source : the age
Welcome to our live and rolling coverage of news around Australia and the world.
Here’s what you need to know today.
President Donald Trump asserted that no one nation would control the vital Strait of Hormuz waterway, highlighting a key sticking point in resolving the war with Iran.
Trump was asked during a meeting of his cabinet officials if he was comfortable with a short-term deal that would open the strait but under Iranian control.
“Nobody’s going to control it. It’s international waters,” Trump said Wednesday at the White House. “The strait’s going to be open to everybody” and the US will “watch over it.”
Oil remained lower on the day as traders stayed optimistic that a deal was in sight, even after Trump said he was “not satisfied” with the negotiations.
Education Minister Jason Clare has defended the government’s rush to legislate its budget tax changes, the first tranche of which will be put before the parliament today.
Clare said the winding back of negative gearing and the capital gains tax discount, which the Coalition opposes and which has received backlash from an online campaign, would be done in stages.
“The first bill gets introduced today, but there’ll be a series of bills to implement these reforms, as there always is with big tax reform,” he told Sunrise.
Clare left the door open to widening capital gains tax exemptions for businesses as the consultation process continues.
Asked whether the government might increase the threshold so businesses with a turnover of $10 million, rather than the current $2 million, would be exempt from the capital gains tax, Clare said: “That’s what those conversations are about right now.”
“The bill today is about cutting income tax and about making it easier to buy a house, and it sets the foundations for these tax changes, but the second bill that we introduced will have all of that detail,” he said.
Victorian senator Jane Hume says the Coalition will oppose tax changes due to be introduced to parliament today.
Hume told Nine’s Today this morning a hypothetical future Coalition government “absolutely will” repeal the government’s changes if passed.
“They’re ramming through these changes to capital gains tax and negative gearing … without the appropriate scrutiny,” Hume said.
Hume said the Coalition will vote against the changes.
The opposition’s housing plans would focus on supply and enabling infrastructure as well as tying migration levels to housing completions, she said.
NSW Premier Chris Minns is hopeful Sydney’s Vivid festival drone show will return, after a “pretty embarrassing” failure that sent 89 devices into Darling Harbour.
The incident during the 7.30pm Star-Bound drone show on Monday night cancelled a later show that night and four others scheduled on Tuesday and Wednesday.
The issue was caused by an unforeseen change in the “radio frequency environment”, UK drone show operator Sky Magic said. The company called it an “anomaly” that had not been encountered during previous site visits and rehearsals.
Minns said he had received a report on the incident and was hopeful the show would return as scheduled on Sunday.
Xaisomboun Province, Laos: Rescue divers have found five villagers trapped for more than a week in a flooded Laos cave alive and in decent health, with efforts continuing overnight Wednesday to locate the remaining two.
The men had been missing since at least May 20 after going into the cave complex in the mountainous central province of Xaisomboun to fossick for gold. Families of the men told this masthead it had begun to rain early that day, and the group had been warned not to go “but they didn’t listen”.
Late on Wednesday afternoon, news reached the desperate relatives and villagers gathered at the staging ground at Phanchai Village that five of the men had been found.
“I came back here and the people were cheering,” said Mun Duang Somdi, the mother of one of the men who had been found. “I was very happy”.
Welcome to our live and rolling coverage of news around Australia and the world.
Here’s what you need to know today.
Facing the most threatening geopolitical environment since the end of World War II, Australia’s defence force is set to carry the load of deterrence with less in the short term.
The Australian Strategic Policy Institute released its analysis of the 2026/27 defence budget on Thursday after the 2026 National Defence Strategy earmarked an additional $53 billion in funding over the next decade.
It found about four cents of every extra dollar stemming from the announcement was appropriated for next financial year.
The remaining 96 cents sat in forward estimates promises, decade out-year profiles, contingency reserves and unspecified alternative financing plans.
Los Angeles: The personal assistant who injected Friends star Matthew Perry with a fatal dose of the hallucinogenic drug ketamine was sentenced to 41 months in federal prison, bringing to a close the prosecution of five people who admitted to playing roles in the actor’s death.
Judge Sherilyn Garnett delivered the sentence for Kenneth Iwamasa, who found Perry floating face down and lifeless in a hot tub at his Los Angeles home in October 2023.
Federal prosecutors said Iwamasa injected Perry with ketamine at the actor’s request before leaving the residence to run errands. Perry was dead when Iwamasa returned.
“I am so sorry to all of you,” Iwamasa said in court, turning to face the Perry family.
The troubled NSW Firearms Registry had no in-house intelligence capability in the years before the Bondi Beach terror attack, which prompted internal warnings of a significant risk to public safety, the royal commission has heard.
The firearms registry, which NSW Police Minister Yasmin Catley described as a “shambles” in the weeks after the December 14 massacre, was left without a senior intelligence analyst from November 2021, when the position was terminated, until December 2023.
When the role was reintroduced, it remained unfilled until February 2025, the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion was told on Wednesday.
Gun ownership laws have been the focus of state and federal governments following last year’s Bondi attack, where 15 mostly Jewish people were gunned down at a Hanukkah festival. One of the gunmen, Sajid Akram, legally owned six guns at the time of the massacre.
Akram applied for a NSW gun permit in 2020, which was granted three years later even though he lived with his son, Naveed, who had been investigated by ASIO for his suspected links to terrorist sympathisers in 2019.
Read more: Intelligence gaps in firearms registry posed major risk to safety
