US-Mexico border, Louisiana joins a growing list of legislatures seeking to expand states' authority over border enforcement. Continue reading...

Shadow chancellor says Labour would ramp up' number of HMRC staff to close gap between what is owed and paid

Tasmanian tribunal rules Museum of Old and New Art discriminated against NSW man by denying him entry to installation

Controversial investment bank could play important role in fate of Britain's biggest water firm