SOURCE :- THE AGE NEWS
Thank you for joining our continuing live coverage of the war in the Middle East and the fallout from the shooting at the Washington Hilton, as King Charles and Queen Camilla visit the US. You can watch a livestream of the pair’s visit below.
Here’s a recap of the latest developments:
Amid destruction and devastation in the wake of war, Iranians have found a rare glimmer of hope among one of the nation’s most endangered species. Iran has recorded a jump this year in its official number of Asiatic cheetahs, a subspecies now found only in Iran that has been on the brink of extinction for years.
Last year, Iranian authorities were aware of just 17 wild cats. But in 2026, Bagher Nezami, the project manager for the Conservation of the Asiatic Cheetah Project, told Iranian state media that conservationists had recorded 21 new adult cheetahs and six cubs.
The Asiatic cheetah is one of the world’s fastest land animals. It has a smaller head, shorter legs and a stronger neck than the African cheetah. The Asiatic cheetahs used to roam the Arabian Peninsula, the lands around the Caspian Sea, and South Asia. Now, a species once favoured by kings prowls only Iran’s eastern desert and is under constant threat from hunters, speeding highway drivers and wild dogs.
Still, the cheetah’s survival in Iran is a source of national pride. The national soccer team’s jerseys are emblazoned with the spots of the wild cat, while the country’s Meraj Airlines has sought to raise awareness of the critically endangered species by painting cheetahs across its jets. “The Asiatic cheetah is really a symbol in Iran,” Iman Ebrahimi, an Iranian conservationist, said in an interview. “I think a big part of that is because people feel a connection to it. It has a place in our culture and history.”
Ancient Persia’s kings used the agile cats to hunt down gazelles. But in recent decades, the cheetah has become a victim of poaching, captivity and neglect, and its population rapidly dwindled to just a few dozen registered cats. More recently, the cheetah has been embraced by some backers of Iran’s political opposition as a symbol of innocence and resistance. During the country’s widespread “Women, Life, Freedom” demonstrations of 2022, the protest anthem Bayareh paid homage to Pirouz, a beloved cheetah cub born in captivity who later died. New York Times
It wouldn’t be a royal visit to the United States without a garden party, and that is how King Charles III and Queen Camilla began their weeklong celebration on Monday evening (US time) of the alliance that emerged – eventually – from the American Revolution.
The garden in question was the sloping lawn of the British Embassy residence, where 600 or so of Washington’s famous and not so famous gathered, Pimm’s Cup in one hand and iPhone in the other, to catch a glimpse of – and maybe a word with – the royal couple.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was there to shake hands with the King and Queen, along with Stephen Miller, the architect of President Donald Trump’s deportation program. So was Mehmet Oz, the administrator of the Centres for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and a host of Pentagon officials. And for a few hours, there was no talk of the greatest split in British-American relations since the Suez Crisis in the mid-1950s.
The chatter was off the record, to keep the garden party more like, well, a garden party and not a news conference. Only public comments could be quoted, and there were virtually none. But it reveals no secrets to say that members of Congress, television anchors, political consultants and reporters – who only 48 hours earlier had been crouching under their banquet tables in the Washington Hilton after gunfire rang out – were all snapping pictures of the royal couple. Many tried, with varying levels of success, to position themselves on the lawn for a quick conversation.
For about eight weeks, Indian Captain Rahul Dhar and his crew have been stranded on their tanker in the Persian Gulf, sometimes watching drones and missiles explode as the Strait of Hormuz remains effectively shut while the Iran war drags on.
The crew’s morale, he said, is holding as they carry on with their routines, but the strain is beginning to show.
A shaky ceasefire between the US and Iran brought “a careful sense of hope” for the crew, but there is still no clear end to the war. “Day to day, we try to keep things normal with open conversations and small team activities that help lift everyone’s spirits.”
The crew sighted drones and missile interceptions several times, both near the ship and along the horizon during their watches. “Those moments were difficult and created real tension for the crew,” Dhar told The Associated Press.
Airlines in Australia and around the world have trimmed flight numbers and increased airfares on the back of the Middle East crisis – but that hasn’t stopped Australians from heading overseas.
Sydney Airport, the nation’s biggest travel hub, has revealed the March quarter was its strongest for international travel in its history, despite the outbreak of the Iran war on February 28. The airport funnelled 4.57 million passengers through its terminals at Mascot, up 5.8 per cent on the same quarter last year.
New Zealand and China were the airport’s largest international markets, with passenger volumes increasing by 13.5 per cent and 14 per cent, respectively. Travel to and from Hong Kong was also strong, up 21.4 per cent, and there was also increased traffic for Shanghai, Seoul and Kuala Lumpur.
Overall, Sydney Airport saw more than 10 million passengers through its domestic and international gates. Since the crisis began, Qantas has reduced some domestic capacity and raised fares, but it says it is also seeing more demand for travel to Europe. Air New Zealand, Air India, Delta Air Lines, and Lufthansa have also reduced capacity, citing the refining costs of jet fuel. AAP
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, who met with Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday, has welcomed Moscow’s support for diplomacy.
Araghchi praised the strength of ties between the two countries and said recent events had demonstrated the depth of their strategic partnership.
Russia has offered to mediate to try to help restore calm to the Middle East following the US and Israeli strikes on Iran that Moscow has strongly condemned.
Russia has also repeatedly offered to store Iran’s enriched uranium as a way of defusing tensions, a proposal spurned by the United States.
Reuters
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has announced that Meghan Quinn will become the new secretary of the Department of Defence.
She will replace Greg Moriarty, who has been appointed ambassador to the United States.
“Ms Quinn will be the first woman to be the permanent secretary of the Department of Defence, and is an outstanding public servant who, after an exhaustive process that we went through, was clearly the standout candidate,” Albanese told reporters in Canberra today.
Quinn will begin her five-year term on May 18.
The first liquefied natural gas shipment since the war in the Middle East began two months ago appears to have traversed the Strait of Hormuz to exit the Persian Gulf.
The Mubaraz – which loaded a cargo from Abu Dhabi National Oil’s Das Island facility in the United Arab Emirates in early March – is now passing the southern tip of India, according to ship-tracking data. The tanker had been idling inside the Gulf, but stopped sending a signal around March 31, before re-appearing east of India on April 27, the data show.
The global energy market is laser focused on traffic through Hormuz, which has dwindled to almost zero over the past two months as Iran and the US imposed rival blockades. The closure of the waterway for roughly a fifth of global LNG supply has tightened the market, sending prices sharply higher.
It is a common tactic for ships to turn off transponders when passing Hormuz to mask detection, and ship data can also be jammed or updated. Adnoc, which owns the vessel through a unit, didn’t respond to a request for comment.
A US official says Donald Trump is unhappy with an Iranian proposal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz because it does not address Iran’s nuclear program.
“He doesn’t love the proposal,” the US official said, referring to Trump.
Earlier today, Trump discussed the proposal with his top national security aides. The US-Iran conflict remains in a stalemate with energy supplies from the region reduced.
Iranian sources said the proposal would set aside discussion of Iran’s nuclear program until the war has ended and disputes over shipping from the Persian Gulf are resolved. Washington has said nuclear issues must be dealt with from the outset.
Two Iran-linked oil tankers that US forces interdicted near Sri Lanka last week appear to have halted their westward course in the Indian Ocean and turned around.
US forces carried out “maritime interdiction and right-of-visit boarding” of two oil supertankers, the Tifani and the Phonix on April 21 and 23 respectively, the Pentagon said last week, without elaborating what would happen next to the vessels. The latter ship is also known as the Majestic X.
The vessels that initially appeared to be moving west in close proximity to one another reversed course and took an eastern heading late Monday, digital signals from the carriers indicate.
The US has given no formal indication of its plans for the vessels or their cargoes. The tankers were still signalling the same Asian destinations they were when the interdictions happened, adding to the confusion.
Iran is rapidly running out of places to store crude oil, threatening to accelerate production cuts in what was once OPEC’s second-largest source, according to research firm Kpler.
The Islamic Republic has enough unused storage capacity to last another 12 to 22 days, Kpler analysts wrote in a new report. That is raising the prospect that Iran may be forced to cut daily oil output by another 1.5 million barrels by mid-May, they added.
Iran has already curtailed as much as 2.5 million barrels of daily crude production, Goldman Sachs said last week. Neighbouring producers such as Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Kuwait and the UAE are also among nations that have had to reduce output since the conflict erupted on February 28.
Despite the dire outlook for Iranian oil output, the regime in Tehran probably won’t begin to fully feel the financial pinch for months, the report states.
