Thorburn was jailed for life after admitting to killing the 12-year-old foster child after his son Trent confessed to sexually assaulting her
Rick Thorburn, the Queensland man who was serving life in jail for the murder of 12-year-old foster child Tiahleigh Palmer, has been found dead in his cell.
Queensland Corrective Services confirmed he had died in his Woodford Correctional Centre cell on Saturday.
Swedes are stockpiling supplies of the drink amid cost hikes, with some saying the coffee culture is changing
Nursing an iced chai latte in a Stockholm department store, Emma Tomth says she has cut down her cafe coffee consumption considerably. The 28-year-old social media manager used to buy a latte most days, but with prices having gone up by about 15-20 kronor (about £1-£1.50), she has cut down to two or three times a week.
But it is not just about coffee. The economy also extends to fika – the historically hardwired Swedish tradition of meeting for a catch-up over a coffee and a biscuit or cake. “Many I know are abstaining from meeting for fika to save money. So we do something else instead,” Tomth says. Low-cost alternatives include meeting at home or going on walks, but it is not quite the same as fika, which plays a key social role in an otherwise often introverted society.
Show looks beyond notions of exoticism, hyper-sexuality and diva behaviour to how stars gained control of their own image
From the cha-cha-chá dancers of the 1950s to the fruit-heavy turbans of Carmen Miranda, and from the golden age of Mexican cinema to the emergence of salsa stars such as Celia Cruz, the world has not lacked powerful symbols of Latin womanhood.
But a new exhibition in Madrid is inviting visitors to look past the cliches and stereotypes of the past century and to reflect on the myriad ways in which Latin women, their bodies and their stories have made their way into popular culture.
Gen Keith Kellogg appears to suggest Ukraine could be split into zones of control after a peace deal; Trump warns Putin to ‘get moving’ ahead of US-Russia talks. What we know on day 1,144
The lauded author on her journey to unlearn the lies told about colonisation and First Nations people in her youth, and why non-Indigenous Australians need a different name
Kate Grenville crouches down on a rock on Sydney’s lower north shore, feet bare, next to a Cammeraygal engraving of a whale. The writer is careful not to trespass on the art. “You can just see the little figure,” she says, pointing to a faint outline of a mysterious tiny human with outstretched arms and legs in the leviathan’s belly.
Ten-year-old Kate was first brought to this coastal Waverton site on a school excursion almost 65 years ago, but remembered only the big whale, not the little human. “The whole thing was kind of trivialised,” she says. “The [whale] outline was picked out in this white Dulux gloss, so I was astonished when I came back and realised there was a figure inside.”
Tariffs have driven a wedge between Trump aides in an administration that hates expertise. I suppose boys will be boys
I would like to dispel some rumors right up front. One, I did not receive a PhD in business from Harvard Business School. Hopefully this doesn’t make you think less of me, but I felt it necessary to be honest. Second, I did not even attend Harvard. I thought about it once; hopefully, thinking about something isn’t illegal yet.
My point is that I am no elitist snob begging for your subservience. I’m a simple man, just trying to salvage the last of my meager wealth during the great trade war of 2025. I know absolutely nothing about global economic policy. As such, I must be worth listening to.
Dave Schilling is a Los Angeles-based writer and humorist
Not long before the Covid pandemic, my dad threw out my cardboard box of mementoes that I had stored in his garage for “safekeeping”: years’ worth of personal journals, Polaroids and photos with no negatives, love letters, all of my degree essays, reams of teenage poetry, etc – the classic priceless time capsule stuff that one looks forward to revisiting one day.
It was one of his final acts before taking his own life, so it was a double whammy of bereavement in which my first loss was buried by the second. And, with the pandemic arriving shortly afterwards, it stayed buried for further years as, again, I was distracted by something else serious happening. But once that had passed, the original grief returned with a vengeance and has become an abiding sorrow that’s been difficult to shake off: the feeling that part of me died when that box went into landfill and can never be recovered, and how its significance seems to grow with time, not diminish.
(No Format) The Malian singer-songwriter’s pared-back new album showcases his older-sounding, still amazingly nimble voice
Since the release of his international breakthrough Soro in 1987, the Malian singer-songwriter Salif Keita, possessed of a sweetly soulful tone, has been affectionately known as the “Golden Voice of Africa”. His genre-spanning work has featured collaborations with psychedelic guitarist Santana, jazz saxophonist Wayne Shorter and Jamaican singer Buju Banton. On So Kono, his first album in seven years, Keita returns with an unusually sparse sound featuring guitar, ngoni, calabash, tama and cello.
The joy of the record lies in Keita’s mature voice, huskier now at 75 and settling into a lower, rumbling register that contrasts with his falsetto. On Aboubakrin and Tassi, he sings over simple, looped ngoni refrains, his raw vocals carrying poignant emotion. While the percussive layering on Soundiata is somewhat jarring, there are many moments of stripped-back beauty. Kanté Manfila finds Keita veering from gravelly whispers to yearning yelps, while highlight Proud showcases his incredibly nimble delivery, weaving through the string melody to reach a soaring climax and proving that the Golden Voice is still full of power.
Expelling the Columbia activist for his views would leave our nation weaker and endanger all of our rights
When the federal immigration judge Jamee Comans ruled in favor of allowing the government to deport Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University student in the US on a legal visa, her decision was based on “foreign policy concerns” presented by US secretary of state Marco Rubio. It was so shocking that I had to reread the news report several times before I could believe it.
Rubio’s claim is based on Khalil’s leadership role in the anti-Israel protests at Columbia University. I didn’t agree with Khalil’s politics when he led the protests and I don’t agree today with his politics, nor even his actions during the protests. But I’m unwavering in supporting his right to his views, and his right to shout them in what, until Trump took the reins, was our free American nation.
Jo-Ann Mort, who writes and reports frequently about Israel/Palestine is also author of the forthcoming book of poetry, A Precise Chaos. Follow her @jo-ann.bsky.social
Parents of school-age children have their work cut out for them when it comes to providing good nutrition, particularly where school lunches are concerned. But with a bit of planning, there are ways to pack a lunch that gets eaten and reduce waste in the process. Here, readers share their tips for better packed lunches and ways to cut waste.
The City of Perth is under increasing pressure to drop its plans to replace one of the city’s most beloved public artworks with a 7-metre tall effigy of an astronaut, which as been derided as a piece of “factory-produced space junk”.
Until four years ago, Ore Obelisk, affectionately known as The Kebab by the people of Perth, stood in the heritage-listed Stirling Gardens in the heart of the city. The 15-metre work made from local geological minerals, created by the architect, artist and Perth’s first city planner, Paul Ritter, was erected in 1971 to celebrate Western Australia’s population reaching one million, and was one of the city’s first public artworks.
Last week I went to Adelaide to see a man about a tree. The man was Dr Dean Nicolle and the tree was actually 10,000 eucalypt trees and mallees, of over 800 species, which Dean has been planting on a block of land south of Adelaide since 1993.
Dean’s passion for eucalypts is incredible. It makes me realise that so much conservation happens purely because someone is just absolutely captivated by something. And thank goodness Dean is, because his love for the eucalypt made the Currency Creek Arboretum, which is designed to bring together all of Australia’s eucalypt species in one place for research.
Melissa Bell loves to paint images of water. In her work, blues and greens swim alongside one another in a colourful flow. “I grew up on the river in the backyard,” the artist says. “I was pretty lucky with that, living on country at Cummeragunja on Yorta Yorta, where I’m from. The water was always a part of me.”
Bell always loved art – and studied it at RMIT – but then her life got “a bit chaotic”. “I ended up meeting a partner, [which led to] domestic violence, and I lost my way,” she says. Bell was incarcerated for the first time in 2015 when she was in her late 20s, and four more times over the next five years.
The $30,000 biennial Dobell drawing prize is known for pushing the boundaries among Australian artists. Rosemary Lee’s 24-1 – an ‘exploration of the urban landscape and gentrification of the Sydney suburbs of Ashfield and Summer Hill’ – was selected winner from 56 finalists and 965 entries
• The finalists of the 2025 Dobell drawing prize will be showing at the National Art School Gallery, Sydney, until 21 May
Erik and Lyle Menendez were convicted of parents’ murders at Beverly Hills home in 1989
A judge has decided theresentencing hearings for Erik and Lyle Menendez, who were convicted of murdering their parents, can continue despite a new Los Angeles district attorney opposing their release after 30 years behind bars.
The brothers appeared in court over Zoom on Friday for the proceedings.
From energy security to boosting internet connections, Taiwan is working on ways to protect its population if China attacks
If war comes to Taiwan, the local citizens might be sent to their nearest 7-Eleven.
No one knows for sure what a Chinese attack on Taiwan will look like, but there are some assumptions made by government planners. They expect Taiwan’s military and maybe police will be sent to frontlines, leaving civilian first responders in charge of care and control.
Northern Irishman roars into tie for third with sublime 66
Rose leads on -8 with Bryson Dechambeau one shot back
Rory’s revenge. Rory McIlroy had opted to keep his thoughts to himself after the wounding end to his first round at the 89th Masters. An inspired follow up by the Northern Irishman made it easy to assume he had taken things personally. Did you think the two double bogeys in four closing holes ended his latest attempt at claiming the career grand slam? Think again. Courtesy of spellbinding, stunning golf, McIlroy blasted his way through the Georgia pines and back into contention.
Statistical gurus had insisted glory was already beyond him. Craig Stadler was the last man to triumph here with more than one double bogey on his card. That happened in 1982. What the numerati failed to acknowledge was that McIlroy had 54 holes to recover. With 36 remaining, he sits two from Justin Rose. Buckle up.
Critics say Nasa faces ‘extinction-level event’ with budget plan, with climate research funding also to be slashed
Donald Trump shows no signs of easing his assault on climate science as plans of more sweeping cuts to key US research centers surfaced on Friday.
The administration is planning to slash budgets at both the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency (Noaa) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa), according to internal budget documents, taking aim specifically at programs used to study impacts from the climate crisis.
Supreme court says overseas voters must prove eligibility or votes will be discarded – which could affect election’s result
The North Carolina supreme court paved the way to throw out thousands of ballots in a race for a seat on the court that was decided by just over 700 votes.
The staggering decision is the latest development in a race in which Democrat Allison Riggs defeated her Republican opponent, Judge Jefferson Griffin, by 734 votes. After multiple recounts confirmed Riggs’s win, Griffin challenged the eligibility of more than 60,000 votes and courts have blocked certification so far. Last week, the North Carolina court of appeals – the body Griffin sits on – gave the challenged voters 15 days to prove their eligibility.
Mahdi, 42, was shot dead by corrections employees inside the execution chamber, where authorities have carried out a rapid spree of killings as South Carolina aggressively revives capital punishment.
Mikel Arteta has praised Declan Rice for his initiative after the midfielder ignored the instructions of Arsenal’s set-piece coach before scoring the first of his two free-kicks against Real Madrid.
Rice revealed that Nicolas Jover had been telling him to cross the ball rather than shoot in the 58th minute of the first leg of their Champions League quarter-final on Tuesday. Rice had never scored a free kick in 338 appearances but said Jover’s instructions “didn’t make sense” and opted to shoot instead after being encouraged by Bukayo Saka.
School district says DHS agents, seeking five students in first through sixth grades, were barred from entering
Immigration officials attempted to enter two Los Angeles elementary schools this week, but were turned away by school administrators. The incident appears to be the Trump administration’s first attempt to enter the city’s public schools since amending regulations to allow immigration agents to enter “sensitive areas” such as schools.
At a Thursday press conference, the Los Angeles unified school district superintendent, Alberto Carvalho, confirmed that agents from the Department of Homeland Security were seeking five students in first through sixth grades.
Greste’s harrowing experience of the Egyptian legal system is brought to the screen in The Correspondent, which takes its audience far beyond the familiar nightly news bulletins of 2014
Richard Roxburgh would like to take this opportunity to apologise to audiences about to watch The Correspondent: “There is no escape from my face. For the entire sentence of the movie.”
The audience’s “sentence” lasts just under two hours – but for the film’s subject, Australian war correspondent Peter Greste, his sentence was seven years in an Egyptian jail. In some ways, though, it was really a life sentence: despite walking free in 2015, Greste remains, by decree of a kangaroo court in Cairo, a convicted terrorist. On a recent flight from New York back to Australia via Auckland, immigration officials refused to let him progress to the transit lounge.
S&P 500 and Dow Jones rise sharply after extraordinarily volatile week as experts warn of continued turbulence
Donald Trump insisted his trade war with much of the world was “doing really well” despite mounting fears of recession and as Beijing hit back and again hiked tariffs on US exports to China.
As the US president said his aggressive tariffs strategy was “moving along quickly”, a closely watched economic survey revealed that US consumer expectations for price growth had soared to a four-decade high.
Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia University graduate and Palestinian organizer, is eligible to be deported from the United States, an immigration judge ruled on Friday during a contentious hearing at a remote court in central Louisiana.
The decision sides with the Trump administration’s claim that a short memo written by the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, which stated Khalil’s “current or expected beliefs, statements or associations” were counter to foreign policy interests, is sufficient evidence to remove a lawful permanent resident from the United States. The undated memo, the main piece of evidence submitted by the government, contained no allegations of criminal conduct.
Department seeks instances of bias, with emphasis on Christianity, that may have occurred under Biden
The state department is ordering staff to report colleagues for instances of “anti-Christian bias” during the Biden administration, part of Donald Trump’s aggressive push to reshape government policy on religious expression in his first months back in office.
The internal cable, obtained by the Guardian, establishes a short seven-day window for employees to report perceived religious discrimination committed by state department officials, with particular emphasis on Christianity.
Actor claims working with Oscar nominee on set of thriller Girl is ‘one of the all time worst experiences’ of her life
Bella Thorne has accused fellow US actor Mickey Rourke of bruising her genitals with a metal grinder on the set of a movie that they filmed together during what she described as “one of the all time worst experiences” of her career.
In a story on her Instagram account on Friday, Thorne alleged that the episode was part of a broader campaign to humiliate her while they collaborated on the 2020 thriller Girl. She wrote: “This fucking dude. GROSS” and relayed the account in writing over a copy of a BBC article reporting that Celebrity Big Brother’s producers had reprimanded him for aiming homophobic comments at the singer JoJo Siwa while they competed on the reality show.
Boulter defeats Tatjana Maria 1-6, 6-3, 6-1 in The Hague
Kartal takes down Jule Niemeier 6-4, 6-2 on cup debut
An hour into her first national team assignment of the season, the forecast for Katie Boulter was grim. Down a set and a break against a cunning opponent, the British No 1 had been junkballed into oblivion and defeat drew near. Her recent difficult form and her lack of confidence in the surface beneath her feet was plain for ll to see.
From that uncomfortable position, Boulter showed her mental fortitude in full as she emerged with a strong 1-6, 6-3, 6-1 win over Tatjana Maria to clinch a 2-1 win for Great Britain over Germany in their opening tie of the Billie Jean King Cup qualifiers in the Hague.
Vanessa Brown called police response in Cobham, Surrey, ‘a complete overreaction’ that left her ‘catatonic’
A history teacher has said she was arrested and blocked from seeing her daughters after she confiscated their iPads.
Vanessa Brown, 50, described her “unspeakable devastation and trauma” after spending seven-and-a-half hours in a cell on 26 March after a claim that she had stolen two iPads.
The aftermath of Trump’s tariffs, Russian airstrikes in Ukraine, raids in the West Bank and Indigenous people in Brasilia: the past seven days as captured by the world’s leading photojournalists
Warning: this gallery contains images that some readers may find distressing
On the face of it the Egyptian’s new contract has no downside – but this is not entirely a free ride for Arne Slot and the club
Well, that’s good then. Things fall apart. But sometime they also don’t. And the centre does actually hold.
Perhaps the most interesting part of Mohamed Salah’s contract extension at Liverpool is the fact this is a rare crossover story, a signing that steps outside its own tribal margins. There will of course be localised delight. Liverpool fans can look forward to their own lost weekend in the sun, a sense that the good times will now continue to roll, that the time bar has shifted. Return to your seats. This is a lock-in.
Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri have a chance to dominate in the desert as Max Verstappen scrambles to stay in touch
Three races into the new Formula One season and this weekend’s Bahrain Grand Prix represents something of a litmus test as to what may follow for the title protagonists. Everything points to a chance for McLaren to dominate at the Sakhir circuit but there may also be some indication if Red Bull are making real steps forward with their car.
For McLaren, Bahrain is a chance to throw off their hoodoo at the track where they have never won and at which, in recent years, they have struggled for form. This season in testing at the circuit they gave their first evidence that they had a much-improved package; one swiftly reinforced with dominant victories for Lando Norris in Australia and then his teammate, Oscar Piastri, in China.
Meta ending DEI programs, getting rid of factcheckers and changing content moderation policies led to LDF’s decision
On Friday, the Legal Defense Fund (LDF) announced its decision to exit Meta’s external civil rights advisory group due to its concerns over Meta’s content moderation and diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility (DEIA) policy changes.
Supporter’ groups criticise response of authorities
Manchester United are investigating the treatment of their fans who attended Thursday’s 2-2 draw at Lyon. The local government admitted French police used teargas but said it was “proportionate” to restore calm.
Posts on social media showed United fans feeling the effect of the spray at the Europa League quarter-final first leg. The Rhône prefecture said in a statement: “English fans were seated in the away section waiting to be allowed to join their bus. They attempted to force their way through the security measures deployed by the national police. Projectiles were also reported to be thrown at the police. The police therefore used moderate, proportionate and necessary force (tear gas) to restore calm.
Mexico’s failure to keep up 81-year-old water-sharing treaty has sparked a diplomatic spat with the US
Mexico will make an immediate water delivery to Texas farmers to help make up its shortfall under a treaty that has strained US relations and prompted tariff threats by Donald Trump, said Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, on Friday.
Mexico is looking for alternatives to comply with the 81-year-old water-sharing treaty with the US, Sheinbaum said in her regular news conference. A proposal had already been sent to US officials, she said.
Trump ally Richard Grenell sends series of hostile emails to Yasmin Williams despite saying he was ‘too busy’ to do so
The Kennedy Center’s interim executive director, Richard Grenell – a staunch ally of Donald Trump – accused a professional musician of “vapidness” after she emailed him over concerns of the now Trump-controlled center’s rollbacks on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.
Earlier this week, Yasmin Williams, an award-winning musician who has performed multiple times at the Washington DC-based performing arts center, emailed Grenell regarding the center’s DEI plans, pointing to the cancellations of a concert by the Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington as well as Finn, a children’s musical about a shark who feels different from other sharks.
The Trump administration has moved to classify more than 6,000 living immigrants as dead, canceling their social security numbers and effectively wiping out their ability to work or receive benefits in an effort to get them to leave the country, according to two people familiar with the situation.
The move will make it much harder for those affected to use banks or other basic services where social security numbers are required. It’s part of a broader effort by Donald Trump to crack down on immigrants who were allowed to enter and remain temporarily in the United States under programs instituted by the US president’s predecessor Joe Biden.
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