Year: 2025

SYDNEY: Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese called a national election for May 3 on Friday, launching a five-week campaign that is set to be dominated by cost-of-living pressures. Prime Minister Albanese’s Labour party won a majority at the last federal election in 2022, but most recent opinion polls show the party neck-and-neck with the opposition Liberal-National coalition when votes from smaller parties are redistributed. “Our government has chosen to face global challenges the Australian way – helping people under cost-of-living pressure, while building for the future,” he told a press…

WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump has defended a planned visit by his delegation to Greenland, dismissing criticism from Denmark and insisting the trip is a gesture of goodwill rather than a provocation. Greenland’s prime minister and Denmark’s foreign minister both denounced the visit, announced for this week by Trump’s national security adviser, Mike Waltz, and Usha Vance, the wife of Vice President JD Vance. “This is friendliness, not provocation,” Trump told reporters at the end of a cabinet meeting. Trump insisted that the visit was at the invitation of Greenland, where…

Pope Francis returned home to the Vatican on Sunday after more than five weeks in hospital with pneumonia, taking time before leaving to thank well-wishers for their support. Looking tired and worn, the 88-year-old Catholic leader waved to a crowd outside Rome’s Gemelli hospital from a balcony, the first time he has been seen in public since he was admitted on February 14. “Thank you, everyone,” a weak-sounding Francis said into a microphone, seated in a wheelchair, as hundreds of pilgrims chanted his name. He waved his hands from his…

WASHINGTON: White House envoy Steve Witkoff has showered Russian President Vladimir Putin with praise and said the leader had told the US official that he had prayed for his “friend” US President Donald Trump when he was shot while campaigning in Philadelphia last year for the presidential election.  The envoy met with Putin over multiple hours last week in Moscow and told US media the talks — which involved discussions about forging a path towards ending Russia’s war in Ukraine — were constructive and “solution-based.” In an interview with right-wing podcast…