“The Argentine president’s expressions have deteriorated the trust of our nation and offended the dignity of President (Gustavo) Petro, who was elected democratically,” the Colombian Foreign Ministry said in a statement Wednesday.

Of Petro, a former guerilla who became Colombia’s first left-wing president following a 2022 election victory, Milei said, “You can’t expect much from someone who was a terrorist murderer.”

Milei, a former television pundit with a reputation for bombast, also attacked Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador in the interview, calling him “ignorant.”

López Obrador, a left-wing populist, has previously criticized Milei’s policies and compared him to a dictator. On Thursday, in a post on social media, López Obrador hit back, wondering why Argentinians “voted for someone who is not right, who despises the people.”

Defense for Israel and hopes for Trump

In the nearly hour-long interview, conducted in Buenos Aires, Milei also defended Israel’s response to the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attack, saying its war in Gaza is “within the rule of law.”

Milei, who was born Catholic but has expressed a wish to convert to Judaism, said that his meeting in February with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was one of the warmest he had held since entering office.

Milei also admitted he privately hopes former President Donald Trump wins the US election in November, but that he intends to be an ally with the United States regardless of who will be in the White House next year.

“Argentina’s allies are the United States and Israel; it’s not a secret my ideas are more akin to those of the Republican party, but we have an excellent relationship with the Democrats too,” Milei told Oppenheimer.

Central Bank is ‘mechanism of fraud’

Milei also reiterated his intention to shut down the country’s central bank, calling the institution a “mechanism of fraud.”

“A central bank is a fairly recent invention. Argentina’s was founded in 1925, and our country was a world power before that,” Milei said, without elaborating who would be responsible for fiscal policy in the country if the Central Bank ceased to exist.

Milei admitted his reform push has stalled in Argentina’s Congress in recent weeks, but his government maintains the intention to close the central bank within three years. Closing the bank was a central promise of his campaign, as he sought to assure voters he could right the country’s floundering economy.

In the interview, Milei claimed his government’s greatest success since entering office in December has been to beat the hyper-inflation and achieve a fiscal surplus for the first time in years.

Argentina’s inflation rate remains the highest in the world at over 270% year on year, but data published this month suggests that price rises have calmed in March compared to February.

Milei celebrated Argentina’s fiscal surplus, achieved last month for the first time in years, and said that fiscal stability is “a beacon” of his government.

“I’m confident that soon, inflation will go back to single digits,” Milei said. “It could be May, we are not sure, but what we are clear about is that this policy is here to stay and for us, zero deficit is like the main mast for Ulysses.”

Milei’s government achieved fiscal parity this year with a robust set of cuts to government spending, including shutting down the Argentina national press agency TELAM and reducing aid to soup kitchens in the poorest suburbs of Buenos Aires.

Argentina’s poverty rate is over 50%, according to a report from the Argentina’s Catholic University in Buenos Aires.

Dozens of worshippers died after a bus headed to an Easter conference plunged off a cliff in South Africa’s Limpopo province on Thursday.

The crash claimed the lives of 45 people and one is seriously injured, the country’s transport department said in a statement.

The sole survivor is an eight-year-old girl who has been airlifted to hospital, the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) reported.

According to the SABC, the passengers were pilgrims traveling from Gaborone – the capital city of neighboring country Botswana – to a church for an Easter conference.

The crash happened in the Mamatlakala mountain pass between Mokopane and Marken. The bus reportedly caught fire after falling.

The cause of the crash is under investigation.

In a statement, the province’s transport department said that “according to reports, the driver lost control and the bus fell onto a rocky surface, some 50 meters under the bridge and caught fire.”

Efforts are ongoing to recover the bodies of the passengers who were killed, according to the statement.

“Some bodies burned beyond recognition,” the local department said. Others are “trapped inside the debris and others [are] scattered on the scene,” it added.

South African Transport Minister Sindisiwe Chikunga said the government would repatriate the bodies to Botswana, the broadcaster said.

“I am sending my heartfelt condolences to the families affected by the tragic bus crash near Mamatlakala. Our thoughts and prayers are with you during this difficult time. We continue to urge responsible driving at all times with heightened alertness as more people are on our roads this Easter weekend,” Chikunga said in a statement.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

The Israeli Supreme Court on Thursday ordered the government to stop funding religious schools whose students defy the country’s mandatory military service, posing one of the most serious threats to date for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing coalition.

Netanyahu relies on two Ultra-Orthodox parties – Shas and United Torah Judaism – to maintain a governing coalition. His wartime cabinet partners – Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and Benny Gantz, of the National Unity Party – have been heavily critical of Netanyahu’s approach to the issue of Ultra-Orthodox conscription.

“The judges of the High Court of Justice want to saw off the branch of existence of the Jewish people,” Ariyeh Deri, leader of the Shas party, said in a statement on X. “The people of Israel are engaged in a war of existence on several fronts and the High Court of Justice judges did everything tonight to create a fratricidal war as well.”

Young men studying in yeshivas have since the country’s founding been exempt from mandatory military service – in practice, exempting all Ultra-Orthodox Israelis. But the exemption has never been enshrined in a law that the Supreme Court views as equitable, and for years has been carried out by patch-work government mandates. Netanyahu this week attempted to delay the Supreme Court’s deadline to pass a law that would make official the exemption.

After decades of rulings on the subject, the Supreme Court told the government that it was illegal for the government to both fund yeshivas and exempt their students from conscription. In a ruling late Thursday, the Supreme Court said that starting on April 1, the government could no longer transfer funds to yeshivas whose students did not receive legitimate deferments.

Yitzhak Goldknopf, leader of the United Torah Judaism party, called the ruling “a sign of disgrace and contempt.”

“The State of Israel arose to be a home for the Jewish people whose Torah is true Torah, and there is no power in the world that can do it,” he said. “Without the Torah, we have no right to exist.”

Ultra-Orthodox Jews view religious study as fundamental to the preservation of Judaism. For many of those who live in Israel, that means study is just as important to Israel’s defense as the military.

Gantz, of the National Unity Party, said that the court “ruled the obvious today. The time has come for the government to do the obvious. It’s time for action.”

This is a developing story and will be updated.

The UN human rights office described sexual violence in Haiti as “severely underreported and largely unpunished” in a harrowing report released Thursday that documented cases of rape and forced sexual relations with gang members, as well surging levels of gang violence in the country.

The report, from the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), also found that more than 1,500 people have been killed by gang violence in Haiti so far this year, set to outpace the 4,451 killings in 2023, as the country slides deeper into chaos and anarchy, with heavily armed gangs battling authorities in the capital city in recent weeks.

“Corruption, impunity, and poor governance, compounded by increasing levels of gang violence, have eroded the rule of law and brought state institutions, which should be the basis of a democratic society, close to collapse,” the report stated.

The violence has caused the internal displacement of approximately 313,900 people as of December 2023, according to the OHCHR.

The gangs also continue to recruit children, who are often used as lookouts for other gang members to carry out kidnappings and robberies, according to testimonies collected by the OHCHR.

“All these practices are outrageous and must stop at once,” said the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk.

The report comes two weeks after Ariel Henry announced he would resign as Haiti’s prime minister, bowing to the demands of gang leaders who had orchestrated prison breaks and attacked government offices in an attempt to overthrow Henry’s leadership.

Members of a transitional council established in Henry’s place issued their first statement Wednesday saying that they are finalizing a document that would officially form the council. Once the presidential council is formed, the statement said, it will “appoint a prime minister, with whom he will constitute a government of national unity and put Haiti back on the path of democratic legitimacy, stability and dignity.”

In the UN report, researchers found that weapons and ammunition are regularly trafficked through Haiti’s borders – despite an arms embargo. The flow of arms enables the gangs to have superior firepower to the police forces.

“It is shocking that despite the horrific situation on the ground, arms keep still pouring in. I appeal for a more effective implementation of the arms embargo,” Türk said.

The Haitian National Police face a range of other challenges including their officers being severely underpaid and understaffed, resulting in a police-to-population ratio of 1.3 officers per 1,000 citizens, the OHCHR found.

The OHCHR also reported that so-called “self-defense brigades” made up of civilians have been executing individuals accused of petty crime or suspected of association with gangs. At least 528 cases of lynching were reported in 2023, and 59 so far in 2024, mostly in Port-au-Prince, the report stated.

Haiti’s criminal justice system has remained dysfunctional as national anti-corruption and accountability mechanisms are chronically under-resourced, the OHCHR found.

“Widespread corruption and dysfunction of the justice system greatly contribute to the pervasive impunity for grave human rights violations, and they need to be addressed urgently,” said Türk.

“Accountability is paramount to restore public trust in the rule of law and the state institutions,” he added.

The report found a high level of self-censorship among journalists due to threats or fear of reprisals by gangs. The OHCHR documented four cases of journalists killed in 2023 with no investigations opened regarding the deaths.

The gangs have also caused extensive damage to Haitians’ property. More than 1,880 homes and businesses have been looted or destroyed since January 2023, the OHCHR found. In the Artibonite Valley, Haiti’s breadbasket, gangs have attacked farm properties and also stolen hundreds of livestock.

Garbage piling up in landfills isn’t just an eyesore, it’s also a climate nightmare, belching out large amounts of planet-warming methane gas. In the United States, the problem could be much worse than previously thought, according to a new study measuring methane pollution at hundreds of landfills across the country.

Scientists flew over more than 200 landfills across 18 states from 2018 to 2022, in what they say is the largest measurement-based survey of America’s landfills. Their results revealed average methane emissions were much higher than those officially reported, according to the study published Thursday in the journal Science.

Methane — an invisible, odorless gas with over 80 times more warming power than carbon dioxide in the near-term — is produced by various sources, the biggest of wich are oil and gas and agriculture. Landfills tend to be a less well-known methane source, but they also have a huge impact, estimated at around 20% of global human-caused methane emissions.

Landfills produce methane when organic waste such as food scraps, paper and wood decompose without oxygen, creating the perfect environment for methane-producing bacteria.

Most landfills in the US are federally required to measure methane emissions four times a year through walking surveys using handheld sensors. The accuracy of these surveys can vary, as people tend to avoid areas that are unsafe to walk through, including steep slopes and where garbage is actively being dumped, according to the study.

Estimates of landfill methane emissions therefore tend to be based on models rather than direct measurements — but this means potential gaps in data. Advanced monitoring systems using remote sensing from aircraft, drones and satellites can provide a more accurate and comprehensive picture, the report noted.

Using airborne imaging spectrometers, the scientists detected methane plumes at 52% of the landfills they measured. This far exceeds the rate of methane detection in airborne studies undertaken for the oil and gas sector, the report notes.

The results show current reporting systems, such as the Environmental Protection Agency’s Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program (GHGRP), are missing large methane sources, the scientist concluded. Average methane emission rates from landfills were 1.4 times higher than those being reported to the GHGRP, the report found.

The study also found landfill methane emissions were generally much more persistent than those from oil and gas production, with 60% lasting for multiple months or even years.

“When we would come back and survey again later in a few weeks or a few months … or over the course of a few years, we always saw [the methane],” Cusworth said.

Rob Jackson, professor of environmental science at Stanford University, who was not involved with the study, said landfills were “super-emitters.”

Unfortunately, the problem of landfills is unlikely to go away anytime soon. “Even in a future where there is not a reliance on fossil fuels, humans will likely still be generating waste,” Cusworth said. “Even if we transition to cleaner fuels, we’re still going to be dealing with waste management.”

Scientists say the rapid reduction of methane is one of the most effective ways to slow climate change because of its powerful short-term planet-heating impact.

Yet most methane policies in the US target the oil and gas industry. “If we’re going to hit our climate targets, reductions in methane emissions can’t come from oil and gas alone,” Cusworth said. “Landfills should be garnering a similar type of attention as oil and gas.”

One day in the next couple of years, everyone in the world will lose a second of their time. Exactly when that will happen is being influenced by humans, according to a new study, as melting polar ice alters the Earth’s rotation and changes time itself.

The hours and minutes that dictate our days are determined by Earth’s rotation. But that rotation is not constant; it can change ever so slightly, depending on what’s happening on Earth’s surface and in its molten core.

These nearly imperceptible changes occasionally mean the world’s clocks need to be adjusted by a “leap second,” which may sound tiny but can have a big impact on computing systems.

Plenty of seconds have been added over the years. But after a long trend of slowing, the Earth’s rotation is now speeding up because of changes in its core. For the first time ever, a second will need to be taken off.

“A negative leap second has never been added or tested, so the problems it could create are without precedent,” Patrizia Tavella, a member of the Time Department at the International Bureau of Weights and Measures in France, wrote in an article accompanying the study.

But exactly when this will happen is being influenced by global warming, according to the study published Wednesday in the journal Nature. Melting polar ice is delaying the leap second by three years, pushing it from 2026 to 2029, the report found.

“Part of figuring out what is going to happen in global timekeeping … is dependent on understanding what is happening with the global warming effect,” said Duncan Agnew, professor of geophysics at the University of California San Diego and the study’s author.

Before 1955, a second was defined as a specific fraction of the time the Earth took to rotate once in relation to the stars. Then came the era of highly precise atomic clocks, which proved a much more stable way of defining a physical second.

From the late 1960s, the world started using coordinated universal time (UTC) to set time zones. UTC relies on atomic clocks but still keeps pace with the planet’s rotation.

But as the rotation speed is not constant, the two timescales slowly diverge. This means a “leap second” must be added every now and then to bring them back into alignment.

Changes in Earth’s rotation over the long term have been dominated by the friction of the tides on the ocean floor — which has slowed down its rotation. Recently, the impacts of melting polar ice, driven by humans burning planet-heating fossil fuels, have become a significant factor, Agnew said. As the ice melts into the ocean, meltwater moves from the poles toward the equator, which further slows the speed of the Earth’s rotation.

Ted Scambos, a glaciologist at the University of Colorado Boulder who was not involved in the study, describes the process like a figure skater spinning with their arms over their head. As they bring their arms down toward their shoulders, their spin slows.

Polar ice melt “has been large enough to noticeably affect the rotation of the entire Earth in a way that is unprecedented,” Agnew said. “To me, the fact that human beings have caused the rotation of the Earth to change is kind of amazing.”

But while melting ice may be slowing the Earth’s spin, there’s another factor at play when it comes to global timekeeping, according to the report: processes in the Earth’s core.

The planet’s liquid core spins independently of its solid outer shell. If the core slows down, the solid shell speeds up to maintain momentum, Agnew said, and that is what’s currently happening.

Very little is known about what’s going on roughly 1,800 miles below the Earth’s surface, and it’s not clear why the core’s speed is changing. “It’s fundamentally unpredictable,” said Agnew.

But what is clear, according to the study, is that despite polar ice melt exerting a slowing influence, overall the Earth’s rotation is speeding up. That means the world will soon need to subtract a second for the first time.

“A second doesn’t sound like much,” Agnew said, but computing systems set up for activities such as stock exchange transactions need to be accurate to a thousandth of a second.

Many computer systems have software enabling them to add a second, but few have the capability to subtract one. Humans will need to reprogram computers, introducing the potential for error.

“Nobody really anticipated that the Earth would speed up to the point where we might have to remove a leap second,” Agnew said.

Scambos, the University of Colorado Boulder glaciologist, said the “big deal” of the study is that it shows “changes from the Earth’s core are now trending bigger than the trends in loss of ice from the poles — even though ice loss has picked up in the last decade.”

For Agnew, the findings could be a powerful tool to connect people with the ways humans are changing the planet.

“Being able to say so much ice has melted that it’s actually changed the rotation of the Earth by a measurable amount, I think gives you the sense, OK, this is a big deal.”

India’s Ministry of External Affairs summoned a US State Department official after the department called for a fair legal process for opposition leader and Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal following his arrest last week.

“We take strong objection to the remarks of the Spokesperson of the US State Department about certain legal proceedings in India,” the Ministry said in a statement Wednesday.

“In diplomacy, states are expected to be respectful of the sovereignty and internal affairs of others. This responsibility is even more so in case of fellow democracies,” the statement added.

The Ministry of External Affairs on Wednesday summoned Gloria Berbena, the State Department Minister-Counselor for Public Diplomacy, according to a diplomatic officer with knowledge of the matter.

At a briefing later on Wednesday, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller declined to discuss “private diplomatic conversations” when asked about Berbena’s summoning, but stood by the department’s previous comments.

“We encourage fair, transparent, timely legal processes. We don’t think anyone should object to that, and we’ll make the same thing clear privately,” Miller said.

Kejriwal was taken into custody on March 21 following a raid on his home by the federal financial crimes agency, members of his Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) said, in the latest blow to an alliance of parties aiming to unseat Modi as he seeks a third consecutive term.

He is one of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s fiercest critics and Kejriwal’s allies have claimed the arrest was politically motivated.

His arrest comes as tensions run high ahead of a crucial nationwide election which begins on April 19, in which Modi is widely expected to leave the opposition languishing despite sharp criticism over his perceived erosion of the country’s democratic founding principles.

India’s main opposition, the Indian National Congress, has also accused the BJP of using the tax department to “cripple” their finances. The party claimed their bank accounts had been frozen by the tax department, leaving them unable to use some $20 million in funds.

Human Rights group Amnesty International warned following the arrest of Kejriwal that a crackdown on Indian opposition figures and parties by the government had reached a “crisis point” ahead of the national elections.

“The arrest of Arvind Kejriwal and the freezing of Indian National Congress’ bank accounts a few weeks before India holds its general elections show the authorities’ blatant failure to uphold the country’s international human rights obligations.”

For South Africans, normality is a sliding scale.

Record electricity blackouts and sustained water outages have crushed businesses, and caused havoc in hospitals and schools nationwide. It’s common to see car-sized potholes in the suburbs of Johannesburg as workmen weld burst pipes. Traffic light outages are a daily occurrence.

The privations are often treated with the nation’s trademark humor.

But now, even extraordinary, violent events have also become almost commonplace. In October, a heavily armed gang blocked off one of the busiest highways near Johannesburg as it blew up a cash-in-transit vehicle – a security van carrying cash.

Video of the heist was captured on cell phones in real-time. Bystanders can be heard giving running commentary from an overpass.

Cash-in-transit, or CIT, heists are one of the most dramatic illustrations of a crime wave that has shocked even the most hardened South Africans. Murder is at a 20-year high; someone is killed in the country roughly every 20 minutes, according to the most recent quarterly police crime statistics.

Other serious crimes are also on the rise. In 2022-23, recorded cases of kidnapping increased by 41.7%, attempted murders rose by 13.7%, while reported carjacking incidents increased by 8.5%, compared to the previous year, according to annual statistics. Meanwhile, CIT heists remained at the same level as the year before, with 238 incidents recorded.

South Africa is approaching a critical election and the ruling African National Congress (ANC) could lose its majority for the first time since Nelson Mandela led it to power 30 years ago — the crime crisis is front and center. And the social impact, of course, goes far beyond the shock value of viral videos.

Forgotten victims

TT Ngwenya, a father-of-four and former cash-in-transit guard, shuffled up the stairs to his apartment in downtown Johannesburg earlier this month, one hand gripping a crutch, the other holding the rail. The elevators were broken.

He recalled the incident in May 2021 in which the van he was guarding was targeted by a gang.

The CIT gang hit Ngwenya and his co-worker, who was driving, quickly and hard, crashing into their armored vehicle with a heavy sedan to disable it.

“I cannot stand for a long time. I can only stand for three minutes. I am always in pain,” said Ngwenya, who says he is currently on temporary disability allowance from his company’s insurers – but hopes to get a permanent payout from them.

He knows that he is one of the luckier ones. When CIT guards get killed — and they are frequently killed — the local news rarely mentions their names.

“It’s so bad because it seems that every day you lose a member. It’s so bad because every day you wonder whether you will come back,” said Petrus Mthembu, the president of the Motor Transport Workers Union, who works in the CIT industry and has been hit by gangs himself.

“You don’t know whether you will survive, which tells you there is no stability within the country,” he added.

Fast cash

Like anywhere in the world, there are push factors for crime, including inequality and a lack of jobs. South Africa has the highest unemployment in the world, at about 32% in the last quarter of 2023. Youth unemployment is more than 40%.

He admits that he was addicted to the fast cash, as he calls it, saying for one hit each gang member netted around R350,000 (about $18,500.)

The gang had spotters and shooters, he said, some with specialized military training. They used a team of 10 to 15 people and, he claims, they frequently got guns and intelligence from the police.

“There are many corrupt cops, too many,” he said.

“During this period, 46 CIT armed robberies took place, which is 11 counts lower than the previous crime reporting period,” the speech said. The police recovered firearms including rifles and AK-47s, it added.

Feeling the toll

Security and intelligence experts say that the CIT epidemic, and the crime crisis in general, come down to a lack of targeted policing and intelligence. They say there are good cops in the system, but that they are demotivated and underpaid. The police have also been struck by multiple corruption scandals over the years.

The South African police minister, Bheki Cele, recently highlighted what he called the successes of the Crime Intelligence division in tackling organized crime and rooting out corruption within the ranks of the force.

“Organized crime at this point is completely out of hand, you have corruption across the board from the lowest to the highest levels,” said Joe van der Walt, the founder and chief executive of Focus Group, a private intelligence company with corporate clients. “You need a strategy that is being followed in order to tackle crime.”

That strategy, for many companies and wealthier South Africans, is to turn to private intelligence, investigations and security. There are more than half a million active private security guards in the country, according to the Private Security Industry Regulatory Authority.

It’s a fast-growing industry – and its members are equipped with manpower and gear far outgunning the police. But even they are feeling the toll.

“These companies are not investing in new products, research, and development to become better. But you are spending a hell of a lot of money to maintain your operations, so you don’t lose the war against crime,” said Gareth Newham, the head of justice and violence prevention at the Institute for Security Studies. “What’s driving the increase in murders is more related to organized crime or organized forms of crime.”

For Ngwenya, the crime crisis is deeply personal and life-changing. He knew the risks of guarding the CIT truck, he said, but he needed the money.

On a recent Tuesday afternoon, as his children started to file in from school, he lay nearly prone on his sofa. He struggles to afford their education fees, he said, and doesn’t have the money to buy airtime on his phone.

“When I went to work there, I knew I could be killed,” he said. “But you must not think about that, otherwise you will never work for your children.”

China has announced it is lifting punishing tariffs on Australian wines more than three years after imposing penalties that devastated the industry and were a major point of friction between the trading partners.

China’s Ministry of Commerce on Thursday said that “in view of the changes in the wine market conditions in China,” it was “no longer necessary to impose anti-dumping duties and countervailing duties on imported wines originating from Australia.”

The measure would come into effect on Friday, two days before the end of a five-month review period agreed on by Canberra and Beijing that saw Australia suspend a dispute on the issue at the World Trade Organization for that period.

The decision scraps duties as high as 218% on Australian wine exports to China, its largest overseas market once worth more than 1 billion Australian dollars ($653 million).

The Australian government said it welcomed Beijing’s decision “which comes at a critical time for the Australian wine industry.”

“Since 2020, China’s duties on Australian wine effectively made it unviable for Australian producers to export bottled wine to that market,” the statement read. “We acknowledge and thank Australian grape growers and wine producers for their fortitude and support during a challenging period.”

The wine tariffs were part of a raft of trade curbs Beijing slapped on key Australian exports starting in 2020 as punishment for political grievances.

Their removal comes amid a thaw in China-Australia relations that’s seen Chinese authorities steadily roll back a number of those barriers including on barley, timber, and coal.

Winemakers toast decision

Beijing’s move was embraced by the country’s hard-hit winemakers, who have been grappling with oversupply amid flagging broader global demand on top of years of major revenue losses from China.

“The loss of China over these last three years has caused a fair bit of damage to the industry and brought uncertainty. We don’t know what the Chinese market looks like after (the Covid-19 pandemic), but having access to it is a lot better than not,” he said.

Tariffs of up to 212% were originally introduced by China’s Ministry of Commerce in November 2020. A final ruling the following March set between 116% to 218% antidumping and countervailing duties for a five-year period.

The wine duties were a sharp hit for the key Australian industry, with sales to China down 97% in 2021 from the previous year at a loss of nearly $1 billion in value and 90 million liters in volume, according to national industry group Wine Australia.

Global exports also dropped by 30% in value during that period.

Annual wine production hit its lowest point in more than 15 years during 2022-2023, Wine Australia said. The same year, the United Kingdom and the US became the country’s most valuable export markets.

Lee McLean, head of national association of grape and wine producers Australian Grape & Wine, said industry groups were working with the Australian government to “ensure a coordinated re-entry” into the market.

“We look forward to seeing Australian wines back on Chinese dining tables and rejuvenating our relationship with customers and business partners in that market,” McLean said.

“We will also, however, be maintaining our focus on diversifying our export footprint and growing demand here in Australia as well,” he added.

Diplomatic thaw

China imposed the wine tariffs and other trade controls amid a souring of relations between the two countries over issues of national security and foreign investment, which deteriorated further in 2020 following Canberra’s call for an international inquiry into the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic in China.

China’s Foreign Ministry had blamed Australia for the trade issues, in 2020 accusing it of “violating the basic norms governing international relations,” though its commerce ministry has cited anti-dumping and other reasons for the raft of curbs.

Relations began to improve after the election of Anthony Albanese’s Labor government in May 2022 allowed for a reset of relations, but the wine tariffs had remained a sore point.

On Thursday, China’s Foreign Ministry said the two countries “for some time” had “properly addressed each other’s concerns through dialogue and negotiations, and jointly pushed for the momentum for improvement in bilateral relations.”

Beijing’s decision comes as the country is facing a number of steep economic challenges and has sought to stabilize its relationships with key trade partners from Australia to Europe.

It also follows concerted diplomatic efforts between the two sides to repair ties, which culminated with a trip to China from Albanese last November, the first visit by an Australian leader in seven years.

Earlier this month, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi made the first trip by China’s top diplomat to the Australia in the same period.

During that visit, Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong raised ongoing points of stress between the two, including China’s sentencing to death last month of imprisoned writer and democracy activist Yang Hengjun, an Australian citizen detained in China since 2019.

Wong also said she stressed Canberra’s desire for the removal of remaining curbs on beef and lobster.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has told a group of US members of Congress that “victory” in Gaza and “getting” Hamas’ senior leadership in the enclave are just “a few weeks away.”

Speaking to a bipartisan group from Congress on Wednesday, Netanyahu said: “We’ve killed many senior leaders [of Hamas], including number four in Hamas, number three in Hamas. We’ll get number two and number one. That’s victory. Victory is within reach. It’s a few weeks away.”

Hosting the congressional delegation, which the Prime Minister’s Office said was organized by the pro-Israel lobbying group American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), in Jerusalem, Netanyahu said it was “very important to maintain bipartisan support” but “especially in these trying times.”

Netanyahu said that Israel “had no choice” but to move into Rafah as the country’s “very existence is on the line.”

The prime minister said that since the October 7 Hamas attack, Israel had enjoyed a “remarkable alignment” with the Biden administration but had fundamentally different views on an Israeli move into Rafah.

Israel has faced criticism internationally ahead of its planned offensive on the southern Gaza city, in which more than one million people are currently sheltering.

Netanyahu had earlier told the delegation that displaced Palestinians in Gaza could “just move” out of Rafah and “move with their tents.”

“There’s all of the Gaza Strip north of Rafah,” Netanyahu said. “People move down, they can move up,” the prime minister added.

Disagreements over the impending invasion of Rafah and the worsening humanitarian disaster in Gaza have driven relations between Netanyahu and US President Joe Biden to a low.

Earlier this week, Netanyahu cancelled a planned government delegation to Washington in protest of a US abstention from a UN Security Council vote, which had allowed a resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza to pass.

The resolution, proposed by the 10 non-permanent members of the Security Council, demanded an immediate ceasefire for the month of Ramadan, the immediate and unconditional release of hostages and “the urgent need to expand the flow” of aid into Gaza.

US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and Secretary of State Antony Blinken all told Gallant that Israel needs to find an “alternative” option to a major assault on Rafah, which would endanger civilians and exacerbate the suffering there.

The White House said Wednesday that Netanyahu had agreed to reschedule the planned visit by the Israeli delegation to Washington to discuss the possible Rafah operation.