Foreign News
King Charles begins Australia tour with church service
King Charles and Queen Camilla joined a church congregation in Sydney for a Sunday service on the first day of engagements during their tour of Australia.
It is the King’s first visit to Australia since he became the country’s head of state in September 2022 and is the biggest trip the King has made since starting cancer treatment in February.
Their six-day visit to the Commonwealth country will involve meeting political and community leaders, and also celebrating the nation’s people, culture, and heritage.
They were joined by members of St Thomas’ Anglican Church in northern Sydney for the service, which was officiated by the city’s archbishop, the Most Reverend Kanishka Raffel.
The royal couple met some well-wishers after a crowd of a couple of hundred people – many who had queued since early morning – were allowed into the church precinct to speak to the royal couple after the service.
For most it was a snatched hello and a chance to hand over flowers or take a photo.
Lyn Tarbuck attended with her husband Bob, a republican, and her two King Charles spaniels. She said of the monarchy: “I think it’s joined forces – if we have a problem in Australia they will help us out. We are a very big country but small in population so the more help we get the better.”
Roslyn Durie, who saw the Queen on her 1980 visit to Australia, said she was “so emotional” after receiving “a good firm handshake” from the King.
Sandra Hall and her husband Peter were also there to greet the royal couple. Ms Hall said: “I shook hands with Camilla first and welcomed her to Sydney, then Charles came along. I said ‘look, it’s a beautiful sunny day’ – and he said ‘it’s always sunny in Sydney’.”
Outside the church, a small but noisy group of about 20 protesters shouted “not our King”.
They held banners, one reading “decolonise”, and waved Aboriginal and Palestinian flags.
Wayne Wharton, an Indigenous Kooma protester from Brisbane, called out: “I charge you, I charge the King … with crimes against the sovereign nations of this country … of war crimes against our people.”
“I do not recognise the illegal occupation of this country,” he said.
He had started with a megaphone but was told by police to put it down or face receiving a fine.
Also on Sunday, the King presented the New South Wales state parliament with an hourglass to celebrate the 200th anniversary of its upper house.
He also gave a speech to guests, in which he spoke of his “great joy” of visiting Australia for the first time as Sovereign, “and to renew a love of this country and its people which I have cherished for so long”.
On Saturday, a rest day for the couple, an image was released of the King and Queen Camilla showing the royals after their arrival on Friday at Admiralty House, the official residence of Australia’s governor-general, who represents the King in the country.
The couple were said to be touched when Sydney Opera House, which can be viewed from Admiralty House, was lit up with a rolling projection of images of them.
The King’s trip has been marked by his appointment to the honorary ranks of Admiral of the Fleet, Field Marshal, and Marshal in the three services of the Australian Defence Force.
Elsewhere, the Association of Commonwealth Universities, of which the King is a patron, has announced the launch of the King’s Commonwealth Fellowship programme.
It has been developed in response to urgent economic, social, and environmental challenges affecting small island developing states.
“There is so much we can learn from one another as we work together within the Commonwealth to tackle the major challenges of our age and, as these fellowships do in small island developing states, to address them where they are felt most acutely,” the King has said.
While in the Commonwealth country, the King’s visit will include supporting environmental projects and a naval review in Sydney Harbour.
The 75-year-old monarch is also expected to meet two Australian scientists, Georgina Long and Richard Scolyer, who have carried out pioneering research on melanoma – one of the country’s most common cancers.
There will be a reception in the capital on Monday to welcome King Charles, but the six state premiers – of New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, Western Australia, South Australia, and Tasmania – have said they are unable to attend.
A post on the Royal Family’s X account said the trip would include the King addressing the Australian parliament in the capital Canberra.
The King’s cancer treatment has been suspended while in Australia and during the trip’s next leg in Samoa, where he will attend a Commonwealth leaders’ summit.
The timetables for the royal tour do not include evening engagements, state dinners, or trips out late in the day.
A message on the the Royal Family’s social media account said: “Ahead of our first visit to Australia as King and Queen, we are really looking forward to returning to this beautiful country to celebrate the extraordinarily rich cultures and communities that make it so special.”
[BBC]
More than a thousand people have been left with respiratory problems after a sandstorm swept across Iraq’s central and southern parts of the country, health officials said.
One official in Muthanna province reported to the AFP news agency at least 700 cases of what they said was suffocation.
Footage shared online showed areas cloaked in a thick orange haze, with local media reporting power cuts and the suspension of flights in a number of regions.
Dust storms are common in Iraq, but some experts believe they are becoming more frequent due to climate change.
Pedestrians and police wore face masks to protect themselves from the dust and paramedics were on site to assist people with difficulty breathing, according to AFP.
Hospitals in Muthanna province in southern Iraq received at least “700 cases of suffocation”, a local health official said.
More than 250 people were taken to hospital in Najaf province, and at least 322 patients including children were sent to hospitals in Diwaniyah province.
A further 530 people reported breathing issues in Dhi Qar and Basra provinces.
The sandstorm blanketed Iraq’s southern provinces in an orange cloud that reduced visibility to less than one kilometre (0.62 mile).
The authorities were forced to shut down airports in the provinces of Najaf and Basra.
Conditions are expected to gradually improve by Tuesday morning, according to local weather services.
Iraq is listed by the UN as one of the five countries most vulnerable to climate change as it encounters regular sandstorms, sweltering heat and water scarcity.
A severe sandstorm in 2022 left one person dead and more than 5,000 needing treatment for respiratory illnesses.
Iraq will be experiencing more “dust days” in the future, according to its environment ministry.
[BBC]
Indian businessman Mehul Choksi has been arrested in Belgium following India’s request for his extradition.
Choksi, who left India in 2018, was arrested on Saturday, his lawyer Vijay Aggarwal told the BBC on Monday.
The diamond merchant is wanted by India for allegedly defrauding one of the country’s largest banks of nearly $1.8bn (£1.3bn).
Choksi has not commented publicly on the case, but his lawyer said they would appeal against his detention and also oppose his extradition to India.
“These are the obvious grounds on which we will argue the case, that he is not a flight risk and secondly, that he is extremely sick. He is undergoing cancer treatment,” Mr Agarwal said. He added that they would “contest the extradition on grounds that there isn’t enough evidence against him and the extradition request is politically motivated and the trial in India may not be fair”.
The BBC has reached out to India’s foreign ministry and financial crimes agency – the Enforcement Directorate (ED) – for comment.
According to a Times of India report, Choksi was arrested on the basis of two non-bailable warrants issued by an Indian court in 2018 and 2021 – although it’s not clear why the action came now.
Mehul Choksi and his nephew, Nirav Modi, are wanted by Indian authorities in connection with a $1.8bn fraud case at Punjab National Bank (PNB).
Niray Modi, who’s also been living abroad since 2018, is lodged in a prison in London and is awaiting extradition to India.
Both were high-profile diamond traders. Modi’s jewellery was worn by several Hollywood celebrities such as Naomi Watts and Kate Winslet. One of the biggest Bollywood stars, Priyanka Chopra, was his company’s brand ambassador. Choksi, meanwhile, was the owner of Gitanjali Gems, an Indian jewellery retailer which once had about 4,000 stores across India.
The ED has accused Choksi and Modi of colluding with some employees of PNB’s Brady House branch in Mumbai city to get fraudulent advances for payments to overseas suppliers of jewels.
These funds were then allegedly diverted and laundered.
Choksi and Modi have denied the allegations against them.
After leaving India, Choksi reportedly travelled to the US and later to Antigua – where he has citizenship. In 2021, he was reportedly arrested in Dominica and deported back to Antigua.
Hariprasad SV, a Bengaluru-based entrepreneur who had in 2016 alerted authorities about the alleged scam at PNB, said Choksi’s arrest was “great news”. “Apart from bringing him back, the most important thing is to get back all those billions of dollars he looted from India,” he told ANI news agency.
[BBC]
US President Donald Trump’s administration has exempted smartphones, computers and some other electronic devices from “reciprocal” tariffs, including the 125% levies imposed on Chinese imports.
US Customs and Border Patrol published a notice late on Friday explaining the goods would be excluded from Trump’s 10% global tariff on most countries and the much larger Chinese import tax.
The move comes after concerns from US tech companies that the price of gadgets could skyrocket, as many of them are made in China.
This is the first significant reprieve of any kind in Trump’s tariffs on China, with one trade analyst describing it as a “game-changer scenario”.
[BBC]
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