Australia news live: woman accused of travelling to Syria to join IS refused bail; ABC reporters denied entry to One Nation press conference

All four Australians onboard the cruise ship where a hantavirus outbreak has so far been linked to the deaths of three passengers remain en route to the Canary Islands.

Some media outlets reported that one Australian has already returned home after joining more than two dozen passengers who disembarked from the MV Hondius in St Helena on 24 April – 11 days before the first case of hantavirus was confirmed. However, a spokesperson for Oceanwide Expeditions confirmed to the Guardian that all four Australians who boarded the MV Hondius at Ushuaia, Argentina, at the beginning of the Atlantic cruise on 1 April remain onboard and in self-isolation.

One New Zealander was among the 30 passengers who disembarked at St Helena, along with the body of the 70-year Dutch national who died onboard 10 days into the cruise. These passengers’ subsequent movements are being traced by international health agencies coordinated through the World Heath Organisation. The cruise company spokesperson said there were presently no symptomatic individuals onboard.

The MV Hondius left Cape Verde on Thursday (AEST) and is expected to arrive in the port of Granadilla in the Canary Islands at some point towards the end of the weekend.

“Oceanwide Expeditions remains in close and continual discussion with relevant authorities regarding our exact point of arrival, quarantine and screening procedures for all guests, and a precise timeline,” the statement said.

ASX sheds $50bn as Middle East tensions flare

Australian shares fell heavily today, wiping nearly $50bn in value as US and Iranian forces traded fire in the strait of Hormuz, undermining an anticipated peace deal.

The benchmark S&P/ASX 200 closed today down 1.5% at 8,744.40 points, erasing most of the week’s gains.

Ten out of the ASX’s 11 sectors fell on Friday, with telecommunications the only one to record a modest rise.

Shares in News Corp, which are listed in the US and Australia, jumped 2.6% today on the ASX after the media conglomerate posted a 9% increase in quarterly revenue to US$2.19bn ($3bn).

Its news media division, which includes Australian mastheads, recorded the weakest earnings figures out of its four main divisions, led by digital real estate, business news-focused Dow Jones and book publishing.

Australia’s broader market was primarily pushed around this week by events in the Middle East.

Chris Weston, the head of research at Melbourne-based financial firm Pepperstone, said “once again, the news flow on the geopolitical front has shown that the path towards a lasting agreement is anything but linear”.

No jail for teacher over ‘gross’ sexual texts to child

A former private school teacher who sent messages detailing sexual contact to a minor will serve his time in the community rather than a jail cell.

William Roberto Gulson had been teaching at Sydney’s elite Knox Grammar school and tutoring privately, before embarking on a 90-minute online exchange with someone he believed was a 15-year-old boy in 2024.

In reality it was a 14-year-old, who along with another teen was running a fake profile on LGBTQI dating app Grindr in an attempt to catch pedophiles.

Gulson stood frozen as he was sentenced to a three-year community bond and ordered to complete 400 hours of community service in Sydney’s Downing Centre local court on Friday.

The 28-year-old will also appear on the NSW child protection register for eight years, is obliged to report any new tattoos and is barred from online gaming platforms that allow communication with children.

Gulson had testified the conversation amounted to a lapse in judgment as he was multitasking, marking papers.

Judge Hugh Donnelly slammed the former English and drama master’s account of the text exchange as “improbable, implausible and inconsistent with the logical course of events” as he handed down his judgment.

Gulson had a sexual interest in children, he determined when he found the former teacher guilty of procuring a child for unlawful sexual activity in January. He described Gulson’s texts to the 15-year-old as “extremely explicit”, mentioning kissing and licking, spotlighting a message which read “do you find it (sic) hot you’re the same age as my students?”

The former teacher has lodged an appeal against his conviction and sentence.

-Australian Associated Press

Measles alert for Sutherland shire in Sydney

NSW Health has urged people in the Sutherland shire of Sydney to be alert for symptoms of measles after a confirmed case in a returned travelled from south-east Asia.

The person visited several locations in the shire while unknowingly infectious, including healthcare facilities. There have been 47 measles cases confirmed in New South Wales since January.

South Eastern Sydney local health district public health physician Dr Anthea Katelaris urged people to monitor for symptoms, particularly if they’d visited exposure locations.

Symptoms to watch out for include fever, sore eyes, runny nose and a cough, usually followed three or four days later by a red, blotchy rash that spreads from the head and face to the rest of the body. It can take up to 18 days for symptoms to appear after an exposure, so it’s important for people who visited these locations to look out for symptoms for this period.

Katelaris also encouraged the community to ensure they were up to date with measles vaccinations, which can prevent the disease after exposure if given early enough.

Measles is a vaccine preventable disease that is spread through the air when someone who is infectious coughs or sneezes.

Three men accused of murdering boys to stand trial

Three men accused of murdering two young boys as they walked home from a basketball match have been committed to stand trial.

Peter Addo, 19, Abel Sorzor, 19, and Prince Conteh, 20, all formally entered not guilty pleas in Melbourne magistrates court on Friday afternoon.

They are accused of attacking Chol Achiek, 12, and Dau Akueng, 15, at Cobblebank in Melbourne’s outer north-west on 6 September.

The two boys were on their way home from basketball when a group of males allegedly set upon them and stabbed them to death. Five other accused – all aged 15 and 16 – have also been charged with two counts of murder.

At a preliminary hearing in April, the court was told police found a sword at the home of one of the 16-year-olds accused after the alleged murders.

Preliminary testing suggested it was likely the 16-year-old boy’s DNA was on the sword’s handle, while the DNA of one of the slain boys was on the blade, the court was told.

Addo, Sorzor and Conteh each elected to have their cases fast-tracked to the Victorian supreme court where they will stand trial on two counts of murder.

Magistrate Stephen Ballek remanded them each into custody to face their first directions hearing on 29 May. Senior crown prosecutor Kristie Churchill SC also indicated the underage accused were planning to have their cases fast-tracked.

The five teens are expected to complete that process at a children’s court next week.

-Australian Associated Press

Shadow home affairs minister declines to weigh in on net overseas migration target

The shadow minister for home affairs, Jonno Duniam, addressed the media earlier this afternoon where he released a series of questions the Coalition has about the women and children with links to the Islamic State who returned to Australia from Syria yesterday.

Duniam was also asked about whether the Coalition is considering cutting net overseas migration by between 150,000 and 200,000, as we reported in a leaked document.

He replied “we haven’t put a number on that”, and continued:

The most important thing to do in setting a net overseas migration target or number is to properly understand how you arrive at that point. And one of those ways of doing so … to determine how many houses are being built in this country. And of course if you’re not building enough houses, where are we going to house these people who want to come here to start a new life? …

I know people will throw numbers around, we want to address the problems that are being caused here. It’s not because solely we have too many people coming in. If we’re not building enough houses, we can’t accommodate people.

So we’ve actually got to boost our capacity to build houses here, and we’ll have more to say about that. But no numbers today. There will be a number before the election, but not today.

Universities coordinate response to education platform hack

The federal education department, the National Office of Cyber Security and Universities Australia are coordinating a national response to the earlier reported cyber-attack on education platform Canvas, which took the service offline this week.

The University of Canberra said on Friday it was one of 25 Australian and NZ universities affected by the breach – where attackers have obtained school information, names, student IDs, email addresses, and potentially messages on the platform – and was part of the coordinated national response.

RMIT told students on Friday any assessment that was due between today and next Friday has been given an extension until 11.59pm on Friday 15 May.

University of Sydney was also rescheduling exams on Friday, and offered an extension, or a mark adjustment or alternative arrangements for any assessment affected by the outage.

The platform is used not just by universities but by schools and Tafe institutions.

The peak body for private schools in NSW, Independent Schools NSW, held a meeting with schools affected by the data breach on Friday afternoon.

Sydney deputy mayor says community ‘rightly suspicious’ of datacentres

The City of Sydney deputy mayor, Jess Miller, told a NSW datacentres inquiry that the community in Sydney is “rightly suspicious of datacentres”.

The impression that they have, based on what they can see, is that they’re ugly, intrusive and parasitic. They take more than they give.

However, we also recognise that they are an inevitability if designed well, utilising innovation, design and engineering, they may well offer an opportunity to contribute meaningfully to our communities.

Miller said that these “quite lifeless, block-long, anonymous, cavernous buildings with no street activation” were already having a massive impact on the community without proper regulatory guidelines.

There are currently 16 datacentres operating in the City of Sydney area, she said, with 15 more in the development pipeline.

She said:

Uncoordinated growth without proper planning will strain the electricity grid, use huge amounts of drinking water, undermine our climate goals, take up scarce land needed for housing and jobs, cause local environmental impacts and provide limited local economic benefits.

Allowing datacentres in areas zoned for light industrial industry means we are forced to permit the use of scarce inner-city land to datacentres, which risks displacing productive, job-rich businesses whose workers also contribute to our area economically and socially.

A Sydney woman charged with joining the Islamic State will remain in custody after prosecutors argued the case against her was “strong and straightforward”.

Janai Safar, 32, appeared before NSW bail court on Friday after she was arrested at Sydney airport on Thursday evening. She was one of four women who returned to Australia with children who were allegedly linked to Islamic State fighters.

Three of those women have been charged, including Safar, who faces one country of entering, or remaining in, declared areas, and another charge of being a member of a terrorist organisation. Each offence she faces carries a maximum of 10 years in prison.

Judge Daniel Covington refused Safar’s application for bail on Friday afternoon because it did not meet the exceptional circumstances test.

Her lawyer, Michael Ainsworth of Samuel Griffith Chambers, argued Safar should be released on bail for a number of reasons, including that the now 32-year-old committed the offences when she was 21 and has been in a refugee camp for nine years.

“She’s been in a situation that is, is, in itself, custodial in another country,” he told the court.

Lane Cove council wants temporary moratorium on datacentre approvals

Last weekend, Guardian Australia reported on three communities across Australia concerned about massive new datacentres proposed for their communities, including the Project Mars datacentre in Lane Cove.

Lane Cove deputy mayor, Rochelle Flood, told a NSW inquiry into datacentres on Friday that consultation from the datacentre developer for the project had been lacklustre.

I’ve heard directly from residents who live in properties that essentially adjoin the business park right where the datacentre is going to go.

Some of them didn’t receive an initial letter of notification. They weren’t aware of the online Zoom meetings that the proponent held with the community, because some of them are in their 80s. They’re not particularly digitally savvy.

There are several datacentres running or in development in the business park in Lane Cove, and Flood said residents were concerned about the cumulative impact of the centres on air quality, the environment and electricity demand.

Until issues are addressed, such as a requirement for renewable energy, recycled water, a demonstration of community benefits, and giving locals a voice in the planning process, Flood said the NSW government should have a moratorium on new datacentre approvals.

Shadow home affairs minister has questions for Albanese government over women with ties to Islamic State

Jonno Duniam, the shadow minister for home affairs, released a series of questions the Coalition has about the women and children with links to the Islamic State who returned to Australia from Syria yesterday.

Three women have been charged upon their return, but the Coalition has spent the day criticizing the Albanese government for letting them return to the country at all. Home affairs minister Tony Burke maintained the government did not assist with repatriation in any way, but promised anyone who committed alleged crimes would face the “full force of the law”.

Duniam asked 10 questions, including why, if there was sufficient evidence to arrest the women there was not enough to impose temporary exclusion orders. He also asked how much taxpayer money had already been spent and I’ll be spent to establish charges against and continue to monitor the cohort.

He said in a statement:

Australians deserve transparency from a government that has chosen to allow individuals that have allegedly committed some of the worst crimes imaginable – charges so serious some of them have never been used before – back into the country.

And Australians deserve a right to know what risks are being imposed on communities, what safeguards are in place, the cost they will have to bear, and whether the same chaotic scenes seen at Melbourne airport will be replicated.