A personal view of Australian and International Politics
Contemporary politics,local and international current affairs, science, music and extracts from the Queensland Newspaper "THE WORKER" documenting the proud history of the Labour Movement.
MAHATMA GANDHI ~ Truth never damages a cause that is just.
The week after it was reported that Lebanese journalist Amal Khalil was killed
in Israeli strikes, the ABC’s global affairs editor wrote in her
analysis that there “appears to be no normal guardrails” on Israel’s
actions.
What followed were
dozens of emails to key individuals at the ABC rather than the usual
filling out of a complaints form, a practice that is becoming
increasingly common, Weekly Beast understands.
While these complaints are investigated, they do not receive individual replies.
Among
the objections to the piece was that the context of the presence of
Hezbollah was not adequately represented in the article. The ombudsman
noted that Tingle did say: “Journalists, by the nature of their jobs
covering war, are at additional risk, and some of their deaths could
have been accidental.”
The ombudsman said Tingle included Israel’s explanation about Khalil’s death.
“The
Ombudsman’s Office reviewed the article, the concerns raised in the
complaint and considered the content against the impartiality and
diversity of perspectives standards as they relate to analysis content,”
the report said.
“In
consideration of the format of an analysis article, the attributed
claims and perspectives presented in the story, we are satisfied the
article is duly impartial as the standards apply to analysis content.”
A
week earlier, the ombudsman also dismissed 19 complaints about the
ABC’s broadcast of Israel’s ambassador Hillel Newman’s National Press
Club address.
One concern was that the ABC
should not have platformed an Israeli government representative, that he
made inaccurate claims about journalist and other civilian deaths and
used offensive language to describe Palestinians.
ABC
News told the ombudsman that senior editorial staff fact checked the
speech and Tingle provided further context in an on-air segment after
the broadcast.
People lay flowers at the site of a Russian missile strike that killed 24 people. (AP Photo: Efrem Lukatsky)
In short:
Twenty four people died, including three children, in a Russian missile strike on a Kyiv apartment building.
It was part of Russia's heaviest bombardment of the Ukrainian capital this year.
What's next?
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has vowed retribution against Russia for the attack.
President
Volodymyr Zelenskyy has vowed retribution against Russia for a missile
strike on a Kyiv apartment building that killed 24 people, including
three children.
The nine-storey building was destroyed on Thursday during Russia's heaviest bombardment of the Ukrainian capital this year.
Mr
Zelenskyy visited the site in the Darnytskyi district, laying roses
amid the rubble and talking to rescue workers as search operations were
called off.
"Ukraine will not
allow any of the aggressor's strikes that take the lives of our people
to go unpunished," he said after meeting military and intelligence
officials to discuss retaliatory long-range strikes.
"We
are entirely justified in our responses against Russia's oil industry,
weapons industry, and those directly responsible for committing war
crimes against Ukraine and Ukrainians."
Rescue workers are scouring the rubble for 20 people believed missing in the Kyiv apartment building. (AP: Evgeniy Maloletka)
Kyiv officials declared Friday a day of mourning, with flags at half-mast across the city.
Residents brought flowers, stuffed animals and sweets to a makeshift memorial at the destroyed housing block.
A portrait of a girl in a school uniform, posed against a bright yellow backdrop, was among the photos.
Oksana Honcharenko managed to survive the attack but she said the pain was "indescribable" and "heartbreaking".
"When
we opened the front door, we saw flames and an abyss. Half the
staircase and the apartment across the hall were completely gone," she
told Reuters.
"We didn't do anything to deserve this — why are our little children dying?
"We all pray and ask so much for this horror to end."
Residents of a Kyiv apartment building were seen in tears after Thursday's attack. (AP: Efrem Lukatsky)
Ukrainian
officials said Russia launched more than 1,500 drones and dozens of
missiles at targets in Ukraine since Wednesday, adding that about 180
sites across the country were damaged, including more than 50
residential buildings.
Six people were also killed in western Ukraine, far from the front line.
Moscow's
Defence Ministry said its forces had carried out massive strikes on
Ukraine between May 12 and 15, Russian state media reported.
Ukrainian prisoners of war released in first phase of planned swap
US
President Donald Trump said the strikes on the Ukrainian capital,
launched hours after a three-day US brokered ceasefire expired, could
disrupt peace efforts to end the war.
As part of the ceasefire agreement, Russia and Ukraine agreed to swap 1000 prisoners of war.
Mr Zelenskyy said Ukraine has brought home 205 service personnel from Russian captivity in the first stage of the swap.
Russia’s Defense Ministry confirmed the exchange and thanked the United Arab Emirates for helping to broker it.
Russia considers Belarus attack on NATO country
Zelenskyy
says Russia has plans to draw Belarus deeper into the Russia-Ukraine
war by attacking Ukraine's north or a NATO country from Belarusian
territory.
"Russia is
considering plans for operations to the south and north of Belarusian
territory — either against the Chernihiv-Kyiv direction in Ukraine or
against one of the NATO countries directly from the territory of
Belarus", Zelenskyy said on the Telegram messaging app after meeting
military and intelligence officials.
Ukraine is continuing to "document Russia's attempts" on increasing Belarusian involvement, he said.
Ukraine
also knows of additional contacts between Russia and Belarusian
President Alexander Lukashenko to persuade him to join "new Russian
aggressive operations".
There was no response to the comments by Moscow or Minsk. Moscow does not disclose its military plans in Ukraine.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave a rare interview at a crucial time for the Middle East. (Reuters: Ronen Zvulun)
The
police had stopped all the traffic last Saturday afternoon near the
small street where the ABC's Jerusalem bureau is located.
Amid
blaring police sirens and lights, a convoy of dark plated cars drove at
speed to a house further down the street. It has not been an uncommon
sight.
A wealthy friend of
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu lives there and there have been
frequent reports of the Israeli PM and his family staying at the house.
The
Israeli public broadcaster, Kan, reported that an American 60 Minutes
interview broadcast on Sunday night had been filmed there, which would
explain the Saturday afternoon traffic disruptions.
For a figure so central to the news, Netanyahu rarely gives interviews.
Israeli
media noted the interview — his first major US broadcast interview
since February 28 — came 60 days after he gave his only press conference
in Hebrew since the start of the latest war with Iran, and even this
was held over Zoom and limited to eight questions.
That
made this interview, which, in full, went for one hour and 20 minutes,
all the more significant. Particularly at this point in time.
That's
just not because interviewer Major Garrett covered everything from the
PM's culpability for the security failures that allowed the October 2023
Hamas attacks to the future of war in Iran. It's because of an
extraordinary public intervention that the PM's office made a couple of
days later, when it released a statement saying that during the war,
Netanyahu "secretly visited the United Arab Emirates, where he met with
UAE President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed".
"This visit", the statement continued, "has led to a historic breakthrough in relations between Israel and the UAE".
The
statement was extraordinary enough in itself. Why did the Israeli PM
suddenly feel the need to divulge this previously secret meeting?
Trump says US-Iran ceasefire 'on massive life support'
UAE disputes Netanyahu's account
Even more extraordinary was the UAE's public response a few hours later, and the public spat that followed.
"The
UAE reaffirms that its relations with Israel are public and conducted
within the framework of the well-known and officially declared Abraham
Accords, and are not based on non-transparent or unofficial
arrangements," the Emirati foreign ministry said.
"Accordingly,
any claims regarding unannounced visits or undisclosed arrangements are
entirely unfounded unless officially announced by the relevant
authorities in the UAE."
"The
UAE calls on media outlets to exercise accuracy and professionalism, and
to refrain from circulating unverified information or promoting
misleading political narratives," it added.
So
just to pause here for a moment and note that this was not a government
denying a speculative, unsourced report by a media outlet. It was a
flat denial of a statement made by the prime minister of another
country.
The Israelis then
doubled down, briefing Israeli media that the meeting had taken place at
Al-Ain, an oasis city by the Oman border on March 26 and that meeting
had lasted several hours.
The
Times of Israel then noted that Netanyahu's spokesman at the time of the
meeting, and acting chief of staff, Ziv Agmon, had insisted on Facebook
that his former boss's account was true.
"As
someone who knows the United Arab Emirates well and has lived there for
long periods of time, and as someone who accompanied the prime minister
on the historic trip that has been top secret until today, I can say
that the prime minister was received in Abu Dhabi with the honour of
kings," Agmon wrote on Facebook.
"Sheikh
bin Zayed, his family members, and other dignitaries welcomed us and
were happy to see the prime minister of Israel on their soil," he
continued.
"The sheikh greatly
respected the prime minister and personally drove the prime minister in
his personal car from the plane to the palace."
"The
things the prime minister concluded during this amazing visit will be
talked about for generations to come. A great success!"
US.
Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee this week confirmed that Israel
provided its "iron dome" defences to the UAE during the conflict. (Reuters: Ronen Zvulun)
UAE's opaque foreign relationships
The
nature of the ties between the UAE, Israel and the United States since
February 28 have been the subject of what could be called increasingly
firm speculation, sometimes followed by confirmation.
The
longer-term backdrop to this is that the UAE was one of the first, and
largest, Gulf nations to have signed on to the Abraham Accords, a set of
agreements, signed under the first Trump administration, aimed at
normalising relationships between the Gulf states and Israel.
But the UAE also has huge trade and financial ties with Iran.
The
UAE's official position in the early days of the war this year was one
of righteous indignation about the fact that it was, and remains, the
state that suffered the greatest number of Iranian drone and missile
strikes of any in the region.
The
indignation was due to the fact the UAE — along with other Gulf nations
— had pleaded with the US and Israel not to start a conflict with Iran,
given the Gulf states have to keep living with a possibly destabilised,
or even more angry, Iranian neighbour long after the US had departed
the scene.
But there was
speculation that bases in Gulf countries were being used by the US,
despite assertions by Gulf countries including the UAE, that they had
explicitly refused to let their facilities be used in offensive
operations.
There have
subsequently been reports that Israel provided its "iron dome" defences
to the UAE during the conflict. This claim was confirmed this week by
the US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee.
Then
this week came reports that seriously recast what has been going on in
the Gulf: that both the UAE and Saudi Arabia had been involved in direct
strikes on Iranian targets.
The
UAE's Ministry of Foreign Affairs declined to comment on the strikes
but pointed to previous statements in which it asserted its right to
respond, including militarily, to hostile acts.
The Saudi government wasn't saying anything either.
But that brings us back to the meeting which did or didn't happen at Al-Ain on March 26 — and Netanyahu's interview on CBS.
Like
many Gulf states, the UAE tends to conduct fairly opaque foreign
relationships. Phrases like "strategic ambiguity" come to mind.
That's
hardly surprising given the Gulf states find themselves perpetually
sitting on the hotspot of tensions that involve everyone from Iran to
the United States to Iranian proxies, unstable neighbours, and
increasingly different individual interests that mean they cannot be
seen as a uniform block.
Israel's unilateral revelation about the meeting with the UAE has, therefore, dumped the UAE right in it.
Iran
was, not surprisingly, expressing its outrage about the revelations in a
'told you so' sort of way. And if Donald Trump's renewed sabre rattling
in Beijing this week about going back to full scale war with Iran comes
to anything, it leaves the UAE very exposed.
Even
if Trump continues to flop around on renewed war, Netanyahu made clear
on CBS this week that as far as he is concerned the war with Iran is not
over and also that, even if it was, his war with Hezbollah in Lebanon
is not.
Domestic elections loom
It
is interesting to fit the statements about the UAE into the jigsaw of
Netanyahu's messages in the 60 Minutes interview and the fact that
elections in Israel, as well as the US, are now only months away.
Domestically,
Netanyahu has cast himself as a wartime prime minister but he is keen
to also offer himself as a peacetime PM with a strategic vision for
peace through greater ties — diplomatic and economic — with Gulf
neighbours.
That's despite the
fact that in Gaza, in Lebanon and Iran, Israel may have degraded enemy
capacities, but it has not eliminated them.
"I said in the second day of the war, 'We're going to change the Middle East'," he said.
"I
now see the possibility of the expansion and the deepening of the
agreements we do have to alliances with Arab states of the kind that we
never even dreamed of."
He said
he couldn't outline all that was underway but mentioned things like
sharing AI and Quantum developments with near neighbours.
Significantly
he then said it was time Israel "weaned ourselves" off the some $US3.8
billion ($4.2 billion) a year of military aid Israel gets from the US.
Views
about Israel from the US public have plunged spectacularly since the
war in Gaza and there has been growing questioning of US support for its
ally, so Netanyahu's remarks are also a canny anticipation of this.
Of
course, he denied that decline in support had anything to do with
Israel's actions in Gaza, or anywhere else, but that it instead
"correlates almost 100 per cent with the geometric rise of social
media".
He dodged questions
about what responsibility he might hold for the security failures that
allowed the October 7 attacks in 2023 and said the "real issue" was what
had happened since that that time, not what preceded it.
He
also dodged questions about the New York Times account of how he had
persuaded Trump to go to war, and whether there had been a spectacular
miscalculation of what it would take for the Iranian regime to collapse,
and of the risk of Iran weaponising the Strait of Hormuz.
There was "no question", however, "that the relative power of Israel has changed", Netanyahu said.
For
all the Israeli PM's talk though, the question for the Gulf states is
whether they are happy for Israel to be the dominant player in the
Middle East. Its ham-fisted efforts to corral the UAE in the interests
of Netanyahu's domestic politics may give them all more cause to wonder.
Donkeys pull a car across the Ord River in the East Kimberley in 1926. (Supplied: Alan Sloan courtesy State Library of Western Australia)
Nuggety
little donkeys were essential beasts of burden in Western Australia's
north early last century, transporting goods and pulling huge loads
across vast, rugged distances.
But within a few decades, thousands of donkeys would be shot and left to rot, or the meat squashed into cans for consumption.
A donkey team outside the Wyndham Hotel, in far north Western Australia, in 1925. (Supplied: Frank Bunney courtesy State Library of Western Australia)
When
83-year-old Fred Russ was a child growing up on the isolated Gibb River
Station, 2,000 kilometres north of Perth, he loved giving pet donkey
Honey a cuddle and feed of bread he pinched from the kitchen.
"They were wonderful animals; a wonderful work animal, very docile. We used to ride them as kids," he said.
"I can't speak more highly of them."
Donkeys were used for decades at Gibb River, a cattle property without roads or suitable vehicles.
He has vivid memories of a team of seven donkeys pulling a hand-hewn wooden wagon built by his father, Fred Russ Senior.
Fred Russ Senior built a wooden wagon at Mt Elizabeth Station to haul firewood, which was pulled by seven donkeys. (Supplied: William Wright courtesy State Library of Western Australia)
"The
wooden wagon my father made had wheels about 2 feet [0.6 metres] wide
cut from four big local trees, with a hole in the middle chiselled out,"
Mr Russ said.
"It didn't run along smoothly, but the donkeys carted wood for the station, two-by-two and one in the shaft."
Mr
Russ said horses were at a premium throughout the 1940s and 50s, and
sure-footed donkeys laden with freight would go where neither horse nor
vehicle would venture.
Donkeys were like semitrailers
Donkeys
were used as pack animals for stock camps during the mustering season
and ploughed paddocks for peanuts at Karunjie, Mt Elizabeth and Sale
River.
Michael Gugeri and Fred Russ say donkeys were hardworking and docile animals. (Supplied: Gabby Gugeri)
"They opened up this country," Michael Gugeri, 87, said.
"Donkeys are only little, so it's just a matter of numbers to pull those loads."
Wool, such as these bales walked into Broome in the 1920s, was an important commodity. (Supplied: State Library of Western Australia)
Teamsters
and their donkeys were the original semitrailer trucks in regional WA,
hauling food, furniture, farm machinery, building and fencing materials
in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
It was only a "matter of numbers" for the little donkeys to pull enormous loads. (Supplied: Clement Durham courtesy State Library of Western Australia)
Newspapers
reported in September 1916 that the biggest load of wool ever hauled in
WA was brought to the Day Dawn Railway Station from Noondie Station, in
the Murchison.
The wagon of 61 bales of wool weighed 10.5 tonnes and was pulled by 29 donkeys over 150km.
"In
the late 1920s, the Derby-Fitzroy Crossing mailman would switch from a
motor vehicle to mules in the wet season," West Australian historian
Cathie Clement said.
Donkeys pull a car through the Fitzroy River in 1939. (Supplied: State Library of Western Australia)
Dr
Clement said new arrivals stepping ashore in the 1930s and 40s found
their trip inland often involved mules, while prospectors rode their
donkeys across the Goldfields and Murchison until the 1950s.
Horses weren't used to haul freight because they were at a premium in the Kimberley for work on cattle stations. (Supplied: Lindsay Le Lievre)
Derby resident Lindsay Le Lievre grew up on Leopold Downs in the 1950s and became a stockman in his teens.
"Donkey teams and wagons would get over the King Leopold Ranges," he said.
That rugged set of ranges cut through the West Kimberley, and a rough road through the hills was only finished in 1967.
Donkeys and their handlers were used in areas with difficult terrain, like the sands of the Fitzroy River in 1920. (Supplied: Samuel Rea courtesy State Library of Western Australia)
"They were very good on rocks, sure-footed and wouldn't fall. They could walk very fast," the 78-year-old said.
When the workhorse turned into a pest
By the 1960s, the three Kimberley stockmen were faced with an unenviable task.
"We used to go out on a run to check bores and windmills and see 30 or 40 and we'd shoot them. Everyone did,"
Mr Le Lievre said.
The doughty and once-essential animal had become a pest in the thousands after being let loose from stations.
"Donkeys
were everywhere, even when we were on Luluigui [Station] back in the
late 1940s. Donkeys were a menace then," Mr Gugeri said.
"They were a nuisance on the road, too, because you kept hitting them."
The
donkeys were usurped by improvements to roads, including the Gibb River
Road being built, and an increase in trucks and four-wheel drives.
Michael Gugeri became a truck driver in the 1960s and says donkeys were a "nuisance on the roads". (Supplied: Michael Gugeri)
"They bred like proverbial flies," Mr Russ said.
Mr Russ said the Agriculture Protection Board culled 5,000 donkeys on Gibb River Station within two years in the 1980s.
Kimberley Rangelands Biosecurity Association (KRBA) data shows more than half a million donkeys have been culled since 1978.
KRBA estimates the region's current population is 5,000, and to completely eradicate them would cost nearly $4 million.
Pastoralists managing feral animals in the West Pilbara shot more than 5,600 donkeys from helicopters between 2017 and 2020.
The Gibb River Road was built in the 1960s for cattle trucks and remained notoriously rough for decades. (ABC Kimberley: Vanessa Mills)
"It's fragile country. We used to shoot as many as we could," Mr Russ said.
Donkeys
would "muck up waterholes", "keep cattle away from springs" and eat
grass; the same damage cattle and horses caused, only the difference was
the value of the animal had plunged.
"I used to hate going to shoot the donkeys because they'd remind you of the ones we used to have," Mr Russ said.
"Just imagine how many carcasses would have rotted away. What a waste of meat."
Donkey in a can
Putting
Kimberley donkeys into a can was the idea of Charlie Telford, a
concrete worker, who took up the abandoned Mt Hart Station lease as a
63-year-old in 1962.
Mr Russ
remembers the rudimentary factory, near the Mt Hart and Gibb River Road
junctions, being made from concrete and called Telfoods.
Mr
Gugeri last visited the site in 1962 and still recalls the mincers on
steel benches, stacks of unused cans on shelves and large wire racks to
dry the meat.
"There wouldn't have been refrigeration. It would've attracted a lot of blowflies," he said.
The dried meat was pressed into 4-litre cans, and the lid was soldered on.
Abandoned stock yards at Mt Hart, near the short-lived donkey canning factory on the Gibb River Road. (ABC Kimberley: Vanessa Mills)
Mr Telford apparently took samples to Singapore, although it is unclear if Telfoods was targeting the human or pet food market.
The venture was short-lived.
A
state heritage listing for the factory site said the WA Health
Department soon closed the plant because it "did not meet international
export health requirements".
Charlie Telford sold Mt Hart in 1967, and the Telfoods Donkey Canning factory began to decay.
"A man was stuck there in the wet [season] and had to resort to opening one of these tins up," Mr Gugeri recalled.
"I believe it wasn't very palatable. They soaked it, boiled it, but nothing they did could make it very interesting."
The Gibb River Road was built for cattle trucks to use, but one creek crossing retains a link to donkeys. (ABC Kimberley: Vanessa Mills)
Residents of a Kyiv apartment building were seen in tears after Thursday's attack. (AP: Efrem Lukatsky)
In short:
Seven
people are dead and at least 20 believed missing after a Russian drone
struck an apartment building in Kyiv on Thursday, local time.
The attack was part of a third straight day of widespread attacks on targets across Ukraine.
Russia is intensifying its attacks on population centres despite Vladimir Putin remarking that the war is near its end.
Russia
has unleashed widespread drone and missile attacks on Ukraine for a
third straight day, demolishing an apartment building in Kyiv and
hitting targets across the country.
Ukrainian
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said seven people were killed and dozens
more injured in the strike on the apartment building in the capital's
leafy Darnytsia neighbourhood, located between a suburban forest and the
Dnieper River.
A further 20 people were believed to still be missing, Mr Zelenskyy said.
Wisps
of smoke rose from the collapsed nine-story apartment block, where
emergency workers dug under concrete slabs and took people away on
stretchers. The building's entrance was smashed in the strike,
preventing residents from escaping.
Rescue workers are scouring the rubble for 20 people believed missing in the Kyiv apartment building. (AP: Evgeniy Maloletka)
All
18 apartments in the building were destroyed, officials said. Among the
dead was a 12-year-old girl, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said.
Further strikes elsewhere in the country wounded more than two dozen civilians.
Mr Klitschko declared Friday to be a day of mourning for the victims.
Emergency workers were forced to use cherry pickers to rescue residents after the building's entrance was hit by a drone. (AP: Evgeniy Maloletka)
Ukrainian officials noted that the attack coincided with US President Donald Trump's trip to China.
Foreign
Minister Andrii Sybiha said Mr Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping have
sufficient leverage to compel Russian President Vladimir Putin to end
his 4-year-old invasion of Ukraine.
"At
the very time when leaders of the most powerful countries are meeting
in Beijing, and the world hopes for peace, predictability and
cooperation, Putin launched hundreds of drones, ballistic and cruise
missiles at the capital of Ukraine," Sybiha wrote on X.
"Only pressure on Moscow can make him stop," Mr Sybiha said of Putin.
Ukraine pummelled this week
Mr
Zelenskyy said Russia had fired ballistic and cruise missiles in the
attack, adding that Moscow had launched more than 1,560 drones against
Ukrainian population centres since Wednesday.
In all, some 180 sites across the country were damaged, including more than 50 residential buildings, he said.
Ukraine is accusing Russia of ramping up drone attacks to co-incide with Donald Trump's visit to Beijing. (AP: Evgeniy Maloletka)
British
Defence Secretary John Healey called Thursday's attack "shocking" and
said he had accelerated UK deliveries of air defences.
Russia's
Defense Ministry said the military aimed at Ukraine's
military-industrial complex, including air bases and fuel and transport
facilities, claiming it hit all its targets.
Among the weapons deployed, it said, were Kinzhal missiles, which Moscow says can fly 10 times the speed of sound.
Russia
has hammered Ukraine with large-scale aerial attacks following a
ceasefire which lasted between May 9 and 11, that Mr Trump said he asked
Mr Zelenskyy and Mr Putin to heed. Fighting continued over those 72
hours, although reportedly at a reduced intensity.
The
attacks undercut recent suggestions from Mr Trump and Mr Putin that the
war, which began with Moscow's all-out invasion of its neighbour in
2022, is nearing its end.
The latest waves of attacks are some of the biggest in the four years since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. (Reuters: Thomas Peter)
'A terrible night'
More
than 30 people were injured in the apartment building collapse, while
emergency workers rescued 28 residents, Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko
said.
Lyudmila Hlushko, 78,
said she heard explosions and the sound of rockets about 3am. "Then the
house shook violently and there was a loud bang, breaking the glass in
my house," she told The Associated Press.
The blast shattered windows throughout the neighbourhood.
"It was a terrible night," said another resident, Nadiia Lobanova.
"We're used to this. Well, it's impossible to get used to this, but somehow we held on."
Russia launched over 1,500 drones at Ukraine in the space of 48 hours. (AP: Evgeniy Maloletka)
Damage was reported in six districts of the capital, according to Tymur Tkachenko, head of Kyiv's Military Administration.
The
Kyiv office of defence contractor Skyeton, specialising in
reconnaissance drones, was destroyed in the overnight attack, although
the company said it had anticipated such a development and had relocated
its production.
Russian drones
also struck a vehicle carrying UN staff who were delivering aid to
residents of Kherson in southern Ukraine, Mr Sybiha said.
The vehicle was marked and was attacked twice, in two different locations, but nobody was hurt, he said.
Russia's biggest attacks since invasion
The Ukrainian cities of Kremenchuk, Bila Tserkva, Kharkiv, Sumy and Odesa also were bombarded, officials said.
"We
are now experiencing the largest strikes since the start of the
full-scale invasion," air force spokesperson Yurii Ihnat told Ukrainian
public broadcaster Suspilne.
Ukraine's
air defence forces are under severe strain, he said. Even so, the
interception rate of drones and missiles was over 93 per cent, Mr
Zelenskyy said.
Air defences
shot down or jammed 693 Russian targets overnight, including 41 missiles
and 652 drones of various types nationwide, the air force said.
Fifteen
missiles and 23 drones scored direct hits across 24 locations, it said.
Debris from downed drones fell in another 18 locations.
Strikes
on energy infrastructure left customers in Kyiv and 11 other regions
temporarily without power, national grid operator Ukrenergo said.
Maritime archaeologists are working to restore the oldest colonial-era boat ever found in Australia.
It
was discovered during construction of the Barangaroo metro station on
the edge of Sydney's CBD in 2018 and is expected to be on display at the
Australian National Maritime Museum (ANMM) by the middle of 2027.
"We
knew we'd find a few archaeological pieces, but we never thought we'd
find something this incredible right in the middle of the Barangaroo
station site," Sydney Metro head of operations Hugh Lawson said.
The remnants of a colonial-era boat were discovered during construction of the Barangaroo metro station in Sydney. (Supplied: NSW government)
The boat is estimated to have been used by British settlers between 1790 and 1830 for trade across Sydney Harbour.
Archaeologists
also believe it travelled south to the Shoalhaven and north to
Newcastle, with its timber traced back to eucalypt species found along
the Hawkesbury River.
Maritime archaeologists are working on the restoration of the vessel. (Supplied: NSW government)
"It's
our earliest example of taking those traditional boat building
techniques from the UK and using them in Australia with Australian
timber," maritime archaeologist Benjamin Wharton said.
"It's
all Australian hardwoods coated in pitch, so once that was all in the
ground as well, it really created a good environment for it to be
stable."
The boat is estimated to have been used by British settlers between 1790 and 1830 for trade across Sydney Harbour. (Supplied: City of Sydney Archives)
Archaeologists
took two months to painstakingly excavate the boat piece by piece, all
of which had to be kept moist for over a year while a facility was built
to preserve the overall vessel.
"This
is an incredible story of one of our newest forms of transport
uncovering one of the oldest forms of transport in the colony, the early
days of ship building and the use of ships in Sydney," NSW Transport
Minister John Graham said.
Reconstructing a 200-year-old boat
Archaeologists traced the boat's timber back to eucalypt species found along the Hawkesbury River. (Supplied: City of Sydney Archives)
The
ANMM team used newspaper reports, diary entries and government records
from the time to try to understand the type of trade that was happening
and how the boat would have been used.
Mr Wharton is now investigating how to reconstruct the boat, like a huge, delicate jigsaw puzzle.
"We're
coming up with different ways for cradle structure, how to join two
bits of wood together using custom-made fasteners, also looking at the
timbers to research methods of construction," he said.
Benjamin Wharton says reconstructing the boat's remnants is like a puzzle. (Supplied: Australian National Maritime Museum/Juri Puisens)
Hundreds
of items which give a snapshot of everyday life in the new British
colony were also well-preserved alongside the boat's remains, in layers
of silt.
"There's glass bottle
fragments, lots of decorated ceramics, leather shoes, smoking pipes,
toothbrushes, even bones of remnants of things that people ate,"
maritime archaeologist James Hunter said.
"You
can see the bite marks of humans on cow, sheep and pig bones, and then
you can see where rats have gnawed into the bones after humans have
thrown those bones away."
Hundreds of items were also well-preserved alongside the boat's remains, in layers of silt. (Supplied: Australian National Maritime Museum/Juri Puisens)
Dr Hunter said all the items dated to the mid to late 1830s, which indicated that was when the boat was abandoned.
"At
that stage, convicts were still coming here, but we also had free
settlers coming in but it was still a colonial outpost on the far side
of the world," he said.
He said
the artefacts showed settlers were trying to replicate their lives in
Europe and boats were instrumental to life in the new colony, whether
that was for moving goods, people or information.
