عربي English Türkçe اردو فارسى
Logo
Latest News
World

Thousands in Australia Rally against Immigration, Government Condemns Rally

Protesters take part in the March for Australia anti-immigration rally in Sydney, Australia, 31 August 2025. EPA/DEAN LEWINS AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND OUT
Protesters take part in the March for Australia anti-immigration rally in Sydney, Australia, 31 August 2025. EPA/DEAN LEWINS AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND OUT
TT
TT

Thousands in Australia Rally against Immigration, Government Condemns Rally

Protesters take part in the March for Australia anti-immigration rally in Sydney, Australia, 31 August 2025. EPA/DEAN LEWINS AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND OUT
Protesters take part in the March for Australia anti-immigration rally in Sydney, Australia, 31 August 2025. EPA/DEAN LEWINS AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND OUT

Thousands of Australians joined anti-immigration rallies across the country on Sunday that the center-left government condemned, saying they sought to spread hate and were linked to neo-Nazis.

March for Australia rallies against immigration were being held in Sydney and other state capitals and regional centers, according to the group's website.

"Mass migration has torn at the bonds that held our communities together," the website says. The group posted on X on Saturday that the rallies aimed to do "what the mainstream politicians never have the courage to do: demand an end to mass immigration".

Australia - where one in two people is either born overseas or has a parent born overseas - has been grappling with a rise in right-wing extremism, including protests by neo-Nazis.

"We absolutely condemn the March for Australia rally that's going on today. It is not about increasing social harmony," Murray Watt, a senior minister in the Labor government, told Sky News television, when asked about the rally in Sydney, the country's most-populous city.

"We don't support rallies like this that are about spreading hate and that are about dividing our community," Watt said, asserting they were "organized and promoted" by neo-Nazi groups.

March for Australia organizers did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the neo-Nazi claims.

COUNTER-PROTESTERS EXPRESS 'DISGUST, ANGER'

Some 5,000 to 8,000 people, many draped in Australian flags, had assembled for the Sydney rally, the Australian Broadcasting Corp reported. It was held near the course of the Sydney Marathon, where 35,000 runners pounded the streets on Sunday, finishing at the city's Opera House.

Also nearby, a counter-rally by the Refugee Action Coalition, a community activist organization, took place.

“Our event shows the depth of disgust and anger about the far-right agenda of March For Australia", a coalition spokesperson said in a statement. Organizers said hundreds attended that event.

A large March for Australia rally was held in central Melbourne, the capital of Victoria state, according to aerial footage from the ABC, which reported that riot officers used pepper spray on demonstrators. Victoria Police did not confirm the report but said it would provide details on the protest later on Sunday.

Bob Katter, the leader of a small populist party, Katter was attending a March for Australia rally in Queensland, a party spokesperson said, three days after the veteran lawmaker threatened a reporter for mentioning Katter's Lebanese heritage at a press conference when the topic of his attendance at a March for Australia was being discussed.

In Sydney, March for Australia protester Glenn Allchin said he wanted a "slowdown" in immigration. “It’s about our country bursting at the seams and our government bringing more and more people in," Allchin told Reuters. "Our kids struggling to get homes, our hospitals, we have to wait seven hours, our roads, the lack of roads."

Laws banning the Nazi salute and the display or sale of symbols associated with terror groups came into effect in Australia this year in response to a string of antisemitic attacks on synagogues, buildings and cars since the beginning of Israel's war in Gaza in October 2023.

Most Viewed

 
 
World

G7 Meets in France to Narrow Transatlantic Iran Split

France's foreign minister Jean-Noel Barrot acknowledges the world is going through a period of 'tension and rivalry'. Thomas SAMSON / AFP
France's foreign minister Jean-Noel Barrot acknowledges the world is going through a period of 'tension and rivalry'. Thomas SAMSON / AFP
TT
TT

G7 Meets in France to Narrow Transatlantic Iran Split

France's foreign minister Jean-Noel Barrot acknowledges the world is going through a period of 'tension and rivalry'. Thomas SAMSON / AFP
France's foreign minister Jean-Noel Barrot acknowledges the world is going through a period of 'tension and rivalry'. Thomas SAMSON / AFP

Foreign ministers from the G7 meet outside Paris from Thursday with European nations and allies seeking to narrow differences with the US on the Middle East war while keeping other crises like Ukraine and Gaza high on the agenda.

The two-day meeting of seven leading industrialized democracies at the Vaux-de-Cernay Abbey in the countryside outside Paris comes as the White House said President Donald Trump is ready to "unleash hell" if Iran does not accept a deal to end the US-Israeli war against the Iranian republic.

Making his first trip abroad since the war started, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio will join fellow top diplomats from Canada, Germany, Italy, France, Japan and the UK, but only on the second day.

One of the objectives of France, which holds the rotating G7 presidency this year, is "to address the major global imbalances which explain in many respects the level of tension and rivalry we are witnessing with very concrete consequences for our fellow citizens," French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot told AFP on Tuesday.

With Lebanon pulled into the war as Iran-backed Shia militant group Hezbollah fired rockets into Israel, Barrot also urged Israel to "refrain" from sending in forces to take control of a zone in south Lebanon.

In a bid to broaden the scope of the elite G7 club -- whose origins go back to the first G6 summit held in the nearby Chateau de Rambouillet in 1975 -- France has also invited foreign ministers from key emerging markets Brazil and India as well as Ukraine, Saudi Arabia and South Korea.

France will also on Monday host a separate G7 meeting bringing together finance ministers, energy ministers and central bank governors, Finance Minister Roland Lescure told RTL radio on Thursday.

The meeting, to be held via video call, will address what Lescure described as a "convergence of energy issues, economic issues and inflation issues".

-'Misguided policies'-

While all G7 nations are close US allies, none have unambiguously offered support for the assault on Iran, angering Trump.

German Finance Minister and Vice Chancellor Lars Klingbeil even complained Trump's "misguided policies" in the Middle East were hitting Germany's economy.

Trump has claimed the US is speaking to a "top person" within Iran's clerical system in talks to end the conflict. But Iranian state TV said on Wednesday Tehran had rejected a peace plan conveyed through Pakistan.

Trump's threat to hit Iranian energy facilities -- which he is now holding back on amid the purported talks -- troubled European allies who have all called for de-escalation and not engaged militarily in the conflict.

British foreign minister Yvette Cooper on Tuesday voiced unease that the war had shifted focus away from the Gaza peace plan and violence in the occupied West Bank.

Over four years into Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Barrot told AFP that support "for the Ukrainian resistance" and pressure on Russia would continue

World

Myanmar's Rebuild Stutters Year after Deadly Quake

Myanmar's ancient capital Mandalay bore the brunt of damage in the 7.7-magnitude quake. Sai Aung MAIN / AFP
Myanmar's ancient capital Mandalay bore the brunt of damage in the 7.7-magnitude quake. Sai Aung MAIN / AFP
TT
TT

Myanmar's Rebuild Stutters Year after Deadly Quake

Myanmar's ancient capital Mandalay bore the brunt of damage in the 7.7-magnitude quake. Sai Aung MAIN / AFP
Myanmar's ancient capital Mandalay bore the brunt of damage in the 7.7-magnitude quake. Sai Aung MAIN / AFP

The gaping holes torn in a road to Mandalay by last year's devastating earthquake have been filled in, and the route in northern Myanmar partly resurfaced.

But only a few of the broken spans of the historic Ava Bridge have been removed, while the others still droop into the river where hundreds of newly homeless people bathed in the aftermath of the disaster.

More than 3,800 people in Myanmar -- and around 90 more in neighboring Thailand -- were killed when the 7.7-magnitude tremor struck on March 28, 2025.

AFP was the only international news agency on the ground in Myanmar's capital Naypyidaw when the quake hit, with its team the first international journalists to reach the city of Mandalay.

A year on, reporters returning to the affected areas found a mixed picture of reconstruction work.

In Naypyidaw, the collapsed concrete awning of the main hospital's emergency department -- which crushed a car when it came down -- has been replaced with a new, lighter structure, with a plastic roof.

A rare unguarded photo of junta chief Min Aung Hlaing, looking flustered as he sought to direct rescue efforts at the hospital, was one of many by AFP that captured the destruction after the quake, which came during a years-long civil war.

Mandalay, an ancient royal capital hemmed by jungle-clad mountains and the snaking Irrawaddy river, bore the brunt of the damage.

At a pagoda in the suburb of Amarapura, a statue of a reclining Buddha emerges from a carefully arranged pile of brick rubble, its face respectfully cleaned.

"Some are rebuilding their houses, while others are just now getting the support they need to work and live," said board secretary Hsan Tun, 70.

Four people died at the pagoda, he added, including a girl who was meditating. "It's only by the Buddha's protection that we survived."

Almost all of Mandalay's flattened or toppled residential buildings have been cleared away, some of them already rebuilt and others remaining as fenced-off empty lots dotting the city.

The tilted-over towers overlooking the palace moat have all been brought back upright, and workers are building new brick castellations for their supporting ramparts.

After the quake, thousands of people whose homes had been made uninhabitable or who feared aftershocks slept out for weeks by the moat, but it is once again the preserve of morning joggers and sightseers.

- 'When the sky falls' -

Some of the buildings at the Thahtay Kyaung monastery, where saffron-clad monks cleared rubble from the wreckage by hand in the days after the quake, have been razed.

"People are facing many economic hardships," said the abbot, U Thudassa. "Like the saying, 'When the sky falls, it falls on everyone'."

"We build as much as we can with what we have," added the 70-year-old. "We cannot just stand still; natural disasters will always be a part of life."

At Amarapura's Nagayon Pagoda, a Buddha statue reduced to just two legs and hands on a pedestal has been fully restored, looking out with a serene gaze.

In nearby Bon Oe village, the quake caused a mosque to collapse onto worshippers gathered for the noon prayer on the last Friday of Ramadan, killing many.

A permanent replacement has yet to be erected -- government approval is needed for religious buildings, and it has not yet been granted.

Instead, men gather for evening prayers in a temporary structure covered in green tarpaulins and with palm leaves for a roof.

"Yesterday marked one year" since disaster struck, said mosque leader Khin Maung Naing, counting by the Islamic calendar.

"Everyone still trembles at any loud noise," he added.

"Even after a year, the tremor, the scenes and the feelings from that earthquake feel as if they happened only yesterday or the day before. To this day, it remains in my heart."

World

Transport Minister: Türkiye-operated Oil Tanker Attacked in Black Sea

Altura, a Turkish-owned crude oil tanker, transits the Bosphorus in Istanbul, Türkiye, March 16, 2026. REUTERS/Yoruk Isik
Altura, a Turkish-owned crude oil tanker, transits the Bosphorus in Istanbul, Türkiye, March 16, 2026. REUTERS/Yoruk Isik
TT
TT

Transport Minister: Türkiye-operated Oil Tanker Attacked in Black Sea

Altura, a Turkish-owned crude oil tanker, transits the Bosphorus in Istanbul, Türkiye, March 16, 2026. REUTERS/Yoruk Isik
Altura, a Turkish-owned crude oil tanker, transits the Bosphorus in Istanbul, Türkiye, March 16, 2026. REUTERS/Yoruk Isik

A Turkish-operated oil tanker was attacked early Thursday in the Black Sea, possibly by an unmanned surface vehicle, Türkiye's transport minister Abdulkadir Uraloglu said.

"I can say that a foreign-flagged ship operated by a Turkish company, which had loaded crude oil from Russia, reported an explosion in its engine room after midnight to our emergency call center," the minister said in a televised interview.

"We believe that the engine room was specifically targeted. We think the attack was not carried out by a drone, but by an unmanned surface vehicle at water level."

The minister would not specify if the attack on the Sierra Leone-flagged tanker happened in Turkish waters but local media reported that it took place less than 30 kilometers from the Bosphorus strait.

"It appears to be an externally caused explosion, particularly directed at the engine room, with the aim of completely disabling the ship," Uraloglu said.

"We have sent the necessary units to the scene and are monitoring the situation," he added.

In December, Türkiye witnessed a series of security incidents linked to the Russia-Ukraine conflict, with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan warning against the Black Sea becoming an "area of confrontation" between the warring parties.

Türkiye, whose northern shore faces Ukraine and annexed Crimea, has maintained close ties with both Kyiv and Moscow since Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.