Olympic medallist Jessica Hull has anchored Australia to victory in the mixed relay event at the World Cross Country Championships in Tallahassee, Florida.
Hull teamed up with Oliver Hoare, Linden Hall and Jack Anstey to win gold, with the Australians recording a time of 22 minutes and 23 seconds across the four 2 kilometre legs of the race.
Australia stopped the clock three seconds ahead of France, with Ethiopia third (22:34).
It is Australia’s fifth medal in World Athletics Cross Country Championships history.
Hull and Hoare helped Australia win bronze in the same race at the 2023 world titles, which were held in Bathurst.
“We’re all pretty proud of that one,” said Hull, who won silver in the 1,500m on the track at the Paris Olympics.
“There’s been a belief that we cannot just medal, but we can probably win it, and we all carried that into today because we weren’t afraid to try and run to win.”
In the individual events, Lauren Ryan was the best-placed Australian in the women’s 10km race, finishing in 13th position.
Ryan ran a time of 33:47, while fellow Australian Leanne Pompeani was six seconds behind in 15th place.
Kenya’s Agnes Jebet Ngetich won gold in 31:28.
Ky Robinson was 24th in the men’s 10km race, one place ahead of Australian teammate Edward Marks.
Robinson clocked 29:56, two seconds quicker than Marks, with Uganda’s Jacob Kiplimo winning in a time of 28:18.
An endangered species of marsupial known as the “northern quoll” or the “North Australian native cat” has been spotted in a wildlife sanctuary in Queensland for the first time in almost a century, sparking hopes of a potential comeback.
The critter was captured on a motion-sensor camera at the 164,850-hectare Piccaninny Plains Wildlife Sanctuary in Northern Kaanju Country, jointly owned by Australian Wildlife Conservancy (AWC) and The Tony & Lisette Lewis Foundation.
Once widespread across northern and eastern Australia, northern quoll populations have collapsed due to toxic cane toads; feral predators including cats; inappropriate fire regimes; and habitat loss.
The closest detection of the species was in 2017, when a quoll was captured on a trail camera on the neighbouring Indigenous managed Kaanju Ngaachi Wenlock and Pascoe River IPA by Chuulangun Rangers.
Ecologists have been fearing the loss of the species from Piccaninny Plains for nearly two decades after failing to detect the elusive marsupial in surveys since 2008—including multiple targeted camera deployments in 2015, 2021 and 2023.
Then last year, sanctuary manager Nick Stock, following a hunch, deployed a single camera on an isolated rocky outcrop within the sanctuary that he spotted from a helicopter. Within days he had captured unmistakable evidence of a quoll.
“It was a fantastic surprise!” Helena Stokes, AWC Wildlife Ecologist said. “After years of no sightings, to finally confirm a northern quoll on the sanctuary is hugely uplifting for our team. It reinforces the importance of persistence, good science, and managing threats across large landscapes.”
This record, according to Stokes gives them a “roadmap” and a clear starting point for future surveys and research.
“It’s possible this quoll, and hopefully others, have adapted their behaviour in response to the presence of cane toads. Understanding that resilience could be vital for the species’ long-term survival,” she said.
The rediscovery also offers an important starting point for understanding how the species continues to persist on Cape York.
Early signs indicate that the rocky outcrop has largely escaped fire—thanks to AWC’s long‑term fire management—and, to date, surveillance cameras have not detected any feral cats in the area.
“Every rediscovery matters,” said Nick Stock. “Just when we were close to giving up hope, this little quoll reminds us why we keep searching, and why protecting these landscapes at scale is essential.”
Do you have a tip on a science story that Newsweek should be covering? Do you have a question about endangered species? Let us know via science@newsweek.com.
BRUSSELS, Jan 6 (Reuters) – Finance ministers from the Group of Seven nations will meet in Washington on January 12 to discuss rare earths supplies, three sources familiar with the matter said on Tuesday.
One of the sources added that price floors for rare earths would be a point of discussion, among other critical mineral topics.
G7 countries, except Japan, are heavily or exclusively reliant on China for a range of materials from rare earth magnets to battery metals. In June last year, the G7 agreed on an action plan to secure their supply chains and boost their economies.
(Reporting by Makiko Yamazaki in Tokyo, Julia Payne in Brussels and Trevor Hunnicutt in Washington; Editing by Alex Richardson)
Seven-time Grand Slam singles champion Venus Williams has received a wild-card entry for the Australian Open beginning Jan. 18 in Melbourne.The tournament said Friday that the 45-year-old Williams would make a return to Melbourne Park 28 years after her first appearance. In 1998, she defeated her younger sister Serena in the second round before losing in the quarterfinals to fellow American Lindsay Davenport.Venus had announced in November that she would play in Auckland, New Zealand, where she also received a wild card, two weeks before the Australian Open. The Australian Open said Williams was also entered to play a tournament in Hobart, Australia a week later and just before play begins at Melbourne Park.She last appeared in Melbourne in 2021 and has finished runner-up in the women’s singles twice, losing to Serena in the finals in 2003 and 2017.”I’m excited to be back in Australia and looking forward to competing during the Australian summer,” Williams said. “I’ve had so many incredible memories there, and I’m grateful for the opportunity to return to a place that has meant so much to my career.”Williams’ record at Melbourne Park is 54 wins and 21 losses. This year will be the 22nd time she has appeared in the main draw.The tournament said Williams is set to become the oldest woman to compete in an Australian Open main draw, surpassing the record previously held by Japan’s Kimiko Date, who was 44 when she lost in the first round at Melbourne Park in 2015.In late December, Williams married Danish-born model and actor Andrea Preti at Palm Beach, Florida.
Seven-time Grand Slam singles champion Venus Williams has received a wild-card entry for the Australian Open beginning Jan. 18 in Melbourne.
The tournament said Friday that the 45-year-old Williams would make a return to Melbourne Park 28 years after her first appearance. In 1998, she defeated her younger sister Serena in the second round before losing in the quarterfinals to fellow American Lindsay Davenport.
Venus had announced in November that she would play in Auckland, New Zealand, where she also received a wild card, two weeks before the Australian Open. The Australian Open said Williams was also entered to play a tournament in Hobart, Australia a week later and just before play begins at Melbourne Park.
She last appeared in Melbourne in 2021 and has finished runner-up in the women’s singles twice, losing to Serena in the finals in 2003 and 2017.
“I’m excited to be back in Australia and looking forward to competing during the Australian summer,” Williams said. “I’ve had so many incredible memories there, and I’m grateful for the opportunity to return to a place that has meant so much to my career.”
Williams’ record at Melbourne Park is 54 wins and 21 losses. This year will be the 22nd time she has appeared in the main draw.
The tournament said Williams is set to become the oldest woman to compete in an Australian Open main draw, surpassing the record previously held by Japan’s Kimiko Date, who was 44 when she lost in the first round at Melbourne Park in 2015.
In late December, Williams married Danish-born model and actor Andrea Preti at Palm Beach, Florida.
Australia’s biggest online bookmaker, Sportsbet, has been hit with an AUD 313,140 (about $209,000) fine by the Northern Territory Racing and Wagering Commission for failing to provide required gambling activity statements to more than 6,000 customers over 18 months.
NT Gambling Watchdog Slaps Sportsbet with Fine
The regulator determined that Sportsbet violated its license conditions by failing to send monthly activity statements to 6,131 customers between 2022 and 2024. Overall, 51,525 required statements were not delivered. These statements are mandated by law and are designed to provide customers with a clear picture of their betting activity, enabling them to monitor and reduce the risk of gambling-related harm.
In its decision notice, the commission stated that the breaches represented a clear and repeated failure to meet a fundamental consumer protection obligation. It further noted that the continued nature of the violations pointed to systemic shortcomings in the licensee’s governance and assurance processes. The regulator concluded that this conduct created an increased risk of harm to consumers.
In a statement, Commission Chair Alastair Shields said the finding of multiple breaches led to a significant cumulative fine, highlighting both the seriousness of the non-compliance and the Commission’s response. He added that the regulator would continue to take strong enforcement action to ensure compliance and foster a safer wagering environment. Shields also confirmed that the commission had not been informed of any legal challenge to the ruling.
Sportsbet told the commission that “several technical issues” had caused the failures. The company expressed regret over the incident and offered a sincere apology to the affected customers.
These aren’t the only troubles that Sportsbet has been involved in in recent months, however. For example, earlier this month, a currently jailed financier filed a lawsuit against Sportsbet in an attempt to recover the money he stole from his clients and then lost to the company.
Some Think the Fine Isn’t Enough
The size of the fine attracted criticism from academics. Charles Livingstone, head of Monash University’s Gambling and Social Determinants Unit, described the penalty as “fairly serious” in principle but financially negligible for the operator. He noted that while AUD 313,000 is significant for the NT regulator, it is “virtually nothing” for Sportsbet, which generates billions in annual revenue, calling the amount “very modest.”
Livingstone also pointed out that, although the fine suggested the regulator was trying to show strength, he remained skeptical. He argued that for the commission to demonstrate real effectiveness, it would need proper resources, conduct active investigations, and be willing to suspend or cancel licences. Without these measures, he said, the regulator remained open to criticism as ineffective and risked being seen as a jurisdiction of convenience.
Auckland rang in 2026 with a downtown fireworks display launched from New Zealand’s tallest structure, Sky Tower, making it the first major city to greet the new year at a celebration dampened by rain.South Pacific countries are the first to bid farewell to 2025. Clocks strike midnight in Auckland, a population of 1.7 million, 18 hours before the famous ball drops in New York’s Times Square.The five-minute display involved 3,500 fireworks launched from various floors of the 787-foot Sky Tower. Smaller community events were canceled across New Zealand’s North Island on Wednesday due to forecasts of rain and possible thunderstorms.Australia plans defiant celebration after country’s worst mass shootingAustralia’s east coast welcomes 2026 two hours after New Zealand, but in Sydney, the country’s largest city, celebrations will be held under the pall of Australia’s worst mass shooting in almost 30 years. Two gunmen targeted a Hanukkah celebration at Bondi Beach on Dec. 14, killing 15 and wounding 40.A heavy police presence monitored the thousands who thronged to the downtown waterfront on Wednesday to watch a fireworks show centered on the Sydney Harbor Bridge. Many officers openly carried rapid-fire rifles, in a first for the annual event.An hour before midnight, the massacre victims will be commemorated with one minute of silence while images of a menorah are projected on the bridge pylons. The crowd has been invited to show their solidarity with Australia’s Jewish community by shining their phone torches across the harbor.New South Wales Premier Chris Minns urged Sydney residents not to stay away through fear, saying extremists would interpret smaller crowds at New Year’s Eve festivities as a victory.“We can’t be in a situation where this horrible, criminal, terrorist event changes the way we live in our beautiful city,” Minns told reporters on Wednesday.“We have to show defiance in the face of this terrible crime and say that we’re not going to be cowered by this kind of terrorism,” he added.Indonesia and Hong Kong hold subdued eventsIn Indonesia, one of Australia’s nearest neighbors, cities scaled back New Year’s Eve festivities as a gesture of solidarity with communities devastated by catastrophic floods and landslides that struck parts of Sumatra island a month ago, claiming more than 1,100 lives.The capital, Jakarta, will not ring in 2026 with its usual fanfare, choosing instead subdued celebrations with a calm and reflective program centered on prayers for victims, city Gov. Pramono Anung said last week.Makassar Mayor Munafri Arifuddin urged residents of one of Indonesia’s largest cities to forgo parties altogether, calling for prayer and reflection instead. “Empathy and restraint are more meaningful than fireworks and crowds,” he said.Concerts and fireworks on Indonesia’s tourist island of Bali have been canceled and replaced with a cultural arts event featuring 65 groups performing traditional dances.Hong Kong, too, will ring in 2026 without the usual spectacular and colorful explosions in the sky over its iconic Victoria Harbor, after a massive fire in November killed at least 161 people.The city’s tourism board will instead host a music show featuring soft rock duo Air Supply and other singers in Central, a business district. The facades of eight landmarks will turn into giant countdown clocks presenting a three-minute light show at midnight.Many parts of Asia welcome the new year by observing age-old traditions.In Japan, crowds will gather at a Buddhist temple in Tokyo for a bell striking at midnight. In the South Korean capital Seoul, a bell tolling and countdown ceremony will be held at the Bosingak Pavilion.Berliners celebrate in snowTourists and Berliners alike marked the end of 2025 by enjoying snowfall, taking selfies and making snowmen in front of the German capital’s cathedral and the iconic Brandenburg Gate. The famous Berlin TV Tower was nearly invisible thanks to the falling flakes and fog.___Associated Press writers around the world contributed to this report.
WELLINGTON, New Zealand —
Auckland rang in 2026 with a downtown fireworks display launched from New Zealand’s tallest structure, Sky Tower, making it the first major city to greet the new year at a celebration dampened by rain.
South Pacific countries are the first to bid farewell to 2025. Clocks strike midnight in Auckland, a population of 1.7 million, 18 hours before the famous ball drops in New York’s Times Square.
The five-minute display involved 3,500 fireworks launched from various floors of the 787-foot Sky Tower. Smaller community events were canceled across New Zealand’s North Island on Wednesday due to forecasts of rain and possible thunderstorms.
Australia plans defiant celebration after country’s worst mass shooting
Australia’s east coast welcomes 2026 two hours after New Zealand, but in Sydney, the country’s largest city, celebrations will be held under the pall of Australia’s worst mass shooting in almost 30 years. Two gunmen targeted a Hanukkah celebration at Bondi Beach on Dec. 14, killing 15 and wounding 40.
A heavy police presence monitored the thousands who thronged to the downtown waterfront on Wednesday to watch a fireworks show centered on the Sydney Harbor Bridge. Many officers openly carried rapid-fire rifles, in a first for the annual event.
An hour before midnight, the massacre victims will be commemorated with one minute of silence while images of a menorah are projected on the bridge pylons. The crowd has been invited to show their solidarity with Australia’s Jewish community by shining their phone torches across the harbor.
New South Wales Premier Chris Minns urged Sydney residents not to stay away through fear, saying extremists would interpret smaller crowds at New Year’s Eve festivities as a victory.
“We can’t be in a situation where this horrible, criminal, terrorist event changes the way we live in our beautiful city,” Minns told reporters on Wednesday.
“We have to show defiance in the face of this terrible crime and say that we’re not going to be cowered by this kind of terrorism,” he added.
Indonesia and Hong Kong hold subdued events
In Indonesia, one of Australia’s nearest neighbors, cities scaled back New Year’s Eve festivities as a gesture of solidarity with communities devastated by catastrophic floods and landslides that struck parts of Sumatra island a month ago, claiming more than 1,100 lives.
The capital, Jakarta, will not ring in 2026 with its usual fanfare, choosing instead subdued celebrations with a calm and reflective program centered on prayers for victims, city Gov. Pramono Anung said last week.
Makassar Mayor Munafri Arifuddin urged residents of one of Indonesia’s largest cities to forgo parties altogether, calling for prayer and reflection instead. “Empathy and restraint are more meaningful than fireworks and crowds,” he said.
Concerts and fireworks on Indonesia’s tourist island of Bali have been canceled and replaced with a cultural arts event featuring 65 groups performing traditional dances.
Hong Kong, too, will ring in 2026 without the usual spectacular and colorful explosions in the sky over its iconic Victoria Harbor, after a massive fire in November killed at least 161 people.
The city’s tourism board will instead host a music show featuring soft rock duo Air Supply and other singers in Central, a business district. The facades of eight landmarks will turn into giant countdown clocks presenting a three-minute light show at midnight.
Many parts of Asia welcome the new year by observing age-old traditions.
In Japan, crowds will gather at a Buddhist temple in Tokyo for a bell striking at midnight. In the South Korean capital Seoul, a bell tolling and countdown ceremony will be held at the Bosingak Pavilion.
Berliners celebrate in snow
Tourists and Berliners alike marked the end of 2025 by enjoying snowfall, taking selfies and making snowmen in front of the German capital’s cathedral and the iconic Brandenburg Gate. The famous Berlin TV Tower was nearly invisible thanks to the falling flakes and fog.
___
Associated Press writers around the world contributed to this report.
Ahmed al Ahmed, the man hailed as a hero for tackling one of the gunmen behind an antisemitic attack on Australia’s Bondi Beach earlier this month, is speaking out in the aftermath of the massacre.
In an exclusive interview with CBS News that airs Monday on “CBS Mornings,” al Ahmed said he “didn’t worry about anything” except for the lives he could potentially save as he sought to disarm the shooter.
“My target was just to take the gun from him, and to stop him from killing a human being’s life and not killing innocent people,” he recalled. “I know I saved lots, but I feel sorry for the lost.”
Al Ahmed, a Syrian-Australian Muslim shop owner, has received international praise for disarming one of two gunmen accused of perpetrating the Dec. 14 mass shooting, which was Australia’s worst since 1996. Surveillance footage showed him leap out from behind a parked car along the beachfront and wrestle one assailant to the ground, successfully disarming him before al Ahmed became wounded himself.
“I jumped in his back, hit him. I hold him with my right hand and start saying a word, you know, like to warn him, drop your gun, stop doing what you’re doing, and it’s come all in fast,” al Ahmed said of his struggle to remove the weapon from the gunman’s grasp. “And emotionally, I’m doing something, which is I feel something, a power in my body, my brain … I don’t want to see people killed in front of me, I don’t want to hear his gun, I don’t want to see people screaming and begging, asking for help, and that’s my soul asking me to do that.”
He added, “Everything in my heart, in my brain, everything, it’s worked just to manage to save the peoples’ life.”
The shooting happened at a Hanukkah celebration and intentionally targeted Sydney’s Jewish community, Australian and U.S. officials have said. Fifteen people died and another 40 were hospitalized with injuries.
Police identified the attackers as 50-year-old Sajid Akram, who was killed by officers at the scene, and his 24-year-old son, Naveed Akram.
See more of the interview Monday on “CBS Mornings,” beginning at 7 a.m. ET/PT.
Welcome to Australia, the land of funny accents and a large variety of scary, monstrous animals that can murder you at any time! Sounds like a great place, doesn’t it?
Jokes aside, these frightening creatures really are the stuff of nightmares. Enjoy this gallery, and remember to bring a flamethrower with you at all times when you’re in Australia.
Boxing legend Jack Johnson in an undated photo. (Chicago Tribune historical photo)
1908:Jack Johnson — who lived in Chicago and owned a short-lived cafe in the Bronzeville neighborhood — became the first Black heavyweight boxing champion. Johnson defeated Tommy Burns in the 14th round by decision in Sydney, Australia, “when the police took a hand in the affair and stopped the uneven battle,” the Tribune reported.
Five years later, an all-white jury in Chicago convicted Johnson of traveling with his white girlfriend, Lucille Cameron, in violation of the Mann Act, which made it illegal to transport women across state lines for “immoral” purposes.
Boxing legend Jack Johnson and his wife Lucille in an undated photo. (Chicago Tribune historical photo)
The case would later be held up as a deplorable example of institutional racism in early 20th-century America. He was sentenced to a year and a day in prison in June 1913, but fled to Canada with Cameron, whom he married while free on bond. He remained a fugitive for seven years, traveling from Europe to Mexico, where he fought bulls and ran a bar called the Main Event.
Johnson returned to the United States in 1920 and turned himself in. He served about a year in federal prison in Leavenworth, Kansas, and was released in July 1921 — arriving back in Chicago a few days later to 35,000 people cheering him on. Johnson died on June 10, 1946, in an auto crash in North Carolina, after storming out of a diner where he’d been asked to sit in a rear section reserved for Blacks. He is buried in Graceland Cemetery.
President Donald Trump granted a rare posthumous pardon to Johnson on May 24, 2018, clearing Johnson’s name more than 100 years after what many see as his racist conviction. The case had been brought to Trump’s attention by “Rocky” star Sylvester Stallone.
“The Glass Menagerie” by Tennessee Williams debuted at the Civic Theatre in Chicago on Dec. 26, 1944, and received a rave review by the Tribune’s Claudia Cassidy. (Chicago Tribune)
1944: Tennessee Williams’ “The Glass Menagerie” — “which tells a worried mother’s problems in marrying off her crippled daughter,” the Tribune earlier reported — held its world premiere at the Civic Theatre in Chicago. The four-character play starred Eddie Dowling, Laurette Taylor, Julie Haydon and Robert Stevenson. The cost of the production was expected to be $40,000 (or roughly $728,000 in today’s dollars).
On Dec. 27, 1944, the feature pages of the Tribune offered a review of the new play. The headline read: “Fragile Drama Holds Theater in Tight Spell.” The reviewer was Claudia Cassidy.
Chicago Tribune theater critic Claudia Cassidy in the 1940s. (Chicago Tribune historical archive)
“Paradoxically, it is a dream in the dusk and a tough little play that knows people and how they tick,” Cassidy wrote in her review. “Etched in the shadows of a man’s memory, it comes alive in theater terms of words, motion, lighting, and music. If it is your play, as it is mine, it reaches out tentacles, first tentative, then gripping, and you are caught in its spell.”
1969:A gunman hijacked Chicago-bound United Airlines Flight 929 — a Boeing 727 with 32 people on board — and forced it to fly to Havana from New York City. Pilot Axel D. Paulsen was ordered, “Take this ship to Cuba — and no funny business.”
A spokesperson for the airline said Paulsen told dispatch: “The guy’s got a gun but he’s pretty cool.”
The plane touched down in Havana at 10:03 p.m. then flew to Miami at 1:23 a.m. Chicago time. It was the 33rd American plane hijacked that year.
Former Ald. Daniel Solis arrives at the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse, Nov. 25, 2024, to take the stand in the Michael Madigan corruption trial. (Antonio Perez/Chicago Tribune)
2018: Retiring Chicago Ald. Daniel Solis signed a secret agreement with federal prosecutors admitting to taking bribes from real estate developers in exchange for his help on zoning issues. The terms of the unprecedented, deferred prosecution agreement that Solis signed with the U.S. attorney’s office that day weren’t made public until April 2022. He became a government mole by wearing an undercover wire to help federal investigators build cases against 14th Ward Ald. Edward Burke and ex-House Speaker Michael Madigan.
Solis entered into a deferred prosecution agreement with the U.S. attorney’s office, which agreed to drop bribery charges against him in 2025 if he continues to cooperate.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced plans Thursday for a national bravery award to recognize civilians and first responders who confronted “the worst of evil” during an antisemiticterror attack that left 15 dead and has cast a heavy shadow over the nation’s holiday season.
Albanese said he plans to establish a special honors system for those who placed themselves in harm’s way to help during the attack on a beachside Hanukkah celebration, like Ahmed al Ahmed, a Syrian-Australian Muslim who disarmed one of the assailants before being wounded himself.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese meets Ahmed al Ahmed, who was injured while disarming one of the Bondi Beach attackers, at St George Hospital in Sydney on Dec. 16, 2025.
Australian Prime Minister’s Office / AP
The attackers, identified as Sajid Akram, who was killed by police during the Dec. 14 attack, and his 24-year-old son Naveed Akram, are accused of perpetrating Australia’s worst massacre since 1996.
Speaking at a press conference after a Christmas Day lunch at a charitable foundation in Sydney, Albanese described a holiday season defined by a sharp contrast between extremist violence and the “best of humanity.”
“This Christmas is a different one because of the anti-terror and the terrorist attack motivated by ISIS and antisemitism,” Albanese said. “But at the same time as we have seen the worst of humanity, we have seen the bravery and kindness and compassion … from those who rushed to danger.”
Acts of heroism amid the tragedy
The proposed honors would recognize those who are nominated and recommended for bravery or meritorious awards under the existing Australian Honors and Awards system for their actions during and after the attack. Officials have not yet said who would be honored.
In the days after Ahmed’s story came to light, members of the public donated more than $1.5 million to aid the 44-year-old father and shop owner who was seen on video tackling one of the gunmen from behind and wrestling the rifle from his hands. He was shot multiple times in the left arm, apparently by the second gunman, and was expected to face months of recovery.
“Ahmed did really a heroic job,” his cousin, Mohammad al Ahmed, told The Associated Press. “Without any hesitation, he tackled the terrorist and disarmed him just to save innocent people.”
Other accounts of heroism also emerged, including acts of extraordinary bravery by victims who did not survive.
They included a married couple in their 60s, Boris and Sofia Gurman, who were seen on video trying to stop the attack just before it unfolded. In the footage, Boris Gurman can be seen grabbing a rifle from one of the two gunmen as they unloaded multiple weapons from their car, which had an ISIS flag draped across the windshield. Moments later, the Gurmans were shot and killed.
“This encapsulates who Boris and Sofia were — people who instinctively and selflessly tried to help others,” their family said in a statement.
Another man, 62-year-old Reuven Morrison, was shot dead as he pelted one of the attackers with bricks.
“From my sources and understanding, he had jumped up the second the shooting started. He managed to throw bricks at the terrorist,” his daughter, Sheina Gutnick, told CBS News the day after the attack. His actions were also captured on video.
Gutnick berated the government and police for being “untrained for this massacre, untrained for what’s to come, untrained for what the Jewish community has been telling the Australian government is inevitable,” adding to a chorus of criticism after a documented rise in hate attacks targeting Australia’s Jewish residents.
An American who was at the Bondi Beach event, Rabbi Leibel Lazaroff, ran over to help a police officer who was shot, taking off his own shirt to use as a tourniquet, his father told CBS News. Moments later, Lazaroff was also shot and wounded, and his mentor was killed. “As I was talking to Leibel, he said, ‘I wish I could have done more,’” his father said.
Australia strengthening gun laws
Just a day after pushing through the country’s toughest firearm laws, New South Wales state leader Chris Minns issued a plea for national solidarity, urging Australians to support their Jewish neighbors during what he described as a fortnight of “heartbreak and pain.”
“Everybody in Australia needs to wrap their arms around them and lift them up,” Minns said at a news conference Thursday. “I want them to know that Australians have got their back. We’re in their corner and we’re going to help them get through this.”
The gun reforms, which passed through the New South Wales state legislature on Christmas Eve, include capping individual gun ownership at four and reclassifying high-risk weapons like pump-action firearms.
The legislation also tightens licensing by reducing permit terms to two years, restricting ownership to Australian citizens and removing the review pathway for license denials.
“Gun reform alone will not solve hatred or extremism, but we can’t fail to act on restricting access to weapons which could lead to further violence against our citizens, Minns said earlier in the week when introducing the proposed laws.
Other new laws will ban the public display of terrorist symbols and grant police expanded powers to restrict public gatherings in specific areas following terrorist incidents.
Albanese has also announced plans to tighten Australia’s already strict gun laws.
What seems most likely: the law will not be rigidly enforced, as teen-agers and social-media companies figure out ways to circumvent the ban, but the social norm established by the law and its robust popularity among politicians and voters will lead to a significant downturn in social-media use by minors nonetheless. Not every fourteen-year-old is going to draw a moustache on their photograph or get a fake I.D.—and the law should be easier to enforce among younger kids, which may mean that in five or so years it will be rare to find a fourteen- or fifteen-year-old in Australia who has ever posted anything on social media.
This seems like a pretty good result—if you believe, as I do, that social media is obviously bad for children and adults alike. But it returns us to the question I posed at the start of this column, which has a particular relevance for Americans, who live in a country founded on the principle of free speech. The civil-libertarian argument against laws like the one that Australia has passed will probably win out in this country, if only because it happens to be aligned, in this case, with powerful domestic tech companies. That argument is simple, but bears repeating: we shouldn’t place arbitrary age limits on who gets to express themselves in the digital town square, and we shouldn’t require everyone who wants to express their opinions online to submit to an I.D. check. As a journalist, I’m also aware that, for many people, social media is a source of news. It may be a toxic and wildly imperfect alternative to legacy media, but I don’t think we should use government force to effectively reroute children to more traditional sources of information.
In my column on this subject two years ago, I compared the attempt to restrict social-media use to adults to earlier efforts to do something similar with tobacco. The remarkably successful fight against youth smoking did rely, in part, on a shift in social norms; it also depended on a variety of legal restrictions, and heavy taxation—and I did not, at the time, see what equivalent measures might be taken with social media. Ultimately, I thought it might just come down to parents holding the line.
I’m less pessimistic now. One of the recurring themes I discuss on “Time to Say Goodbye,” the podcast I host with the Atlantic’s Tyler Austin Harper, is what a good life looks like today. When politicians, especially liberal ones, discuss the society that they want to help bring into reality, what are the shared values that they imagine will hold people together? I’m not talking about kitchen-table issues, as important as they are, or even about tolerance and equality. What I have in mind is a vision of how Americans should live on a daily basis in a time when technology runs our lives. The Times columnist Ezra Klein addressed this recently in a piece about the “politics of attention” and the question of “human flourishing.” He concluded, “I don’t believe it will be possible for society to remain neutral on what it means to live our digital lives well.”
I ultimately agree with Klein that we will not be neutral forever, even if our courts make an Australia-like ban nearly impossible. But I have come to believe that, in the not too distant future, the concerns of crusty civil libertarians such as myself will be pushed aside, and a new set of social norms will emerge, especially in the middle and upper classes. The signs of this quiet revolution waged on behalf of internet-addicted children are already all around us. School districts around the country are banning phones from the classroom. “The Anxious Generation,” by Jonathan Haidt, which directly informed the new law in Australia, has been on the Times best-seller list for eighty-five weeks, and has inspired little acts of tech rebellion by parents around the country.
The nascent anti-smartphones movement in America is decidedly nonpartisan, for the most part, and this contributes to its potential and also to the vagueness of its outlines. It also has taken place almost entirely at the local and state level. More than thirty states in the country now have some form of cellphone ban in their schools, which should be applauded. I believe that teen-agers should have the right to post their opinions on social media, but I don’t think they need to do that in the middle of geometry class. If this means that First Amendment rights are further restricted in schools, that may be a compromise that free-speech absolutists have to accept.
Melbourne, Australia — A man accused of killing 15 people at Sydney’s Bondi Beach obtained firearms training in New South Wales state outside Sydney with his father, according to Australian police documents released on Monday.
The documents, made public following Naveed Akram’s video court appearance from a Sydney hospital where he has been treated for an abdominal injury, said the two men recorded footage justifying the meticulously planned attack.
Officers wounded Akram at the scene of the Dec. 14 shooting and killed his father, 50-year-old Sajid Akram.
The state government confirmed Naveed Akram was transferred Monday from a hospital to a prison. Authorities identified neither facility.
The 24-year-old and his father began their attack by throwing four improvised explosive devices toward a crowd celebrating an annual Jewish event at Bondi Beach, but the devices failed to explode, the documents said.
Police described the devices as three aluminum pipe bombs and a tennis ball bomb containing an explosive, gunpowder and steel ball bearings. None detonated, but police described them as “viable” IEDs.
The pair had rented a room in the Sydney suburb of Campsie for three weeks before they left at 2:16 a.m. on the day of the attack. CCTV recorded them carrying what police allege were two shotguns, a rifle, five IEDs and two homemade ISIS flags wrapped in blankets.
Police also released images of the gunmen shooting from a footbridge, providing them with an elevated vantage point and the protection of waist-high concrete walls.
Australian police
The largest IED was found after the gun battle near the footbridge in the trunk of the son’s car, which had been left draped with the flags.
Authorities had been looking into a month-long trip by the father and son to the Philippines, where there’s been a decades-long Islamist insurgency in the south of the country.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said last week that the attack was inspired by ISIS, and there is an ISIS-affiliated militant group operating in a remote area of the Philippines.
But a receptionist at a hotel in Davao City told CBS News the attackers never left their room for more than a day.
Authorities have charged Akram with 59 offenses, including 15 counts of murder, 40 counts of causing harm with intent to murder in relation to the wounded survivors and one count of committing a terrorist act.
The antisemitic attack at the start of the eight-day Hanukkah celebration was Australia’s worst mass shooting since a lone gunman killed 35 people in Tasmania state in 1996.
The New South Wales government introduced draft laws to Parliament on Monday that Premier Chris Minns said would become the toughest in Australia.
The new restrictions would include making Australian citizenship a condition of qualifying for a firearms license. That would have excluded Sajid Akram, who was an Indian citizen with a permanent resident visa.
Sajid Akram also legally owned six rifles and shotguns. A new legal limit for recreational shooters would be a maximum of four guns.
Police said a video found on Naveed Akram’s phone shows him with his father expressing “their political and religious views and appear to summarise their justification for the Bondi terrorist attack.”
The men are seen in the video “condemning the acts of Zionists” while they also “adhere to a religiously motivated ideology linked to (ISIS),” police said.
Video shot in October shows them “firing shotguns and moving in a tactical manner” on grassland surrounded by trees, police said.
“There is evidence that the Accused and his father meticulously planned this terrorist attack for many months,” police allege.
An impromptu memorial that grew near the Bondi Pavilion after the massacre, as thousands of mourners brought flowers and heartfelt cards, was removed Monday as the beachfront returned to more normal activity. The Sydney Jewish Museum will preserve part of the memorial.
Victims’ funerals continued Monday with French national Dan Elkayam’s service held in the nearby suburb of Woollahra, at the heart of Sydney’s Jewish life. The 27-year-old moved from Paris to Sydney a year ago.
The health department said 12 people wounded in the attack remained in hospitals Monday.
A world-first social media ban took effect in Australia last week, restricting children younger than 16 from using platforms such as Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok.
“Australia has become an international guinea pig for the people who want internet censorship,” said Hon. John Ruddick, a member of the New South Wales Legislative Council.
A 13-year-old boy displays a message on his mobile phone from social media platform Snapchat after his account was locked for age verification in Sydney on December 9, 2025. (Photo by AFP via Getty Images)
The 10 social media giants included in the ban are Facebook, Instagram, X, TikTok, Snapchat, Kick, Reddit, Threads, Twitch and YouTube. By law, they are required to locate and deactivate accounts of Australian users under the age of 16.
“I have heard that every playground around Australia for months has been talking about censorship coming,” Ruddick told Fox News Digital.
Children and parents won’t be penalized for violating the ban, but social media companies face fines of up to $33 million if they don’t take “reasonable steps” to remove underage users.
Many Aussie children, Ruddick said, are already finding ways to skirt the sweeping ban.
“They’re getting around it through fake IDs, opening new apps — which you know are popping up — VPNs,” he explained. “Kids are tech-savvy… This is what we predicted would happen.”
A teenager gets a notification from Instagram after the account was locked for age verification in Sydney on December 9, 2025. (Photo by AFP via Getty Images)
Ruddick, alongside two Australian teenagers, is taking legal action over the ban, filing a constitutional challenge to Australia’s High Court. Equivalent to the U.S. Supreme Court, the court can overturn laws it deems unconstitutional.
Ruddick told Fox News Digital he believes the social media ban violates young Australians’ right to political communication.
“We’re saying that this is breaching young kids’ ability to engage in politics, and a lot of them will be voting within two years of turning the age of 16,” he explained.
The Australian politician is the president of the Digital Freedom Project, a group launched to raise public awareness about the ban that he calls a “dangerous violation” of free speech.
A judgment on their constitutional challenge is expected in March or April 2026.
Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese speaks during an official function to mark the start of Australia’s social media reform at Kirrilbilli House in Sydney on Dec. 10, 2025. (DAVID GRAY / AFP via Getty Images)
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese says the ban is about shielding children from the harmful effects of social media.
Albanese said Wednesday that the nation is taking a leading role in challenging major tech platforms and demanding accountability for how social media impacts children’s well-being.
“It’s a profound reform which will continue to reverberate around the world in coming months, to assist not just this generation, but generations to come,” Albanese said.
The politician counters Albanese’s argument, saying the ban will create the “worst of both worlds,” with children turning to dangerous underground media platforms while parents let their guard down, assuming the ban is protecting them.
US lawmakers are being probed on whether a social media ban could come to America.(J. David Ake/Getty Images)
Back in the U.S., lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are signaling an interest in tougher social media restrictions for young people following the Aussies’ one-of-a-kind ban.
“I think we ought to look at what Australia’s doing, for example, requiring access to these social media platforms to not be available to anybody under the age of 16,” Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said.
“I think protecting children is an avenue that should be pursued,” Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said. “I won’t rule out some sort of limitation in sales or distribution or use of those devices… Parents and grandparents need a helping hand; this is getting out of hand.”
Social media giants like Meta could face multi-million-dollar fines if they fail to ban underage Australian users.(Anna Barclay/Getty Images)
Ruddick warned that Australia’s ban is making “very prominent people” interested in a dangerous strategy of censorship.
“I was assuming that the U.S. First Amendment was going to protect you from this,” the politician told Fox News Digital. “But this is why I think we’re a guinea pig. We’re having very prominent people all around the world coming out and supporting this ban.”
“They’re going to try and say it’s a success, and then they’re going to say, ‘Oh, the rest of the world needs to do this.’ This is not about protecting kids. This is about internet censorship, which all governments crave,” he added.
Nora Moriarty is a Production Assistant at FOX News.
Sydney — Australia will use a sweeping buyback scheme to “get guns off our streets,” Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said Friday, showing his government was keen to take quick action less than a week after a terrorist attack left 15 people dead at a Jewish holiday gathering on Sydney’s famed Bondi Beach.
Sajid Akram and his son Naveed are accused of opening fire on the festival, which was organized to mark the first day of Hanukkah on Sunday, in what was one of Australia’s deadliest mass shootings.
“There is no reason someone living in the suburbs of Sydney needed this many guns,” he said.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Australian Federal Police Commissioner Krissy Barrett are seen on Dec. 19, 2025, in Canberra, Australia, during a news conference in the wake of the Bondi Beach terrorist attack.
Hilary Wardhaugh/Getty
Australia would pay gun owners to surrender “surplus, newly banned and illegal firearms.”
Albanese said Monday that his government was “prepared to take whatever action is necessary. Included in that is the need for tougher gun laws.” He specifically suggested measures that could limit the number of guns a licensed owner can obtain, and mandating a review process for existing licenses.
The prime minister said the federal government would evenly split the cost of the buyback program with Australia’s state and territorial administrations, with further details to be worked out when lawmakers return to work next week.
Investigation continues as Sydney remains on high alert
Sajid Akram, 50, was killed in a gunfight with police, but his 24-year-old son Naveed survived. The unemployed bricklayer was charged earlier this week with 15 counts of murder, an act of terrorism, and dozens of other serious crimes after waking up from a coma in a Sydney hospital.
Albanese said the attack was inspired by ISIS ideology, and Australian police are still investigating whether the pair may have met with Islamist extremists during a visit to the Philippines just a couple weeks before the shooting.
They spent most of November in the south of the Asian nation, in a hotel in Davao City. A hotel employee told CBS News on Thursday that the father and son extended their stay week by week and paid in cash, and that they would go out during the day but return to the hotel every night, often bringing food back to eat in their room.
He said staff noticed nothing particularly suspicious about the men during their nearly monthlong stay.
A view of the GV Hotel, where Sajid and Naveed Akram, suspects in the Bondi Beach terror attack, stayed in November, as seen on Dec. 18, 2025, in Davao City, in the southern Philippines.
Ezra Acayan/Getty
Sydney, meanwhile, remains on high alert almost a week after the shootings.
Armed police released seven men from custody on Friday, a day after detaining them on a tip they may have been plotting a “violent act,” as they reportedly headed for Bondi Beach.
Police said there was no established link with the alleged Bondi gunmen and “no immediate safety risk to the community.”
A second major Australian gun buyback spurred by a mass shooting
The new buyback, assuming it is approved by lawmakers next week, will be the largest such government-funded program since 1996, when then-Prime Minister John Howard cracked down on firearms in the wake of another mass shooting, in which 35 people were killed in the town of Port Arthur.
Just 12 days after that attack, Australian lawmakers approved legislation banning the sale and importation of all automatic and semi-automatic rifles and shotguns; forcing people to present a legitimate reason, and wait 28 days, to buy any firearm, and initiating the massive, mandatory gun-buyback for banned weapons.
The government confiscated and destroyed nearly 700,000 firearms in the wake of the law’s adoption, reducing the number of gun-owning households by half.
“It is incontestable that gun-related homicides have fallen quite significantly in Australia,” former premier Howard, who defied many in his own conservative party to usher in the 1996 law, told CBS News’ Seth Doane two decades later, in 2016.
A Sept. 8, 1996 file photo shows Norm Legg, a project supervisor with a local security firm, holding an ArmaLite rifle similar to the one used in the Port Arthur mass shooting, which was handed in for scrap in Melbourne as part of a mandatory government gun buyback program after the attack.
WILLIAM WEST/AFP/Getty
In the 15 years before those laws were passed, there were 13 mass shootings in Australia. In the two decades after, there wasn’t a single one. Gun homicides overall decreased by nearly 60% in the same period.
Asked to respond to critics who said the fall in gun deaths did not necessarily happen because of the legislation, Howard told CBS News: “The number of deaths from mass shootings, gun-related homicide has fallen, gun related suicide has fallen … Isn’t that evidence? Or are we expected to believe that that was all magically going to happen? Come on!”
A study published earlier this year, however, found Australia still has some way to go to fully implement the 2016 legislation, called the National Firearms Agreement. The paper, by the Australia Institute think tank, said some of the measures had yet to be brought into force 29 years later, and others were being inconsistently enforced across different states.
The law “was ambitious, politically brave, and necessary for public safety,” the report concluded, lauding Howard’s will to defy his fellow lawmakers.
But “Australia still allows minors to hold firearm licenses, still lacks a National Firearms Register, and still has inconsistent laws that make enforcement difficult,” the group said, adding that overall gun ownership across the country had actually boomed over the last three decades.
“There are now over four million registered privately owned guns in Australia: 800,000 more than before the (1996) buyback,” the institute said in its May report. “Australians needs gun laws that live up to the Howard Government’s bravery, and right now Australia does not have them.”
Albanese, along with state and territorial leaders, agreed on Monday to look at ways to bolster gun laws, including by accelerating the launch of the national firearms register called for in the 1996 legislation, making gun licenses available only to Australian citizens, and imposing new restrictions the types of weapons that are legal for licensees to own.
A memorial at sea, and a day of reflection planned for Bondi Beach victims
Hundreds of people plunged into the ocean at Bondi Beach on Friday to honor the 15 people killed in the terror attack, forming a massive ring in the sea on surf and paddle boards, as Albanese announced a national day of reflection to be observed on Sunday.
Albanese urged Australians to light candles at 6:47 p.m. on Sunday, “exactly one week since the attack unfolded.”
Surfers and swimmers paddle out into the ocean to hold a tribute for the victims of the terror attack at Bondi Beach, in Sydney, Australia, Dec. 19, 2025.
Steve Markham/AP
On Friday, swimmers and surfers paddled into a circle, bobbing in the gentle morning swell, splashing water and roaring with emotion.
“They slaughtered innocent victims, and today I’m swimming out there and being part of my community again to bring back the light,” security consultant Jason Carr, 53, told AFP. “We’re still burying bodies. But I just felt it was important.”
Carole Schlessinger, a 58-year-old chief executive of a children’s charity, said there was a “beautiful energy” at the ocean gathering. “To be together is such an important way of trying to deal with what’s going on.”
“It was really lovely to be part of it,” she said, adding: “I personally am feeling very numb. I’m feeling super angry. I’m feeling furious.”
Australian police carried out a dramatic operation in a Sydney suburb on Thursday, with heavily armed officers in tactical gear reportedly ramming a car and at least briefly detaining several men amid the ongoing investigation into the Sunday terror attack on a Jewish holiday gathering at the city’s Bondi Beach.
The New South Wales state police force said in a statement that two cars were intercepted by tactical operations officers responding “to information received that a violent act was possibly being planned.”
The operation was conducted in Sydney’s southwest suburb of Liverpool, about a half hour drive away from Bondi Beach. Police said they had “not identified any connection to the current police investigation of the Bondi terror attack.”
Australian news outlets NewsWire and The Australian newspaper said the intercepted men were believed to be heading for Bondi from the city of Melbourne, almost 550 miles away in Victoria state.
No arrests were announced, though photos from the scene showed men sitting on the ground as officers moved around them. Police said seven men were “assisting police with their inquiries.”
Police said there was no threat to the public and the operation had concluded.
Police walk past floral tributes left at the promenade of Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia, Dec. 18, 2025, to honor victims of the terror attack that took place there on December 14.
DAVID GRAY/AFP/Getty
NewsWire quoted an unnamed witness of the operation as saying it was “frightening to see so many police with huge weapons in the area” so soon after the Bondi attack.
While police said there was no immediate link to the Bondi Beach shooting, Australian Federal Police Commissioner Krissy Barrett said earlier Thursday morning that more raids should be expected in the wake of the terror attack, in which two gunmen killed 15 people attending a celebration marking the first day of Hanukkah.
“In the coming days, the New South Wales Joint Counter Terrorism Team will execute further search warrants to support our investigation. There is a lot of material to be examined, and the AFP continues to work with both domestic and international partners to build a more complete picture of the movements and who the alleged offenders had contact with, both in Australia and offshore,” she said.
MANILA, Dec 17 (Reuters) – There is no evidence indicating that the two suspects involved in the Bondi Beach attack received any form of military training while in the Philippines, the Philippines’ National Security Adviser said on Wednesday.
In a statement, Eduardo Año said that a mere visit to the country does not substantiate allegations of terrorist training, and the duration of their stay would not have permitted any meaningful or structured training.
The alleged father-and-son gunmen opened fire on a Hanukkah celebration at Sydney’s Bondi Beach on Sunday, killing 15 in an attack that shocked Australia and heightened fears of antisemitism and violent extremism.
Año said the government was investigating the two men’s travel from November 1 to 28 and coordinating with Australian authorities to determine the purpose of the visit, dismissing media reports portraying the southern Philippines as a hotspot for violent extremism as “outdated” and “misleading”.
Immigration records show the pair landed in Manila and travelled to Davao City in Mindanao, a region long-plagued by Islamist militancy, before the attack that Australian police say appeared to have been inspired by Islamic State.
The men stayed mostly in their rooms for almost a month at a budget hotel in Davao, MindaNews reported.
The father and son checked in at noon on November 1 and rarely went out for more than an hour, a hotel staffer told the online news outlet, which is based in Mindanao. Hotel staff said the two kept to themselves, never spoke to other guests, or had visitors. They were only seen walking nearby and never taking rides or getting picked up in front of the hotel.
Reuters could not immediately verify the report. Calls to a hotel officer and Davao police went unanswered.
Since the 2017 Marawi siege, a five-month battle in which the Islamic State-inspired Maute group seized the southern city and fought government forces, Philippine troops have significantly degraded ISIS-affiliated groups, Año said.
“The remnants of these groups have been fragmented, deprived of leadership, and operationally degraded,” he added.
(Reporting by Karen Lema; Editing by David Stanway and Sharon Singleton)
