Top World News

Philippines’ Carmelle wins first Eurovision contest in Asia

Filipino entry, pop and rap song Sobra-Sobra, takes 19-year-old to victory at grand final in BangkokCarmelle Collado has won the first Eurovision song contest Asia, taking the Philippines’ entry, Sobra-Sobra, to victory in Bangkok on Saturday night, at the first regional edition of the contest to be staged outside Europe.Eleven countries competed at the One Bangkok Forum in central Bangkok, and the show ran for two and a half hours including advertising. Continue reading...

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Even Labor MPs are at a loss over the Victorian premier’s ‘tough love’ plan for youth offenders

Parliamentarians across factional lines share concerns about policy that legal expert says ‘paints the imprisonment of children as therapeutic’Get our daily political email, free app or daily news podcastUntil December last year, Meena Singh was Victoria’s commissioner for Aboriginal children and young people, a role in which she advocated for some of the state’s most vulnerable children.She had held the role since 2022. In all that time, she says, nobody from the Victorian government had approached her with a proposal like the one the Victorian premier, Ben Carroll, announced last week: a $204m “tough love” plan to send children who commit low- and mid-level offences to secure facilities, including the former Malmsbury youth justice centre, for schooling, drug and alcohol treatment and to learn life skills. Continue reading...

Art ‘must not be sacrificed on the altar of corporate profit’, Liberal senator says as AI policy debate rages

Andrew McLachlan says he chooses ‘real forests over virtual ones’ as he urges Labor government to consider AI’s impact on artists and environmentGet our daily political email, free app or daily news podcastOutspoken Liberal senator Andrew McLachlan has raised the alarm about the approach of his party and the Labor government to AI, urging artists’ copyright not be “sacrificed” for investment and that building new datacentres must not be prioritised above environmental concerns.As Labor considers copyright changes in an AI policy suite including datacentres, online safety, energy resources and economic benefits, the South Australian backbencher added weight to mooted constitutional challenges as to whether watering down copyright law would be an illegal acquisition of property.Sign up for Guardian Australia’s Politics, really newsletter here Continue reading...

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Trump's 'wounded animal' ally racing to drag US into war within weeks: ex-leader

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is racing to spark a war with Iran and pull the United States into it before he loses power, according to a former Israeli leader and geopolitical expert Trita Parsi.Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak wrote in Haaretz that Netanyahu, a close ally of President Donald Trump, plans to “carry out a blatant military provocation in order to force Iran to respond on a scale triggering a war that would disrupt or prevent the establishment of a new government.”“For months I have warned publicly that the prime minister is behaving like a wounded animal and that he will not hesitate to disrupt the election, refuse to recognize their results or even launch a war of deception in order to ensure his political survival,” Barak wrote.Netanyahu’s right-wing bloc fell short of a majority in Israel’s Oct. 27 election. Israeli President Isaac Herzog tasked opposition leader Gadi Eisenkot with forming a government Nov. 7, giving him 28 days with a possible 14-day extension.Parsi, co-founder and executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, wrote Saturday that Netanyahu may have no more than three to four weeks to achieve his “lifelong dream” of getting the U.S. to bomb Iran, something he’s pressed for since at least the 1990s.“He has never been closer to this goal, but time is running out,” Parsi wrote.Parsi said former and current Israeli officials, from Avigdor Lieberman to Barak, are sounding the same alarm. He wrote that Netanyahu tried to provoke Iran by violating its airspace the weekend before the election. That same weekend, according to Barak, “a covert operation in Iran that could have ignited a war was thwarted at the last minute.”Netanyahu has been calling Trump “every day” to urge him to resume the war, a person briefed on the discussions recently told the Financial Times. War skeptics inside the White House have been scrambling to push back.Trump hasn’t ruled out war but is hesitating, Parsi wrote. Instead, he has opted to keep an economic blockade on Iran in place for a few more weeks.“But a few more weeks is exactly what Netanyahu does not have,” Parsi wrote.

Mayan ceremony in Guatemala honors Nobel winner Miguel Ángel Asturias

Nobel Peace Prize laureate Rigoberta Menchú Tum attended the ritual.