Todd  Murphy is firming to play his first home Test, after the SCG’s head curator declared the pitch’s green covering would be near-irrelevant come day one.

With administrators still on edge after last week’s two day debacle in Melbourne, an extremely green SCG surface raised eyebrows in Sydney on Thursday.

Palestine was the deadliest place to work as a journalist in 2025, with the Middle East as a whole the most dangerous region for media professionals, according to a global journalist union.

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) said the region accounted for 74 deaths last year – more than half of the 128 journalists and media workers killed – in a new report released on Wednesday.

The Middle East was followed by Africa with 18 deaths, Asia Pacific (15), the Americas (11) and Europe (10), according to the report. The vast majority of those killed were men, but the list included 10 women.

“128 journalists killed in a single year is not just a statistic; it is a global crisis. These deaths are a brutal reminder that journalists are being targeted with impunity, simply for doing their job,” IFJ General Secretary Anthony Bellanger said.

Palestinian journalists were the biggest cohort of victims: 56 Palestinian media professionals were killed in 2025. Yemen followed, with 13 deaths, Ukraine, with eight, and Sudan, with six, according to the IFJ.

The Paris-based media union cited Israel’s killing of Al Jazeera journalist Anas al-Sharif as the most “emblematic” of the 56 journalists murdered in Palestine last year covering Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza. Al-Sharif, 28, was killed on August 10 alongside several colleagues when Israeli forces struck a media tent outside Gaza City’s al-Shifa Hospital.

The attack also killed Al Jazeera correspondent Mohammed Qreiqeh, Al Jazeera camera operators Ibrahim Zaher and Mohammed Noufal, freelance camera operator Momen Aliwa and freelance journalist Mohammed al-Khalidi.

IFJ also cited an Israeli strike in early September on a Yemeni newspaper office as “one of the worst-ever attacks on a media office”. Thirteen journalists and media workers at the Houthi-affiliated “26 September” newspaper were killed, along with more than 20 other people.

Another nine deaths were ruled as accidents, while others – including two journalists in Syria and two in Iran – were “targeted and killed” because of their work, IFJ said.

While the Middle East was the deadliest region for the third year in a row in 2025, the Asia Pacific accounted for the largest number of journalists and media workers behind bars. Most cases in 2025 were in China and Hong Kong, which together accounted for 143 journalists, followed by 49 in Myanmar and 37 in Vietnam.

Europe was another detention hotspot last year, accounting for 149 imprisoned journalists. IFJ attributed the figure, up 40 percent from a year earlier, to “intensified repression in Azerbaijan and Russia”.

[Aljazeera]

United States President Donald Trump has said that he will delay the implementation of tariffs on upholstered furniture, kitchen cabinets and vanities for one year, amid growing concerns over cost-of-living issues.

Trump signed an order on Wednesday night, during the New Year’s Eve holiday, pausing a planned 50 percent tariff on cabinets and vanities and a 30 percent tariff on upholstered furniture.

But the order maintained the 25 percent tariff he put in place for those products in September.

The US president had previously described the furniture tariffs as a step to “bolster American industry and protect national security”.

Polls indicate that rising prices and the cost of living are major concerns for people in the US as the country approaches its 2026 midterm elections, scheduled for November.

Voters hold President Trump’s policies, and tariffs in particular, at least partly responsible for their economic woes. A Politico poll released in December found that 30 percent of respondents cited tariffs as the primary reason prices were high, and 32 percent said that Trump bears “full responsibility” for the state of the economy.

A majority of respondents cited the cost of living as a top issue facing the country, while 32 percent cited the state of the economy. Democratic politicians have sought to hammer Trump and his Republican Party on affordability concerns, which Trump has waved away as a “hoax” perpetuated by his political rivals.

The Italian foreign ministry said on Thursday that the US had also agreed to slash proposed import duties on pasta products from 13 companies.

[Aljazeera]