What’s making news today
Hello and welcome to our live coverage of national news this Tuesday, September 22. Here’s what you need to know today.
G7 foreign ministers call on Iran to stop arming Houthis
The foreign ministers of seven of the world’s most powerful nations have called on Iran to end its arming and support of Houthis in Yemen.
The Houthis have recently stepped up strikes on Saudi Arabia and captured more territory in Yemen.
The nations said Iran’s actions constituted a dangerous pattern of escalation that risked undermining international trade and creating global instability.
“We condemn in the strongest terms the unacceptable continued strikes carried out by the Houthis in Yemen and against the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia,” the ministers of Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States said in a statement after a meeting on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly.
“We call on the Houthis to immediately cease all military actions, all threats and attacks against civilian shipping, and to return to the political process in good faith.”
Reuters, Bloomberg
Aussie motorists inadvertently funding Putin
The vast majority of fuel arriving in Australia from a key Asian refinery has come from Russia, a new analysis has found, sparking warnings that motorists and businesses are inadvertently funding Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine.
A new report by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) estimates that 68 per cent of oil exported to Australia from Brunei’s Hengyi refinery in the first seven months of the year was Russian-derived, up from 24 per cent two years ago.
Australia has imported a total of 2.6 million tonnes of Russian-origin oil, mostly in the form of diesel, from the Hengyi refinery since the war in Ukraine began in 2022, the Finland-based think tank estimates.
Australia banned direct imports of Russian oil after Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, but a loophole has allowed Russian crude oil to enter the nation after being refined in third countries such as India, China and Brunei.
Read the full story here.
Taylor says people should have ‘choices’ about their super
Opposition Leader Angus Taylor has just wrapped up a press conference in Sydney during which he said people should have “choices” when it comes to their superannuation, and he hinted the Coalition would unveil its super policy soon.
“Superannuation is Australia’s money … They should have choices. That’s why we strongly support self-managed super funds,” he told reporters.
“But we’ll say more about our policy more generally over the next little while.”
Pressure on the Coalition to articulate its position on super has been ramped up in recent weeks after One Nation announced it would allow renters and mortgage holders access to a quarter of their future superannuation contributions over the next three years.
Nurse who missed red zone heartbeat apologises to Joe Massa’s family
The triage nurse responsible for assessing two-year-old Joe Massa, who died after he suffered a cardiac arrest at Northern Beaches Hospital, has broken down in tears on the second day of the inquest into his death.
“I am sorry, I am human and I think about Joseph every day,” she told his family.
Registered nurse Hilary O’Neill triaged Joe as a category three patient, despite his “red zone” heart rate of 182 beats per minute.
“I feel terrible that I missed his heart rate and I think I played a role,” she said. “I think the system really let him down and let you down.”
O’Neill said nursing was a job she loved and that she was now “terrified” of it.
UK to send air support to Saudi Arabia for Houthi fight
Britain is to send air-refuelling aircraft to Saudi Arabia to assist the country’s military against Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels.
“We have received a request from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia for military support, and on the advice of the defence secretary and the foreign secretary, last night I agreed to that request for defensive air-to-air refuelling,” Prime Minister Andy Burnham told reporters while travelling to the UN General Assembly in New York.
The decision to support the Saudi military campaign is one of Burnham’s first significant military decisions since becoming prime minister in July. Refuelling of Saudi jets on missions that the UK considers defensive will begin in the coming days, and the operation is expected to last weeks.
Houthi fighters pushed to seize strategic heights in Yemen yesterday to cut off the Red Sea coast from remaining areas held by Saudi-backed forces, after a report that US President Donald Trump had called off American strikes on the group at the last minute.
Joyce slams Nine for broadcasting interview with KKK leader
One Nation MP Barnaby Joyce insisted this morning that he was opposed to media censorship before he slammed Nine for broadcasting an interview with Thom Robb, the leader of the Ku Klux Klan, in which he praised Pauline Hanson.
During the broadcast, published by Nine News yesterday, Robb said Hanson’s rise in Australia was “heartening”.
“She’s demonised by the same people who demonise us.”
Joyce called the report “absolutely crazy” and told News24 the reporter had “pulled this stuff out of their backside”.
US plans to reopen Greenland bases ahead of UN agreement
The US will reopen a former Cold War-era military base in southern Greenland and set up a military presence at an east coast base now used by the Danish dog sled patrol under an agreement to be signed by the US, Denmark and Greenland today, according to three people familiar with the matter.
Those sites are Narsarsuaq, whose population has dwindled to a few dozen since the US closed its Bluie West One military base in the 1950s, and Mestersvig, an outpost currently used by the Sirius Dog Sled Patrol, a Danish special forces unit, said two of the sources.
Denmark, Greenland and the US are expected to sign their new agreement at the UN General Assembly in New York City overnight.
The text of the deal has not been made public, and the three people familiar with it, speaking on condition of anonymity, said its details were not finalised until it was signed. The governments of Denmark and Greenland did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The White House also did not immediately respond.
Reuters
UN scrambles to avoid a repeat of Trump’s 2025 escalator drama
The defining moment of 2025’s gathering of world leaders at the UN may have been Donald Trump’s accusation of “sabotage” after his teleprompter blinked out and an escalator stalled while he was on it.
Now the world body is working overtime to make sure nothing similar happens again to distract from its focus on solving the world’s problems this week. Trump is set to deliver his speech at the UN’s iconic East River headquarters in New York City tonight.
“It has been checked and rechecked,” UN spokesman Stéphane Dujarric told reporters about the escalator at a briefing, ahead of the high-level General Assembly session.
The UN is anxious for everything to run smoothly a year after Trump called for the arrest of the person who purportedly triggered an escalator to shut down just as he and first lady Melania Trump stepped onto it. At the time, the UN said Trump’s videographer may have been to blame.
Rishworth: Australia in ‘good position’ to address issues raised in report
Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations Amanda Rishworth insists Australia is well-positioned to address the issues raised by yesterday’s Intergenerational Report, despite challenges.
“I do feel that there are challenges, but we are in a good position to address them,” Rishworth told the Today show.
“As the report shows, we’re in a better position than many other countries. But what this has demonstrated is that some of the measures that we are taking are critical, making sure that we’re giving tax cuts to workers, getting our superannuation system in the best position possible, so that people can live in a better retirement with more money.”
The Treasury report showed Australia would face rising national debt and a heavier tax burden unless it fixed its productivity crisis.
“Making sure that we are investing in productivity growth, and we have a big productivity agenda as well,” Rishworth said.
“This does outline challenges, but also some really important opportunities that, if we play right in the next number of decades, Australia will be in a very good place.”
Hundreds of flights cancelled as technical problems impact NYC airports
Hundreds of flights have been cancelled in the US north-east due to technical problems at a key regional air traffic control centre, halting operations at every major airport in the New York City area for several hours on Monday (US time) just as numerous foreign leaders were flying in for the United Nations General Assembly.
However, President Donald Trump’s flight from Washington to New York was able to depart as scheduled.
The technical problems happened at the same FAA facility in Philadelphia that caused numerous disruptions at Newark Liberty International Airport in the spring of 2025.
On Monday morning, the primary circuit that carries data into that air traffic control facility failed, affecting flights for Philadelphia as well as Kennedy, LaGuardia and Newark airports, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said.
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: www.smh.com.au
