By: Michelle Grattan   Scott Morrison weighed whether to go to the G20 and COP26. The political hard heads will be thinking maybe it would have been wiser to have stayed at home.Important as it is internationally, the Glasgow conference is billed as a harm-minimisation assignment for the Prime Minister. And the G20 wasn’t expected to yield much that ...

By: Amy Remeikis, Paul Karp and Christopher Knaus Malcolm Turnbull says Christian Porter’s decision to accept money without knowing the source was an “extraordinary abrogation of responsibility”, after the former attorney general declared part of his legal fees were paid by unknown donors. Porter, the industry and science minister, updated his register of interests on Monday, to include the Legal ...

By: Nick Davies The Nato coalition in Afghanistan has been using an undisclosed “black” unit of special forces, Task Force 373, to hunt down targets for death or detention without trial. Details of more than 2,000 senior figures from the Taliban and al-Qaida are held on a “kill or capture” list, known as Jpel, the joint prioritised effects list. In ...

By: Maram Susli What we’ve just witnessed in Afghanistan is a historical repeat of the ‘Saigon moment’. But the final hours of the US occupation have been accompanied by a cacophony aend the war. They cite women’s rights, regional stability and anti-terrorism as reasons the US should have remained in Afghanistan. But those were the very reasons cited for starting ...

Soccer superstar Cristiano Ronaldo’s decision remove two Coca-Cola bottles from his Euro 2020 press conference table and drink water instead has wiped billions of dollars off the beverage company’s value. The company’s stock price dropped from $US56.10 ($73) to $US55.22 ($71.86) almost immediately after the Portuguese superstar’s perceived slight. That’s the equivalent of wiping $5.2 billion off the company’s market value. The drop stemmed ...

By: Ahmed Abu Artema On May 21, after bombarding Gaza for 11 days and killing 253 Palestinians, including 66 children, Israel announced a ceasefire. Among the victims were entire families torn to pieces by Israeli fighter jets while sleeping in their homes. The Abu Hatab family was killed in their home in the Shati refugee camp on May 14. A ...

Australia will close its embassy in the Afghan capital of Kabul in three days, ahead of the withdrawal of Australia’s final contingent of defence personnel from the country. The embassy has been open since 2006. Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Foreign Minister Marise Payne said they hoped the closure would be temporary, and that Australia could reopen an embassy in the future. “In ...

WIRES   Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to press ahead with Israel’s military offensive in the Gaza Strip, pushing back against calls from the United States to move towards a ceasefire. US President Joe Biden told Mr Netanyahu “that he expected a significant de-escalation today on the path to a ceasefire,” according to the White House. In comments that marked the first public rift between ...

By: Rachel Clun Australia is working to give one million doses of the internationally-produced AstraZeneca vaccines originally destined for Australia to Papua New Guinea, as the country battles a widespread outbreak of COVID-19. Prime Minister Scott Morrison also announced Australia will send 8000 locally-produced AstraZeneca vaccines to PNG to help immunise health workers, as the local health system struggles to contain the ...

The ACTU deplores the flagrant violation by the Moroccan army of the ceasefire in Western Sahara by moving its army into the Guerguerat area and Buffer Strip which is monitored by the United Nations’ mission in Western Sahara, MINURSO. MINURSO was tasked with organising a referendum of self-determination promised to the people of Western Sahara, which has been occupied by ...