World - Monday, June 29, 2026

McIntosh doubles down on call for Liberal ‘rebrand’. Follow today’s news live Get our breaking news email , free app or daily news podcast Chalmers defends house price forecasts The government has been facing some heat over the cooling house market around Australia with falling auction clearance rates, and forecasts that house prices in Sydney and Melbourne could fall more than $100,000. Auction clearance rates in Brisbane came up on the weekend, if you compare the preliminary numbers from the week before. They also came up in Adelaide. They came up nationally in aggregate, as I understand it. But in Sydney and Melbourne, we saw some softness there, that actually predated the budget announcements. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to replace one big distortion that Howard and Costello introduced when they made that big policy mistake in 1999 and ruined the housing market for too many people, especially young people; [it] doesn’t make sense to replace that big distortion with another big distortion. And so we’re applying this CGT discount – there’s still a discount, just calculated differently to reflect real gains – we’re applying it fairly and neutrally across the board so that we don’t introduce another big distortion and repeat the mistakes. Some people think that we’re stuck in the past and our policies need to resonate with the Australia of today and the future. So I think it’d be a really good time for us to revisit our values. If things aren’t resonating, and if people are actually latching on to our policies and believing in that, but they’re not wanting to vote for us, then maybe we need to do something about the brand, I want us to have more cut-through on our policies. I worked for John Howard back in the day, and my patch, we were the Howard battlers, we’re the Menzies Forgotten people, and we’re Tony Tradie. So we are pretty much the heartland of Australia. And when the heartland of Australia tells you that you need to get more cut-through to get more voters on your side, then you need to listen to the people. Continue reading...

After President Trump said U.S.-Iran talks would take place in the Qatari capital on Tuesday, an Iranian official said its delegation would only be talking to mediators about getting the U.S. to uphold its cease-fire commitments.

German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier said he was "deeply shocked" after six people were killed in a shooting at a facility housing mothers and children.

In blistering dissent, Sonia Sotomayor writes ‘the court gives the president a power unknown even to the English crown’ Key cases today: Trump can fire federal regulators ; Lisa Cook firing unconstitutional ; bid to appeal $5m E Jean Carroll verdict ; mail-in ballots arriving after election day The supreme court is due to release some of its final opinions at 10am ET, with major decisions including on Donald Trump ’s effort to end birthright citizenship and to fire Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook still to come. Last week the court handed the Trump administration huge wins in major rulings on immigration . It gave the administration a green light to block asylum seekers at the US-Mexico border , in a decision that fundamentally reshapes the US asylum system. And it also ruled in favor of the administration’s bid to strip temporary protected status from hundreds of thousands of Haitians and Syrians , who were legally in the US and protected from deportation. The decisions, powered by court’s conservative justices, saw the supreme court accused of advancing a white supremacist agenda. Continue reading...

With tens of thousands of people still believed missing, teams listen for signs of life beneath the rubble.

The authorities said a 45-year-old man opened fire at a youth facility after a quarrel about the custody of his baby daughter. The dead were all facility employees.

More than 100 people removed on ICE flight were being held in hotel in La Guaira when earthquakes struck More than 100 people just deported from the United States were being held in a hotel when earthquakes struck Venezuela, setting off a scramble to find survivors and bodies buried in the rubble, according to survivors. A deportation flight from Miami arrived in Venezuela hours before Wednesday’s earthquakes. Onboard were 146 Venezuelans, including 19 women and seven children, according to ICE Flight Monitor, an initiative of Human Rights First, which tracks deportation flights. They were transported to a hotel in La Guaira. Continue reading...

Andy Burnham, who looks set to become prime minister next month, said he would set up a new operation in Manchester called “No. 10 North” to give more funding and control to local leaders.

At least 1,700 people are known to have been killed in the disaster but hope remains that others can continue to be found alive.

City regulator will require booming industry to prove its resilience to risk from October next year Crypto firms operating in the UK will be forced to prove they can weather market shocks and hold capital against risky assets as part of sweeping new rules announced by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). The regulations will increase supervision of the crypto industry, which has so far has faced minimal oversight despite a boom in popularity linked to social media influencers and a legitimisation drive under the US president, Donald Trump. Continue reading...