Early voting in the Australian election began on Tuesday, with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s centre-left Labor party holding a slim lead over the conservative opposition coalition.

Russian President Vladimir Putin proposed on Monday bilateral talks with Ukraine for the first time since the early days of the war, and his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Kyiv was eager to discuss a halt to attacks on civilian targets.

Japanese investment bank Nomura will acquire Macquarie Group’spublic asset management operations in the United States and Europe for A$2.8 billion ($1.8 billion), the companies said on Tuesday.

Members of the 1.4 billion-member global Catholic community expressed grief on Monday at the death of Pope Francis aged 88, many praising him as a humble man who stood up for the marginalised.

U.S. trade officials finalized steep tariff levels on most solar cells from Southeast Asia, a key step toward wrapping up a year-old trade case in which American manufacturers accused Chinese companies of flooding the market with unfairly cheap goods.

U.S. Vice President JD Vance and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi touted progress in talks for a trade deal between the two countries, their offices said on Monday, as New Delhi rushes to avoid U.S. tariffs and court Trump’s administration.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, ahead in polls in the run-up to an April 28 election, renewed calls on Monday for voters to give him a strong mandate to deal with U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariff threat.

The Palestinian Red Crescent called on Monday for a “serious investigation” into the killing of 15 aid workers in Gaza last month, a day after the Israeli military admitted “professional failures” and disciplined two officers over the incident.

U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth shared details of a March attack on Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthis in a message group that included his wife, brother and personal lawyer, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters on Sunday.

Russia and Ukraine accused each other of thousands of attacks that violated the one-day Easter ceasefire declared by President Vladimir Putin, with the Kremlin saying there was no order to extend the pause in frontline fighting.

A nine-year-old boy has died after being caught between rocks on the NSW Mid North Coast, taking the number of deaths at sea over the Easter long weekend to seven.

President Vladimir Putin and Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin joined other worshippers for an Easter service led by the head of Russia’s Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, a faithful backer of the Russian leader and an advocate for the war in Ukraine.