A highly pathogenic strain of bird flu has been detected at a third property in Victoria, with farmers warning it could exacerbate Australia’s egg shortage in coming months.
Agriculture Victoria on Thursday said the H7N8 strain of avian influenza had been detected at a third poultry farm at Euroa in Victoria’s north-east.
Democratic party chair Lo Kin-hei would not comment on whether Beijing had put pressure on members
Hong Kong’s oldest pro-democracy party, which became an influential voice of opposition before Beijing cracked down on dissent, will start preparations to shut down, its leader has said.
Lo Kin-hei, chair of Hong Kong’s Democratic party, said on Thursday: “We are going to proceed and study on the process and procedure that is needed for the disbanding.”
Statement from IDF comes hours after prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu orders further crackdown on occupied West Bank over bus explosions
One of the four bodies returned by Hamas to Israel on Thursday is not that of Shiri Bibas, Israel’s military has said, calling it a “violation of utmost severity” of a ceasefire deal that was already precarious.
The Israeli military confirmed that two of the bodies belonged to Bibas’ children, Ariel and Kfir, in the early hours of Friday. However, it added “During the identification process, it was determined that the additional body received is not that of Shiri Bibas, and no match was found for any other hostage. This is an anonymous, unidentified body.”
Today in Focus presenter Helen Pidd hits the road in Germany before Sunday’s federal elections, talking to voters across the country about the rise of the far right
This Sunday, millions of Germans will head to the polls to vote in the country’s federal elections – historic not only because they will determine who will be the next chancellor, but because they come at a time when the far right in Germany is polling better than in any other period since the second world war.
Regardless of the result, it is a remarkable development for a country so haunted by its Nazi past.
Janette Rosing built up pioneering trove of 8,000 images dating back to the early days of the Industrial Revolution
Some of the oldest photographs in England which show the country’s transformation after the industrial revolution have been acquired by Historic England.
Images from the Janette Rosing collection include some of the earliest landscape photography ever taken in the country, spanning the breadth of southern England from the harbours of Clovelly and Plymouth in Devon to the streets of Bethnal Green and the banks of the River Thames in London.
Gutting of workforce will have far-reaching consequences as advocates warn of playing ‘Russian roulette’ with safety
You wake up to dark clouds outside, so you check the weather on your phone: a storm is coming.
That weather app uses data from the National Weather Service, a part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, a small organization which could see as much as 10% of its workforce cut this week.
From the Trump administration’s latest moves abroad and in the US – here are the key US politics stories from Thursday at a glance
Thursday saw a judge rule that the Trump administration can continue the mass firing of US federal workers, rejecting a bid by labor unions to stop the US president dramatically cutting the jobs of many of the 2.3 million people employed by the government. The IRS began laying off roughly 7,000 workers on Thursday.
In his 16-page order, US district judge Christopher Cooper started by saying that Trump’s executive actions had “caused, some say by design, disruption and even chaos in widespread quarters of American society”.
The mood in Taipei is one of wariness as the new US president takes a blowtorch to diplomatic norms and assurances
It’s a bustling morning at the Dongmen wet market, in inner-city Taipei. Mr Yu is shouting at passersby, trying to offload his boxes of freshly steamed dumplings. In between customers, the self-professed “dumpling king” and his wife, Ms Liao, discuss Donald Trump.
“He’s very positive, energetic,” says Yu, handing flour-covered coins to a customer. Liao chimes in: “The dancing! Isn’t he in his 80s?” Yu nods in agreement. But asked what Trump means for Taiwan, the elderly couple is less effusive.
Musk claimed without evidence that Nasa’s Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams were left stranded on the orbital outpost for ‘political reasons’
Elon Musk has got into a heated row with a Danish astronaut who criticised the tech billionaire’s claim that former president Joe Biden intentionally abandoned two American astronauts aboard the International Space Station.
Andreas “Andy” Mogensen had on Thursday shared on X a Fox News clip featuring Musk and his boss, US President Donald Trump, in which Musk claimed Nasa’s Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams were left stranded on the orbital outpost for “political reasons” by Biden, and that the new administration was now coming to the rescue.
First-half brace by Mina Tanaka helps Asia’s top team to 4-0 win
Australia register just one shot on goal over course of 90 minutes
If there was a moment during this capitulation to Japan that encapsulated the gap between the hosts of the 2026 Women’s Asian Cup and the nation widely expected to win it, it arrived in the 15th minute.
Pouncing on an under-hit pass from Yui Hasegawa, Katrina Gorry stole possession in the middle of the park and knocked the ball forward for Caitlin Foord, with players in the Matildas’ new fluoro kit surging forward on either side. Before the striker could continue the move, however, she was monstered off the ball by Tōko Koga, with the 19-year-old ambling away in possession as Japan began another period of extended possession. Just like that, a moment of promise, a moment where the Matildas glimpsed an opportunity to get in transition and do what they do best, was ruthlessly snuffed out.
Their attack has a distinctly Sheffield Shield flavour to it but the main thing in the two-times winners’ favour is the relative weakness of their group
For a long time, a strange situation continued in Australian cricket. Through a one-day World Cup in 2023, through a T20 World Cup in 2024, through a Test summer that sat between them, and through the lead-ups and warm-ups before all of the above, the same three fast bowlers showed up almost all of the time. Mitchell Starc, Josh Hazlewood, Patrick Cummins, in aeternum.
Things don’t work that way. Fast bowling is a horrifically taxing art, and the mad operators who pursue it across any level of the game share a gruesome delight in cataloguing their lifetime’s injuries, discarding sneakers and peeling back socks and rolling up trouser legs to show you toes bent sideways or lurid half-moons of scars around ankles or knees. At the top level, fitness and availability are sporadic, and that’s before you come to the changes driven by each format requiring different skills. Australia’s big three have been men for all seasons, all styles, all conditions, in a remarkable show of consistency and adaptability.
Argentinian wants to settle down at his fourth club in three years and has begun like a house on fire at ‘loco’ Goodison
To describe Everton’s first impressions of Carlos Alcaraz as positive would be something of an understatement. He was the light in the gloom of an FA Cup exit against Bournemouth, looking the epitome of a gifted Argentinian midfielder as soon as he was introduced for his debut. One start for David Moyes’s team and Everton fans were singing Alcaraz’s name after he marked the occasion with an assist plus an 80th-minute winner at Crystal Palace last Saturday.
One taste of a Merseyside derby, meanwhile, and the feeling was mutual. “Loco, loco,” says Alcaraz, shaking his head and smiling about the mayhem that was the final Merseyside derby at Goodison Park. “It was a mad derby, a crazy match. We were ahead, we were behind and then we managed to get a draw at the end of a pulsating game. To say that was my first derby wearing this shirt is fantastic. I really enjoyed it.”
5 mins: Japan settle and start to work the ball around the midfield as the Matildas sit back and wait for the attack.
3 mins: The Matildas build up slowly, giving each player a touch of the ball and taking few risks to limit turnovers against an opponent that prefer to possess the ball themselves.
Israel has demanded the return of Shiri Bibas after it said testing showed that one of the four bodies released by Hamas did not belong to any other hostage
We’re pausing our live coverage of the Middle East crisis now – it’s approaching 4.30am in Tel Aviv and Gaza City. You can read all the key developments in our latest full report. Here’s where things stand:
One of the four bodies Hamas returned to Israel on Thursday is not that of Shiri Bibas, the Israeli military has said, calling it a “violation of utmost severity” of a ceasefire deal that was already fragile.
The Israel Defense Forces confirmed on Friday that two of the bodies belonged to Bibas’ children, Ariel and Kfir, but said that during the identification process it was determined the additional body received was not Shiri Bibas and no match was found for any other hostage. “This is an anonymous, unidentified body,” it said. “We demand that Hamas return Shiri home along with all our hostages.” There was no immediate response from Hamas.
Bibas and her children became a symbol of the Hamas attack of 7 October 2023. The militant group has said they were killed in an Israeli airstrike in the early days of the war. However, the IDF said on Friday that they had been murdered in captivity, posting on X: “According to the assessment of professional officials, based on the intelligence available to us and forensic findings from the identification process, Ariel and Kfir Bibas were brutally murdered by terrorists in captivity in November 2023.”
The IDF’s statement Friday’s statement came hours after Israeli prime Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the military to conduct an “intense operation” against “terror hubs” in the occupied West Bank after a series of explosions on three parked buses in Bat Yam, a city outside Tel Aviv, that authorities said was a suspected terrorist attack. No injuries were reported.
Explosives were found on two other buses but did not detonate, Israeli police said. The five bombs were identical and equipped with timers, and bomb squads were defusing the unexploded bombs, they said. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the explosions
The IDF said it “was decided to reinforce with three battalions in the Central Command sector” of the West Bank.
Thursday’s handover of bodies is to be followed by the return of six living hostages on Saturday, in exchange for hundreds more Palestinian prisoners and detainees.
It is my hope that the peace he worked to see in the region through his charity work and activism will be achieved.
Four children can now see shapes, find toys, recognise their parents’ faces and some can read and write
Doctors in London have become the first in the world to cure blindness in children born with a rare genetic condition using a pioneering gene therapy.
The children had leber congenital amaurosis (LCA), a severe form of retinal dystrophy that causes vision loss due to a defect in the AIPL1 gene. Those affected are legally certified as blind from birth.
Assault on Robert Brooks in December caught on body cameras, triggering widespread outrage and calls for justice
Six New York prison workers have been indicted for second-degree murder in the beating death of an incarcerated man who had been handcuffed, while four others were charged with lesser crimes.
The beating of Robert Brooks by multiple officers at Marcy Correctional Facility in December was caught on body cameras, triggering widespread outrage and calls for justice.
By Ramsay’s own estimate, he has lost more than £2,000 during one week in stolen maneki-neko cat models
Nearly 500 cat figurines were stolen in one week from Gordon Ramsay’s new London restaurant, the TV chef has said.
The restaurateur, 58, recently launched Lucky Cat 22 Bishopsgate by Gordon Ramsay in one of London’s tallest buildings, which features the beckoning Japanese cat models called maneki-neko.
Charges of criminal negligence dropped against three key defendants over death of British singer in October
A court in Argentina has dropped charges of criminal negligence against three of the five people indicted in connection with the death of Liam Payne, the former One Direction singer who fell from a third-floor hotel balcony in Buenos Aires last October.
In a decision issued Wednesday, the Argentine federal appeals court ordered the other two defendants in the case to remain in custody. They are facing prosecution on charges they supplied the famed British boy band star with narcotics.
No injuries reported after three explosions in Tel Aviv suburb of Bat Yam and two more bombs being defused
A string of explosions has rocked buses in the Israeli city of Bat Yam, in what police described as a “suspected terror attack”.
No injuries were reported in the blasts late on Thursday. Police said bomb disposal units were searching for any additional bombs in the city, which is a suburb of Tel Aviv.
National security adviser says Ukraine is wrong to push back against Trump’s approach to peace talks with Russia
White House officials have told Ukraine to stop badmouthing Donald Trump and to sign a deal handing over half of the country’s mineral wealth to the US, saying a failure to do so would be unacceptable.
The US national security adviser, Mike Waltz, told Fox News that Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, should “tone down” his criticism of the US and take a “hard look” at the deal. It proposes giving Washington $500bn worth of natural resources, including oil and gas.
Could this be true? Are we underestimating the effect of these things? Did the pitch mics at the Bernabéu pick up Nico González in the pre-match huddle saying: “Lads, we’ve all absorbed the news about the related third-party transaction rules being declared improper. I am as a consequence bang up for this.” Did the cameras detect Savinho whispering: “Guys, we are now free to seek our own definition of market value. This commercial potential is hugely energising. Hit me early over the top.”
Key Trump ally, who aligns with US president on range of issues, wins confirmation in 51-49 Senate vote
The US Senate has confirmed Kash Patel as the next FBI director, handing oversight of the nation’s premier law enforcement agency to an official who has declined to explicitly say whether he would use his position to pursue Donald Trump’s political opponents.
Patel was narrowly confirmed on Thursday in a 51-49 vote, a reflection of the polarizing nature of his nomination and what Democrats see as his unwillingness to keep the bureau independent from partisan politics or resist politically charged requests from the president.
After Suits became a surprise Netflix smash hit in 2023, the inevitable follow-up is unlikely to find as many fans
For all my eye-rolling at spinoffs, reboots and IP rehashing, I have to admit that a redux of Suits, the erstwhile USA Network show about smartly dressed hyper-smart lawyers bickering smartly, is smart business. The original series, which ran from 2011 until 2019, is the type of show that linear television used to excel at, and what streaming services have long struggled to replicate: lightly serialized, an aspirational workplace drama with near-comically low stakes, sleek and sexy and easily second-screened. It was the show of the summer in, of all years, 2023, nearly half a decade after it wrapped its run and cultural eons away from the heyday of breezy, beautiful so-called “blue sky” television.
Given that everyone and their friend was watching (or rewatching) Suits a year-ish ago, it made sense, and was even maybe promising, that NBC greenlit Suits LA, a spinoff set in a somehow even sunnier environment than the original’s unrecognizably bright vision of New York (via Toronto). As an original series watcher carried back by the Netflix resurgence, I, too, was hopeful for an extension of the show’s cheeky, clever, bad-but-fun spirit, a show that doubled down on the magnetic hyper-competence of a corporate lawyer like Harvey Specter (Gabriel Macht), continued the predominance of unrealistically sexy tailoring, and transcended the presence of a pre-Sussex Meghan Markle.
In a matter of days, Donald Trump completed the most radical shift in US foreign policy in decades, bringing Putin back into the fold while sidelining Europe. He claims to have brought the end of the war in Ukraine in sight, but with Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the rest of Europe excluded from the US-Russia talks, are we really any closer to peace? And, at what price?
Jonathan Freedland speaks to veteran US diplomat Kurt Volker, who served as Trump’s special representative for Ukraine during his first term, and the Guardian’s US live news editor Chris Michael
Velvet worms have rows of pudgy legs, skin speckled like a galaxy and dissolve their prey with sticky goo
An ancient gummy-looking worm-like creature with a vicious hunting method that involves projecting sticky goo from its head has been crowned New Zealand’s bug of the year.
The Peripatoides novaezealandiae is from the family of velvet worms, or Ngāokeoke in the Māori language. The invertebrates have rows of pudgy legs and skin speckled like a galaxy, and are considered “living fossils”, having remained virtually unchanged for 500m years.
Reform leader contradicts Trump rant, saying ‘you shouldn’t always take things Donald Trump says absolutely literally’
Nigel Farage has contradicted his ally Donald Trump, saying Volodymyr Zelenskyy “is not a dictator” after the US president’s attack on the Ukrainian leader this week.
Farage, who became one of the last UK party leaders to distance himself from Trump’s remarks, said he had been delayed in calling it out earlier because he was heading to the US to speak at the Conservative Political Action Conference.
Survey indicates 64% of Americans believe flying is safe, down from 71% who said so last year
Americans’ confidence in aviation has slipped following a string of plane crashes in 2025, according to a new poll.
As of this year 64% of Americans said they believe air travel is very or somewhat safe, marking a decrease from 71% of Americans who indicated so last year, said the poll, conducted by AP-NORC and released on Wednesday.
As Donald Trump persists with a monstrous proposal to remove Palestinians, the immediate need is to prevent fresh conflict
The pain and damage wreaked in the last 16 months will reverberate through families, communities and the Middle East for decades to come. On Thursday, the bodies of two young children and their mother, and that of an 83-year-old peace activist, were returned to Israel by Hamas. They were kidnapped in the 7 October 2023 raid in which the militants killed around 1,200 Israelis and others. Around 48,000 Palestinians, most of them civilians, have been killed in Gaza since Israel launched its war in response.
It was always feared that the ceasefire deal, which has brought desperately needed respite for Palestinians in Gaza and the return of Israeli and foreign hostages, would be fleeting. The six-week opening stage is due to expire on 1 March. The talks on the more complicated second stage have yet to begin, more than a fortnight after they were due.
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Republican Kentucky lawmaker formally announced his retirement in a Senate floor speech on Thursday
Senator Mitch McConnell announced he will not run for re-election next year, bringing an end to a decades-long career for a Republican leader who marshaled his party through multiple administrations with a singleminded focus on power that enraged his critics and delighted his allies.
The Associated Press broke the news of McConnell’s retirement on Thursday, which marked the Republican senator’s 83rd birthday. McConnell formally announced his retirement in a Senate floor speech on Thursday.
World’s largest retailer expects inflation-weary consumers to pull back after shares hit record high of $105 last week
Walmart on Thursday forecast sales and profit for its latest fiscal year below Wall Street estimates, suggesting that the world’s largest retailer expects inflation-weary consumers to pull back after several quarters of solid growth.
Walmart shares, which had risen about 72% in 2024 and hit a record high of $105 last week, were down 6% in early trading. Shares of its rival retailer Target were down 1.6%, with Amazon 0.9% lower.
The condition of the state’s system was already precarious when the US president ordered billions of gallons be let out
First, there was Donald Trump’s executive order to release billions of gallons of water from two reservoirs in California’s Central valley, a move the feds walked back after farmers and water experts decried it as wasteful, ill-conceived – and an unnecessary risk factor for levees in the region.
The mandate, said Nicholas Pinter, a professor of applied geoscience at the University of California at Davis who studies California’s levees, amounted to “hydrologic insanity”.
Ajax sneaked through despite losing at home, while Shamrock Rovers were eliminated on penalties by Molde
45 min: Roma 2-1 Porto (agg: 3-2) Roma almost scored a third a moment ago, with a shot cleared off the line by Otavio. I didn’t see exactly what happened because THERE IS SO MUCH GOING ON.
Welcome to heaven. AZ Alkmaar are cruising into the last 16 of the Europa League, having done a helluva number on one of the tournament favourties. After a superb run from Ernest Poku, Gabriel Sara’s attempted clearance hit Seiya Maikuma and ricocheted into the net.
JD Vance marked one month since the Trump administration returned to power on Thursday by again claiming uncontrolled immigration was “the greatest threat” to both Europe and the United States.
The vice-president took the stage at the country’s largest conservative voters conference in National Harbor, Maryland, to double down on his criticism that stunned European leaders last week when he accused them of suppressing free speech and “running in fear” from voters’ true beliefs.
IOC presidential candidate focused on integrity of sport
Coe claims Trump ‘right on the principle’
US president Donald Trump is right in principle to seek the exclusion of transgender athletes from women’s sport, International Olympic Committee presidential candidate Sebastian Coe has said.
Earlier this month Trump signed an executive order aimed at banning transgender athletes from women’s sports, which includes empowering the secretary of state’s office to put pressure on the IOC on its inclusion policy ahead of the Los Angeles Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2028.
Frenchman was favourite for defensive player of year
Victor Wembanyama’s season looks to have ended after the San Antonio Spurs announced he is dealing with deep vein thrombosis in his right shoulder.
The Spurs said Wembanyama had been diagnosed when he returned from last week’s All-Star Game in San Francisco. DVT occurs when blood clots form in veins; the condition can be fatal if untreated. The Spurs said they expect the 21-year-old to miss the rest of the season.
British heavyweight was due to defend title on Saturday
Martin Bakole steps in to face Parker as replacement
Daniel Dubois has withdrawn from his IBF world heavyweight title defence against Joseph Parker on Saturday after falling ill.
The British boxer was evaluated by a doctor on Thursday, according to a report in the Ring magazine, but is unable to compete. The 27-year-old will be replaced by heavyweight contender Martin Bakole, a dangerous proposition for Parker at short notice.
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