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TRANSCRIPT
- An investigation launched into the death of two sailors in the Sydney to Hobart yacht race
- Tributes for former Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh
- In Tennis, Simona Halep withdraws from the Australian Open
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has paid his condolences to the family and crew of two sailors who have died in the Sydney to Hobart yacht race.
They are the first deaths in the race since 1998 when six men died during the stormy conditions.
New South Wales Police Marine Area Command says the sailors died in separate incidents after being hit by sail booms.
Cruising Yacht Club Australia Vice Commodore David Jacobs says the race will continue.
Eighty-eight yachts remain, after 16 retired.
Mr Jacobs says a full investigation is being launched into what happened.
“Until there is an investigation and we find out exactly what happened. It is difficult to know. The club will do an investigation. We always want to improve safety wherever we can. So we will do an investigation. And if there is something that boats can do to try and prevent this from happeninng, we will implement it.”
In Victoria, cooler weather conditions are helping firefighters working to contain the fire in the Grampians, following the worst bushfire conditions since 2019’s Black Summer.
The fire has burnt more 70,000 hectares of bushland over more than a week.
Seventeen warnings remain active across the state, with authorities warning residents to be on the lookout from the danger of fire spreading in unpredictable directions due to the wind change.
Daryl Lord is a resident of Moyston, near the Grampians mountain range.
He says he has prepared his property for the fire danger – and now it is a wait and see scenario to see how the fire behaves.
“The problem is that it is unpredictable where and when – and that’s the hard part. At the moment, we have got fire to our north. The northerly wind at the moment could bring that onto us. We’ve got fire out to the west, so a westerly could bring that.”
Finnish authorities have seized a ship carrying Russian oil in the Baltic Sea on suspicion it caused the outage of an undersea power cable connecting Finland and Estonia.
It also the ship damaged or broke four internet lines.
The Cook Islands-registered ship, named by authorities as the Eagle S, was boarded by a Finnish coast guard crew which took command and sailed the vessel to Finnish waters.
Finnish Police says the case is being investigated as “aggravated criminial mischief”.
Estonia’s Prime Minister, Kristen Michal, says the country’s energy supply is not in danger from the damaged cable.
He says the incident highlights the need for increased monitoring.
“Of course the way we see it as I described, what the government is thinking, then is that when it comes to critical infrastructure, then the countries around the Baltic Sea should be more active. What does it mean in practice? It is that our navy with our allies is going to be more active when it comes to the critical infrastructure, looking after both monitoring and deterrence perhaps more than they have been doing so far.”
Baltic Sea nations are on high alert for potential acts of sabotage following a string of outages of power cables, telecom links and gas pipelines since 2022.
One of India’s longest-serving prime ministers, in office for 10 years, Manmohan Singh has died.
India’s current Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, says the country mourns the loss of one of its most distinguished leaders.
Born in 1932 in the village of Gah in what is now Pakistan, Manmohan Singh studied economics to find a way to eradicate poverty in India.
He had never held elected office before taking on the nation’s top job.
Singh was taken to a hospital in New Delhi after he lost consciousness at his home on Boxing Day, but could not be resuscitated and was pronounced dead at 9:51 pm local time.
He is survived by his wife and three daughters.
In Tennis, two-time Grand Slam champion Simona Halep will delay the start to her 2025 season and skip the looming Australian Open due to pain in her knee and shoulder.
In a statement, she says suffered pain during an exhibition event in Abu Dhabi.
The former world No.1 received a wildcard for the Aussie Open qualifying tournament last week.
She had also been scheduled to play in the Auckland Classic.
