Dozens of people have been arrested after protesters clashed with police at a major defense expo in Australia on Wednesday, which saw some demonstrators set fire to bins and target police horses and officers respond with pepper spray, according to local media.

Police officers struggled to control the crowd of around 1,200 people who tried to block attendees from entering the Land Forces international exposition in downtown Melbourne.

The three-day event brings defense experts from around the world and showcases military equipment, heavy-duty trucks, semi-automatic guns and other weapons.

The protests come at a time when heightened tensions sparked by global conflicts have deepened public anger in many countries towards the arms industry and its profits.

Victoria Police said 33 people have been arrested for offenses including assault, arson, blocking roadways, and assault of a police officer.

Some of the protesters threw horse manure, rocks, and fruit at police, according to Victoria Police and media reports.

The organization behind the protests, Disrupt Land Forces, said in an open letter they “unequivocally oppose the glorification of death, destruction, and genocide being carried out with weapons developed on this continent and showcased at Land Forces.”

The group called for an end to funding “states engaged in genocide and militarized repression,” including Israel.

More than 40,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since Israel launched its war on Hamas, according to the health ministry in the enclave. The Israeli government has vowed to wipe out Hamas following the group’s attacks on October 7, in which 1,200 Israelis were killed and 250 taken hostage, according to Israeli authorities.

Attendees targeted

Protesters heckled attendees making their way into the expo Wednesday, 9 News reported.

“We have seen many delegates coming through and we want to make it uncomfortable for these (people) to go inside and make million-dollar contracts and buy more weapons or sell weapons that are going to be used to commit genocide in Palestine and other places in the world,” protester Natalie Farah told 9 News.

Israel’s offensive in Gaza is being investigated by the International Court of Justice, in a case lodged by South Africa which accused Israel of genocide against Palestinian people. Israel has denied that characterization as “grossly distorted.”

Jacinta Allan, Victoria state premier, strongly criticized any protesters making threats or using violence against police officers.

“They’re doing their job supporting community safety,” Allan told Australian public broadcaster, the ABC.

“They deserve to be treated absolutely with respect by people who are attending this protest.”

About 1,000 firms from 31 countries are expected to attend the expo, according to the event’s website.

The disruption has caused traffic chaos across downtown Melbourne. Police have closed several major roads and urged motorists to avoid parts of the city, Reuters reported.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said people had the right to protest but had to do so peacefully.

Speaking to ABC Radio National from Melbourne before the conference started on Wednesday, Bec Shrimpton, director of defense strategy and national security at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute said “it’s very unfair to tarnish everybody with a genocide brush.”

“The world is not as we would all like it to be and it is not a peaceful and stable place at the moment. Things like this event are actually really, really important to help with the defense of our nation and our national interests,” Shrimpton said.

But some local politicians have voiced support for the protesters.

Gabrielle de Vietri, a member of the Victorian Greens who sits in the state parliament, said the state government “is turning our city into a display of war machines, spending millions to protect the profits of genocide.”

“We pleaded for them to cancel Land Forces, but they didn’t listen. Disruption is all we have left,” de Vietri wrote on X.

The Victorian Greens have called for an independent inquiry into Victoria Police’s use of force at the protests, according to a post by the leader to X.

Lurking in the bushes near Pokrovsk in eastern Ukraine is a unit of men who have two things in common: The short amount of time they have served defending their nation and time spent behind bars.

The 15 infantry men of the 59th Brigade, part of the Shkval – or wind gust – battalion are former prisoners. Convicted of a variety of crimes, they see their service in defense of Ukraine as redemption and a chance at a new life without a criminal record.

The catch for prisoners is that they are contracted to the military until the end of the war. There is also a considerable financial incentive: Wages range from $500 to $4,000 per month, depending on time spent on the front line, according to the Ukrainian defense ministry.

Among the recruits is Vitaly, 41, a recovered addict and a father-of-five. He asked to be identified by first name only for security reasons.

Perched on a tree stump, Vitaly mumbles: “My life was crazy. I grew up with bandits, as did all of our guys (in the unit).”

But by joining the ranks of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, he saw an opportunity.

“I need to turn the page of my life. My life was a mess. It’s better to be useful here, to be around brothers … and a completely different social circle,” he said.

He’s been in the trenches for three months following a short, 21-day training period. Vitaly has no regrets about his choice to join the army, but he said he was naive about what to expect.

“Life is hard here, it’s fun … but I didn’t think it would be this hard,” he said.

Life as an infantry soldier is particularly dangerous with casualties higher than other members of the military. Infantry soldiers are often exposed to Russian drone attacks and storming trenches as they traverse large expanses of land by foot.

Vitaly recalls a particularly brutal drone attack on a comrade.

“He was taken apart. It is so hard to watch… but what can you do? You can’t help. You need to leave them behind because half of the man is already gone,” he said.

In June, the defense ministry launched an initiative that gives prisoners the chance to serve in the army, in exchange for freedom after the war.

With life on the front line more challenging than many expected, Vitaly now wishes that he’d paid closer attention during his short training. He thinks it may have better prepared him for what was to come.

“We were stupid and didn’t take it seriously. We were not responsible; it was a mistake not to listen or pay attention,” he said.

Keeping the peace

Ensuring there is no disruption to the peace in the unit is Oleksandr, the company commander.

Vitaly’s company commander Oleksandr is no stranger to convicts. He left his position as a prison guard in February 2022, when the war began. Now, despite his protestations, he is back in his old job – but this time, on the battlefield.

“They see me as a former prison guard, as a brother-in-arms, as a commander, everyone here lives as one family,” Oleksandr, who also asked to be identified only by his first name, said of the soldiers, adding, “I am a psychologist, father, mother, everything.”

Along with the 15 prisoners already in his unit, he’s expecting a further 25 from the prison where he used to work.

Oleksandr said that many convicts, like Vitaly, signed up with the aim of reforming themselves.

“Many of them have families in front of whom they were ashamed of what they did. They have children who are told that their father is a convict. When he joins the armed forces, he is no longer a convict – but a hero,” Oleksandr said.

Still, morale may be Ukraine’s only hope in Pokrovsk as Russian forces zero in on the town.

At sundown in the town, the streets empty and the artillery barrages begin.

Russian forces are only 8 kilometers (5 miles) away, according to a map dated September 10 from DeepState, a group that monitors the progress of Russian forces in Ukraine that has links to Ukraine’s security services.

Pokrovsk is a vital supply town for eastern Ukrainian forces fighting back the tides of Russian soldiers. Its capture would be a coup for Putin as he looks to take control of the entire region of Donetsk. It could result in a withdrawal of Ukrainian forces from Chasiv Yar and the line of contact moving closer to the much larger cities of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk.

Oleksandr is aware of the unenviable task of holding the Russians at bay, but thinks his troops have a skill that others don’t.

“The convict sub-culture is used to surviving. This means physical endurance, moral endurance, plus cunning, logical thinking, much higher than those of ordinary civilians.”

The last captive orca in all of Latin America cuts a lonely figure.

“Kshamenk” has lived in the Mundo Marino oceanarium in the Argentine city of San Clemente del Tuyú since 1992 – the majority of that time, following the death of his female companion in 2000, as the lone representative of his species.

But in recent weeks, Kshamenk has amassed something of a following. One far beyond what might usually be expected at his oceanarium some 320 kilometers (200 miles) from Buenos Aires.

A campaign by the Canadian activist group UrgentSeas – which has been working to secure Kshamenk’s release – is building steam thanks to a series of clips on social media that allegedly show the orca in his tank, barely moving.

One of the group’s latest posts shows a timelapse video of what it says is a bird’s eye view of Mundo Marino in August and has the hashtag “FreeKshamenk.” It has already amassed more than 184,000 responses on TikTok.

Mundo Marino claims the images posted by UrgentSeas “have been maliciously manipulated as part of a disinformation campaign to suggest that Kshamenk is inactive and to make a negative diagnosis about his health, without any objective veterinary indicators.”

UrgentSeas insists its “videos are not edited or deceptive. They’re a real time look at Kshamenk’s cruel captivity without the music and spectacle of the show.”

Activists say the videos simply draw attention to the negative side of keeping these apex predators in captivity – a practice that not only in Latin America, but across the world has gone out of fashion in recent decades as the public’s awareness of animal rights issues has grown.

Globally, according to the International Marine Mammal Project, as of January 2024 there were just 54 orcas remaining in captivity out of the 166 that have been taken from the wild since 1961.

In Kshamenk’s case, controversy over his captivity has been brewing ever since he arrived at the oceanarium more than three decades ago.

According to Mundo Marino, “Kshamenk was rescued in November 1992 after stranding with a group of orcas.”

But animal rights activists have long questioned that account, alleging that he was deliberately captured to be used in its orca show and have launched legal action against Mundo Marino.

“They went out to look for a male orca for Belén, who was the female they had. What they wanted was reproduction to have more orcas and to have an orca show. That is the plain truth,” said María Rosa Golía, from the NGO Marine Animal Rights.

Last October several activist groups, including Marine Animal Rights, filed an injunction in court aimed at stopping the orca shows and forcing Mundo Marino to return Kshamenk to the wild.

Mundo Marino insists it is acting in Kshamenk’s best interests and that Kshamenk’s remaining years are best spent in captivity. It says that after the orca’s rehabilitation it received expert advice that reintroducing him to the wild would put his life at risk.

But some activists are skeptical about that claim and argue that, whatever the truth about his capture, three decades is too long for an animal of Kshamenk’s size – according to Mundo Marino, he is 19 foot long and weighs 4 tons – to be kept in captivity.

“Kshamenk has been locked up in that oceanarium, entertaining people (ever since his capture),” said animal rights lawyer Mauricio Trigo. “And since the year 2000, he has not seen another orca,” added activist Dalila Lewis.

Other activists point out that, while Kshamenk has spent most of his 35 years of life so far in captivity, he has the potential to live many more if given the right environment. Orcas can live up to 90 years, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

An Israeli official has floated the possibility of offering Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar safe passage out of Gaza, once all remaining hostages held in the Palestinian territory are released.

Hirsch said those conditions, along with Gaza being “demilitarized and deradicalized,” could help recover Gaza and end the war.

On Tuesday, Hirsch elaborated on the idea in an interview with Bloomberg, saying Israel has already proposed safe passage to Sinwar.

“I’m ready to provide safe passage to Sinwar, his family, whoever wants to join him,” he told Bloomberg. “We want the hostages back. We want demilitarization, de-radicalization of course — a new system that will manage Gaza.”

He told Bloomberg that the offer of safe passage was put on the table a day and a half ago, but did not say what the response was. Israel would be open to releasing prisoners it holds as part of any deal, he told Bloomberg.

Sinwar, one of Hamas’ most powerful figures, is accused by Israel of being the key architect of the October 7 massacre in Israel, when militants killed 1,200 people in Israel and took more than 250 people hostages. He is also among the Hamas leaders charged by US prosecutors over the deadly attack.

Hamas announced Sinwar as the head of its political bureau last month, days after former political bureau head and top negotiator Ismail Haniyeh was assassinated in Tehran.

He is believed to remain at large in the vast warren of tunnels trenched beneath Gaza, moving frequently and possibly surrounded by hostages as human shields, US officials believe. He has not been seen in public since October 7.

A senior Hezbollah commander has been killed in an Israeli airstrike in Lebanon.

Mohammed Qassem Al-Shaer, a commander of Hezbollah’s elite Radwan Force, was killed in a strike on the village of Qaraoun in the western Beqaa Valley on Tuesday, according to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).

The IDF said Al-Shaer had “advanced numerous terrorist activities against the state of Israel” and his “elimination” would impair the Iran-backed militant group’s ability to launch attacks against Israel from southern Lebanon.

Hezbollah confirmed Al-Shaer had been killed and said it responded to his killing by launching “dozens” of Katyusha rockets and several drones toward two locations in northern Israel.

The IDF said those attacks caused no casualties, with some of the “projectiles” being intercepted and others falling in an open area.

The Israeli military added that it had responded by striking Hezbollah launchers “in the areas of Mansouri and At Tiri,” which had been used in the attacks.

Earlier Tuesday, the Israeli Air Force said it had struck a Hezbollah military structure in the village of Rachaf in the Nabatieh governorate of southern Lebanon.

Lebanon’s Public Health Emergency Operations Center said the strike on Rachaf wounded 12 people.

There have been almost daily exchanges of fire across the Israel-Lebanon border since war broke out between Israel and Hamas in Gaza on October 7.

The former partner of Ugandan athlete Rebecca Cheptegei, who is accused of killing her by dousing her in petrol and setting her on fire, has died from burns sustained during the attack, the Kenyan hospital where he was being treated said on Tuesday.

Cheptegei, 33, who competed in the marathon at the Paris Olympics, suffered burns to more than 75% of her body in the Sept. 1 attack and died four days later.

Her former boyfriend, Dickson Ndiema Marangach, died at 7.50 p.m. (12.50 p.m. ET) on Monday, said Daniel Lang’at, a spokesperson at Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital in Eldoret in western Kenya, where Cheptegei was also treated and died.

“He died from his injuries, the burns he sustained,” Lang’at told Reuters. Local media reported that he had suffered 30% burns when he assaulted Cheptegei as she was returning home from church with her children.

Cheptegei, who finished 44th in Paris, is the third elite sportswoman to be killed in Kenya since October 2021. Her death has put the spotlight on domestic violence in the East African country, particularly within its running community.

Rights groups say female athletes in Kenya, where many international runners train in the high-altitude highlands, are at a high risk of exploitation and violence at the hands of men drawn to their prize money, which far exceeds local incomes.

“Justice really would have been for him to sit in jail and think about what he had done. This is not positive news whatsoever,” said Viola Cheptoo, co-founder of Tirop’s Angels, a support group for survivors of domestic violence in Kenya’s athletic community.

“The shock of Rebecca’s death is still fresh,” Cheptoo told Reuters.

Cheptoo co-founded Tirop’s Angels in memory of Agnes Tirop, a rising star in Kenya’s highly competitive athletics scene, who was found dead in her home in the town of Iten in October 2021, with multiple stab wounds to the neck.

Ibrahim Rotich, Tirop’s husband, was charged with her murder and has pleaded not guilty. The case is ongoing.

Nearly 34% of Kenyan girls and women aged 15-49 years have suffered physical violence, according to government data from 2022, with married women at particular risk. The 2022 survey found that 41% of married women had faced violence.

Globally, a woman is killed by someone in her own family every 11 minutes, according to a 2023 UN Women study.

Ukraine struck the Moscow region on Tuesday in its biggest drone attack so far on the Russian capital, killing at least one woman, wrecking dozens of homes and forcing around 50 flights to be diverted from airports around Moscow.

Russia, the world’s biggest nuclear power, said it destroyed at least 20 Ukrainian attack drones as they swarmed over the Moscow region, which has a population of more than 21 million, and 124 more over eight other regions.

At least one person was killed near Moscow, Russian authorities said. Three of Moscow’s four airports were closed for more than six hours and almost 50 flights were diverted.

Kyiv said Russia, which sent tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine in February 2022, had attacked it overnight with 46 drones, of which 38 were destroyed.

The drone attacks on Russia damaged at high-rise apartment buildings in the Ramenskoye district of the Moscow region, setting flats on fire, residents told Reuters.

A 46-year-old woman was killed and three people were wounded in Ramenskoye, Moscow regional governor Andrei Vorobyov said.

Residents said they awoke to blasts and fire.

“I looked at the window and saw a ball of fire,” Alexander Li, a resident of the district told Reuters. “The window got blown out by the shockwave.”

Georgy, a resident who declined to give his surname, said he heard a drone buzzing outside his building in the early hours.

“I drew back the curtain and it hit the building right before my eyes, I saw it all,” he said. “I took my family and we ran outside.”

The Ramenskoye district, some 50 km (31 miles) southeast of the Kremlin, has a population of around quarter a million of people, according to official data.

More than 70 drones were also downed over Russia’s Bryansk region and tens more over other regions, Russia’s defense ministry said. There was no damage or casualties reported there.

Drone war

As Russia advances in eastern Ukraine, Kyiv has taken the war to Russia with a cross-border attack in Russia’s western Kursk region that began on Aug. 6 and by carrying out increasingly large drone attacks deep into Russian territory.

The war has largely been a grinding artillery and drone war along the 1,000 km (620 mile) heavily fortified front line in southern and eastern Ukraine involving hundreds of thousands of soldiers.

Moscow and Kyiv have both sought to buy and develop new drones, deploy them in innovative ways, and seek new ways to destroy them – from shotguns to advanced electronic jamming systems.

Both sides have turned cheap commercial drones into deadly weapons while ramping up their own production and assembly to attack targets including tanks, energy infrastructure such as refineries and airfields.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has sought to insulate Moscow from the grinding rigors of the war, says the Ukrainian drone attacks are “terrorism” as they target civilian infrastructure – and has vowed a response.

Moscow and other big Russian cities have largely been insulated from the war.

Russia has hit Ukraine with thousands of missiles and drones in the last two-and-a-half years, killing thousands of civilians, wrecking much of the country’s energy system and damaging commercial and residential properties across the country.

Ukraine says it has a right to strike back deep into Russia, though Kyiv’s Western backers have said they do not want a direct confrontation between Russia and the U.S.-led NATO military alliance.

There was no immediate comment from Ukraine about Tuesday’s attacks. Both sides deny targeting civilians.

Tuesday’s attack follow drone attacks Ukraine launched in early September targeting chiefly Russia’s energy and power facilities.

Authorities of the Tula region, which neighbors the Moscow region to its north, said drone wreckage fell onto a fuel and energy facility but the “technological process” of the facility was not affected.

A Singaporean man has been ordered to repay more than 38 million Australian dollars ($25.7 million) after he lost big during a gambling spree at an Australian casino over the span of a few days.

Queensland’s Supreme Court ruled Monday that Yew Choy Wong owed that amount to the Star Gold Coast, as well as the casino’s legal fees and interest. He had racked up losses of 47.3 million Australian dollars ($31.5 million) there between July 26 and August 2, 2018.

Wong fled the country without settling his bill, according to court documents. The casino tried to recoup its losses using a blank check Wong had given its sister property, the Star Sydney, a year prior, but that check bounced after Wong told his bank not to pay out any checks from the Star, the ruling said.

The casino then tried to recover the debt in 2019 by suing Wong in Singapore, but that case was dismissed a year later because Singaporean law largely prohibits the recovery of gambling debts.

According to court documents from that case, Wong frequently played the card game baccarat at the Star’s casinos, during which he and his “entourage of some 28 people” were flown to Queensland by the casino and housed in its private salons.

In the more recent case, Wong argued he did not owe the Star any money because he had complained about the way the casino’s dealers had dealt cards to him, after which he stopped gambling.

Wong said he resumed gambling after the Star’s chief operating officer, Paul Arbuckle, verbally agreed that Wong would not have to pay for losses he had already incurred and that the casino would waive any further losses, if the dealers repeated their alleged mistakes.

Arbuckle denied making this agreement, according to the ruling.

Star Entertainment, which owns the Gold Coast casino, declined to comment on the case.

In a letter presented to the court, which was addressed to Wong and signed by Arbuckle, the COO apologized for “difficulties” Wong experienced during his visit, but noted the mistakes would have had no direct financial impact on Wong. The letter did not mention waiving Wong’s debt.

The casino also paid Wong hundreds of thousands of dollars in goodwill payments following his complaints, the ruling said.

Justice Melanie Hindman said: “The alleged agreement pleaded by Dr Wong is not evidenced by the letter of apology or otherwise supported by any other evidence adduced in the trial.”

American and Chinese military commanders spoke in a long-anticipated call Tuesday as the two powers seek to manage their intensifying rivalry in a contentious Asia-Pacific region – and repair lines of military communication severed more than two years ago.

US Indo-Pacific Command Adm. Samuel Paparo and Gen. Wu Yanan, commander of the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) Southern Theater Command spoke via video conference, according to statements from both sides.

The call marks a step forward in what has been a gradual restoration of high-level US-China military communications in recent months as the two sides navigate a host of regional tensions, including over Beijing’s aggressions in the South China Sea and toward Taiwan.

Beijing severed high-level military-to-military communication with the US in August 2022 following visit by then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan, the self-ruling democratic island that China’s ruling Communist Party claims as its own.

China and the US agreed to hold the commander-level call “in the near future” during a visit from White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan to Beijing late last month.

In Tuesday’s call, Paparo underscored that having sustained lines of communication between senior military leaders serves “to clarify intent and reduce the risk of misperception or miscalculation,” according to a White House readout.

He also cited “several recent PLA unsafe interactions with US allies,” and called on the PLA to “comply with international laws and norms to ensure operational safety.”

“Paparo also urged the PLA to reconsider its use of dangerous, coercive, and potentially escalatory tactics in the South China Sea and beyond,” said the readout, which characterized the talks as a “constructive and respectful exchange of views.”

A readout published by Chinese state media Tuesday morning confirmed the talks and simply said the “two sides exchanged in-depth views on issues of common concern.”

The resumption of the commander-level talks comes amid especially heightened tensions in the South China Sea, where Chinese and Philippine ships have been engaged in a series of increasingly violent, but so-far non-lethal confrontations in recent months.

Beijing claims the sea almost in its entirety despite a major international ruling to the contrary, and the US has in recent months reiterated Washington’s “ironclad commitment” to defend its treaty ally, the Philippines.

Analysts have long warned that a miscalculation in the South China Sea could quickly spiral into a damaging regional conflict between the world’s two largest economies and that a lack of communication could compound those risks.

The talks also play out amid a range of frictions between Washington and Beijing, including over China’s close ties to Russia and what the US says is its support for Moscow’s defense industrial base, as well as Beijing’s concerns that the US is tightening ties with its regional allies to contain China.

Tuesday’s call marks a rare point of contact between top military officials leading American troops in the Indo-Pacific and Chinese strategy in the Southern and Eastern theater respectively.

It comes within a broader, gradual resumption of high-level military communication following a meeting between US President Joe Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping in November.

Top US and Chinese generals spoke in December after more than a year of silence, and US and Chinese defense chiefs held rare talks on the sidelines of a defense gathering in Singapore in May.

But the Biden administration had for months pushed to move direct discussions between the two global powers beyond the government brass to uniformed officers making decisions in the region.

Many are feared killed and wounded after Israeli forces struck a humanitarian zone created to shelter displaced people in southern Gaza, in what Israel said was an attack on Hamas terrorists in the area.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said Monday evening that it “struck significant Hamas terrorists who were operating within a command and control center embedded inside the humanitarian area” in Khan Younis, Gaza.

The strike was carried out with the direction of the Israel Security Agency and the Israeli Air Force, and steps were taken to mitigate civilian harm, it also said in a statement.

“Prior to the strike, numerous steps were taken to mitigate the risk of harming civilians, including the use of precise munitions, aerial surveillance, and additional means,” it also said.

According to Gaza’s Civil Defense spokesman Mahmoud Bassal, civil defense and medical teams are working “to control the situation” following the strike.

The IDF has accused Hamas and other militant groups in the Gaza Strip of continuing to “systematically abuse civilian and humanitarian infrastructure, including the designated Humanitarian Area, to carry out terrorist activity against the State of Israel and IDF troops.”

This is a developing story and will be updated.