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After they were forcibly displaced multiple times during Israel’s war on Gaza, the Sobh family has taken refuge in a coastal camp west of Gaza City.

Street vendor Fadi Sobh, 30, describes his tent as “unbearably hot during summer”. His 29-year-old wife, Abeer, collects seawater because clean water is in short supply.

The children bathe in turns, standing in a metal basin as their mother pours saltwater over them. Nine-month-old Hala cries when the salt irritates her eyes, while her siblings bear the discomfort without complaint.

Abeer feeds Hala water from a baby bottle. On good days, she has lentils to grind into powder and mix with the water. “One day feels like one hundred days, because of the summer heat, hunger and the distress,” she says.

Fadi travels to a nearby soup kitchen, sometimes with one of his children. “But food is rarely available there,” he said.

The kitchen operates roughly once a week, never meeting demand. Often, he waits an entire day only to return home with nothing “and the kids sleep hungry, without eating”.

Abeer sometimes goes to aid trucks near the Zikim crossing alone or with Youssef, one of her children. The crowds are mostly men – stronger and faster than she is. “Sometimes I manage to get food, and in many cases, I return empty-handed,” she said.

When unsuccessful, she begs those who secured supplies. “You survived death thanks to God, please give me anything,” she pleads. Many respond kindly, offering her a small bag of flour to bake for the children.

During the hottest hours of the day, the six children stay in or near the tent. Their parents encourage them to sleep through the heat, preventing them from using energy and becoming hungry and thirsty.

As temperatures drop, the children go outside. Some days, Abeer sends them to ask the neighbours for food. Other times, they search through Gaza’s ruined streets, sifting through rubble and rubbish for anything to fuel their makeshift stove.

After spending the day seeking life’s essentials – food, water, and cooking fuel – the family occasionally gathers enough for Abeer to prepare a meal, usually a thin lentil soup. More often, they have nothing and go to bed hungry.

Abeer says she is growing weaker, frequently feeling dizzy while searching for food. “I am tired. I am no longer able,” she said. “If the war goes on, I am thinking of taking my life. I no longer have any strength or power.”

Less than a day after city workers painted the 2nd Street Tunnel, long an L.A. graffiti haven, taggers covered the walls of the iconic tunnel again, according to an Instagram post.

Video footage posted by user @grafftv appeared to show people spray-painting new graffiti on top of blank walls as motorists drove by.

“Less than 24 hours after the 2nd Street tunnel in downtown Los Angeles was painted a sterile white for the first time in over six months, the city’s graffiti underground roared back to life,” the user posted. “What had been a clean slate at noon became by midnight a living gallery of street expression, filled with burners, rollers, and painted signatures from L.A.’s most well known vandals.”

City officials did not immediately respond to an inquiry about whether or when they would repaint the walls of the tunnel, which was finished in 1924 and runs from South Figueroa Street to Hill Street.

The 1,500-foot white-tiled tunnel is an L.A. landmark, featured in Hollywood movies such as the sci-fi epic “Blade Runner” and the biographical drama “The Soloist.” It is also a popular location for car commercials, with more than 70 shot there between 2006 and 2009.

Hundreds of residents gathered at a beach in Yokosuka city’s Kurihama area, south of Tokyo, over the weekend to pray for marine safety in a summer festival that fuses sacred ritual and seaside spectacle.

As a portable shrine called mikoshi, decorated with Shinto ornaments, was lifted onto bearers’ shoulders, the audience cheered.

The mikoshi had started from Sumiyoshi Shrine and was paraded through neighbourhood alleyways. Shrine priests paused to bless offerings and pray for good fortune for people gathered outside their homes.

When the procession reached the beach, the priests danced and chanted. The festival reached its climax when the bearers entered the water up to their necks, their sweaty faces splashed with seawater.

The procession made a final stop at the nearby ferry terminal, where the mikoshi was carried onto a vessel for prayers for its safe travels.

“Everyone has been looking forward to this day all year,” said Shuji Shimizu, head of the Kurihama Neighbourhood Association. “It’s a celebration of our own strength and unity. Please stay safe out there … and enjoy every moment.”

As evening fell, the mikoshi was carried back to storage at the shrine, until next summer.

Huge fires around Bursa, Turkiye’s fourth-largest city, broke out over the weekend, leading to more than 3,500 people fleeing their homes. On Monday morning, fog-like smoke from fires and smouldering foliage hung over the city.

Unseasonably high temperatures, dry conditions, and strong winds have been fuelling the wildfires, with Turkiye and other parts of the eastern Mediterranean experiencing record-breaking heatwaves.

The death toll from wildfires outside the city of Bursa in northwest Turkiye rose to four late on Sunday after two volunteer firefighters died.

The pair died in hospital after they were pulled from a water tanker that rolled while heading to a forest fire, news agency IHA reported. Another worker died earlier at the scene of the accident, and a firefighter died on Sunday after suffering a heart attack.

Their deaths raised Turkiye’s wildfire death toll to 17 since late June, including 10 rescue volunteers and forestry workers killed on Wednesday in a fire in the northwestern city of Eskisehir.

The fires around Bursa were among hundreds to have hit the country over the past month. While firefighting teams have contained the damage to a limited number of homes, vast tracts of forest have been turned to ash.

Turkiye battled at least 44 separate fires on Sunday, said Forestry Minister Ibrahim Yumakli. He identified two fires in Bursa province, as well as blazes in Karabuk in the northwest, and Kahramanmaras in the south, as the most serious.

The government declared disaster areas in two western provinces, Izmir and Bilecik. Prosecutions have been launched against 97 people in 33 of Turkiye’s 81 provinces in relation to the fires, Justice Minister Yilmaz Tunc said.

The hunger that has been building among Gaza’s more than two million Palestinians has passed a tipping point and is accelerating deaths, aid workers and health staff say.

Not only Palestinian children – usually the most vulnerable – are falling victim to Israel’s blockade since March, but also adults.

The United Nations’ World Food Programme says nearly 100,000 women and children urgently need treatment for malnutrition, and almost a third of people in Gaza are “not eating for days”. Medical workers say they have run out of many key treatments and medicines.

The World Health Organization reports a sharp rise in malnutrition and disease, with a large proportion of Gaza’s residents now starving.

Doctors Without Borders, known by its French initials MSF, says a quarter of all young children and pregnant or breastfeeding women screened at its clinics in Gaza last week were malnourished, blaming Israel’s “deliberate use of starvation as a weapon”.

In Porciuncula, Brazil, small-scale coffee farmer Jose Natal da Silva is losing sleep – not just to protect his arabica crops from pests, but over fears raised by a new 50% United States tariff on Brazilian goods announced by President Donald Trump.

The tariff, widely seen as a political move in defence of far-right Trump ally ex-President Jair Bolsonaro, who faces trial for an alleged coup plot, could slash demand and prices for Brazilian coffee in its top export market.

Brazil is the world’s largest coffee exporter, sending 85 percent of its output abroad. The US buys 16 percent of that, making it Brazil’s biggest coffee customer. Experts warn the tariff will hurt competitiveness, especially for family farmers who produce two-thirds of Brazil’s coffee and have fewer resources to weather downturns or shift to new markets.

Last year’s climate change-driven drought already devastated crops. Now, falling arabica prices, down 33 percent since February, are compounding losses. “We struggle for years, and suddenly we might lose everything,” said da Silva, who grows 40,000 trees and other crops to survive.

Nearby in Varre-Sai, Paulo Menezes Freitas, another smallholder with 35,000 trees, fears he may be forced to abandon coffee farming. He says the tariff also affects essential imports like machinery and aluminium. “It feels like the ground is crumbling under us,” he said.

Despite the blow, Brazil’s coffee exporters remain cautiously optimistic. The Council of Coffee Exporters of Brazil (Cecafe)’s Marcio Ferreira believes US buyers can’t afford to stop importing Brazilian beans. But on the ground, small farmers fervently hope for a rollback before livelihoods vanish.

Desperate evacuees, huddled on plastic mats in a sports hall in Thailand, have described fleeing from thunderous artillery bombardments as heavy fighting has escalated between Thailand and Cambodia.

The worst fighting in more than a decade between the neighbouring countries has forced more than 100,000 people to evacuate from their homes across four Thai border provinces by Friday.

As artillery fire echoed on Thursday, thousands from northeastern Surin province abandoned their homes for makeshift shelters established in the town centre.

Nearly 3,000 people crowded the sports hall of Surindra Rajabhat University, packed onto rows of plastic mats covered with colourful blankets and hastily gathered possessions.

“I’m worried about our home, our animals, and the crops we’ve worked so hard on,” Thidarat Homhuan, 37, told the AFP news agency.

She evacuated with nine family members, including her 87-year-old grandmother who had just been released from hospital.

“That concern is still there. But being here does feel safer, since we’re further from the danger zone now. At least we’re safe,” she said.

Thidarat was babysitting at a local school when she heard what she described as “something like machinegun fire”, followed by heavy artillery thuds.

“It was chaos. The kids were terrified. I rushed to the school’s bunker,” she said.

Inside the shelter, evacuees slept alongside one another beneath the gym’s high ceiling, surrounded by electric fans humming and the quiet whispers of uncertainty.

Elderly residents lay wrapped in blankets, infants slept in cradles, while children played quietly. Pet cats rested in mesh crates near the public restroom.

This marks the first full activation of the university as a shelter, according to Chai Samoraphum, director of the university president’s office.

Classes were immediately cancelled, and within an hour, the campus transformed into a functioning evacuation centre.

Evacuees from four border districts were distributed across six locations throughout the campus.

“Most of them left in a hurry. Some have chronic health conditions but didn’t bring their medications, others only managed to grab a few belongings,” Chai told AFP.

The centre, with assistance from the provincial hospital, is providing care for those with chronic illnesses and offering mental health services for trauma victims, Chai explained.

The border fighting has killed at least 14 people in Thailand, including one soldier and civilians killed in a rocket strike near a Sisaket province petrol station, officials reported. One Cambodian has also been confirmed killed.

As fighting continues near the border, evacuees face uncertainty about when they can return home.

For now, the shelter provides safety and a place to await signals that it’s safe to “go back to normal life”, Thidarat said.

She already has a message for the authorities: “I want the government to take decisive action – do not wait until lives are lost.

“Civilians look up to the government for protection, and we rely on them deeply,” she said.

Across the border in Cambodia, about 20,000 residents have evacuated from the country’s northern border with Thailand, the Khmer Times news organisation said, quoting officials in Cambodia’s Preah Vihear province.

When John Warmington first began diving the reefs outside his home in Vanuatu’s Havannah Harbour 10 years ago, the coral rose like a sunken forest – tall stands of staghorns branched into yellow antlers, plate corals layered like canopies, and clouds of darting fish wove through the labyrinth.

“We used to know every inch of that reef,” he said. “It was like a friend.”

Now, it is unrecognisable.

After Cyclone Pam battered the reef in 2015, sediment from inland rivers smothered the coral beds. Crown-of-thorns starfish swept in and devoured the recovering polyps.

Back-to-back cyclones in 2023 crushed what remained. Then, in December 2024, a magnitude 7.3 earthquake shook the seabed.

What remains is a coral graveyard – bleached rubble scattered across the seabed, habitats collapsed, and life vanished.

“We have come out of the water in tears,” said Warmington, who has logged thousands of dives on this single reef. “We just see heartbreak.”

That heartbreak is becoming more common across this Pacific island nation, where intensifying cyclones, rising seas, and saltwater intrusion are reshaping coastlines and threatening daily life.

Since 1993, sea levels around Vanuatu’s shores have risen by about 6mm (0.24in) per year – significantly faster than the global average – and in some areas, tectonic activity has doubled that rate.

On Wednesday, Vanuatu will have its day in the world’s highest court. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) will issue an advisory opinion on what legal obligations nations have to address climate change, and what consequences they may face if they do not.

The case, led by Vanuatu and backed by more than 130 countries, is seen as a potential turning point in international climate law.

The opinion will not be legally binding, but could help shape future efforts to hold major emitters accountable, and secure the funding and action small island nations need to adapt or survive.

It comes after decades of frustration for Pacific nations that have watched their homelands disappear.

In Tuvalu, where the average elevation is just two metres (6.6ft), more than a third of the population has applied for a climate migration visa to Australia.

By 2100, much of the country is projected to be under water at high tide.

In Nauru, the government has begun selling passports to wealthy foreigners – offering visa-free access to dozens of countries – in a bid to generate revenue for possible relocation efforts.

Vanuatu has already sought opinions from other international courts, and is pushing for the recognition of ecocide – the destruction of the environment – as a crime under the International Criminal Court.

Not all of these effects can be attributed solely to climate change, said Christina Shaw, chief executive of the Vanuatu Environmental Science Society.

Coastal development, tectonic subsidence, volcanic eruptions, deforestation, and pollution are also contributing to ecosystem decline.

“Vanuatu’s environment is quite fragile by its very nature in that it is young with narrow reefs, has small amounts of topsoil, and is impacted regularly by natural disasters,” she said. “But we do have to think about the other human impacts on our environment as well.”

The damage is not limited to homes, gardens, and reefs – it is reaching into places once thought to be untouchable.

On the island of Pele, village chief Amos Kalsont sits at his brother’s grave as waves lap against broken headstones half-buried in sand.

At high tide, both his brother’s and father’s graves sit just a few arm’s lengths from the sea. Some homes and gardens have already been moved inland, and saltwater intrusion has tainted the community’s primary drinking water source.

Now, the community is considering relocating the entire village – but that would mean leaving the land their grandparents cleared by hand.

Many in Vanuatu remain committed to building something stronger and hope the rest of the world will support them.

Back in Havannah Harbour, John Warmington still dives the reef he considers part of his family. While much of it has gone, he and his wife Sandy have begun replanting coral fragments in the hope of restoring what remains.

Sweat covers Isaac Barnes’s face under his beekeeper’s veil as he hauls boxes of honeycomb from his hives to his truck. It is a workout in what feels like a sauna as the late-morning temperatures rise.

Though Barnes was hot, his bees were even hotter. Their body temperatures can be up to 15 degrees Celsius (27 degrees Fahrenheit) higher than the air around them. As global temperatures rise, scientists are trying to better understand the effects on managed and wild bees as they pollinate crops, gather nectar, make honey, and reproduce.

They noticed flying bees gathering nectar avoided overheating on the hottest days by using fewer but harder wingbeats to keep their body temperature below dangerous levels, according to a study published last year. Scientists also say that bees, like people, may cope by retreating to a cooler environment such as the shade or their nest.

“Just like we go into the shade, sweat, or we might work less hard, bees actually do the exact same thing so they can avoid the heat,” said Jon Harrison, an environmental physiologist at Arizona State University and one of the study’s authors.

Generally, most bees are heat-tolerant, but as the climate warms, some experts think their ability to fend off disease and gather food might become more difficult. Habitat loss, increased use of pesticides, diseases, and lack of forage for both managed and wild bees are all listed as potential contributors to the global decline of bees and other pollinators.

Earlier this year, preliminary results from the annual US Beekeeping Survey found that beekeepers lost almost 56 percent of their managed colonies, the highest loss since the survey started in 2010.

Almost all of the managed honeybee colonies in the United States are used to pollinate crops such as almonds, apples, cherries, and blueberries. Fewer pollinators can lead to less pollination and potentially lower yields.

Back at Isaac Barnes’s hives in Ohio, thousands of honeybees fly around as he gathers boxes to take back to his farm for honey production. Nearby, a couple of his bees land on milkweed flowers, a rare bit of plant diversity in an area dominated by maize and soya bean fields.

For Barnes, who operates Honeyrun Farm with his wife, Jayne, one of the challenges heat can pose to his 500 honeybee hives is fending off parasitic mites that threaten the bees. If temperatures get too hot, he cannot apply formic acid, an organic chemical that kills the mites. If it is applied when it is too hot, the bees could die.

Last year, they lost nearly a third of the 400 hives they sent to California to help pollinate commercial almond groves. Barnes thinks those hives may have been in poor health before pollination because they were unable to ward off mites when it was hot months earlier.

It is only in the last decade that people have become aware of the magnitude of the pollinator decline globally, said Harrison, of Arizona State University. Data is limited on how much climate change and heat stress are contributing to pollinator decline.

The Trump administration’s proposed budget would eliminate the research programme that funds the US Geological Survey Bee Lab, which supports the inventory, monitoring and natural history of the nation’s wild bees. Other grants for bee research are also in jeopardy.

US Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon said his country’s pollinators are in “grave danger”, and he will fight for the federal funding. Pollinators contribute to the health of the planet, the crops we grow and the food we eat, he said.

“Rather than taking bold action to protect them, the Trump administration has proposed a reckless budget that would zero out funding for critical research aimed at saving important pollinators,” he said in a statement to The Associated Press news agency.

Harrison said his research on this topic would come to a halt if cuts are made to his federal funding, and it would generally be more difficult for scientists to study the disappearance of bees and other pollinators and improve how they prevent these losses. Not being able to manage these pollinator deaths could cause the price of fruits, vegetables, nuts, coffee and chocolate to rise or become scarce.

“Hopefully, even if such research is defunded in the US, such research will continue in Europe and China, preventing these extreme scenarios,” said Harrison.

Syria’s armed Bedouin clans have announced their withdrawal from the Druze-majority city of Suwayda after weeklong clashes and a United States-brokered ceasefire.

Fighting between Druze fighters and Sunni Muslim clans killed more than 250 people and threatened to unravel Syria’s already fragile post-war transition.

Israel also launched dozens of air strikes in the southern province of Suwayda, targeting government forces, who had in effect sided with the Bedouins.

The fighting also led to a series of sectarian attacks against the Druze community, followed by revenge attacks against the Bedouins.

Interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa, who has been perceived as more sympathetic to the Bedouins, tried to appeal to the Druze community while remaining critical of its fighters. He later urged the Bedouins to leave the city, saying they “cannot replace the role of the state in handling the country’s affairs and restoring security”.

Dozens of armed Bedouins alongside other clans from around the country who came to support them remained on the outskirts of Suwayda as government security forces and military police were deployed on Sunday to oversee their exit from the entire province. The Bedouin fighters blamed the clashes on Druze factions loyal to spiritual leader Sheikh Hikmat al-Hijri and accused them of harming Bedouin families.

The Syrian government on Monday began evacuating Bedouin families trapped inside Suwayda.

Syrian state media said on Sunday that the government had coordinated with some officials in Suwayda to bring in coaches to evacuate about 1,500 Bedouins from the city. Interior Minister Ahmad al-Dalati told the SANA news agency that the initiative would also allow displaced civilians from Suwayda to return because the fighting has largely stopped and efforts for a complete ceasefire are ongoing.

Syrian authorities did not give further details about the evacuation or how it ties into the broader agreement after failed talks for a captive exchange deal.

The Syrian government has announced that local leaders will take control of security in the southern city of Suwayda in an attempt to defuse violence that has killed hundreds of people and triggered Israeli military intervention.

Syrian forces had entered Suwayda, reportedly to oversee a ceasefire after deadly clashes between Druze fighters and local Bedouin tribes killed more than 350 people, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor.

Witnesses, however, reported that government forces had aligned with Bedouin groups in attacks against Druze fighters and civilians.

Israel carried out deadly strikes on Syria on Wednesday, including on its army headquarters in Damascus, saying they were aimed at defending Syria’s Druze minority. It threatened to intensify its attacks unless Syrian government forces withdrew from the south.

On Wednesday, Syria announced its army’s withdrawal from Suwayda while the United States – Israel’s close ally working to rebuild Syrian relations – confirmed an agreement to restore calm, urging all parties to honour their commitments.

Syrian interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa announced on Thursday in a televised address that security responsibility in Suwayda would transfer to religious elders and local factions “based on the supreme national interest”.

“We are eager to hold accountable those who transgressed and abused our Druze people because they are under the protection and responsibility of the state,” he said.

Before government intervention, Druze fighters largely maintained control of their areas.

Al-Sharaa emphasised to the Druze community that it is “a fundamental part of the fabric of this nation. … Protecting your rights and freedom is one of our priorities.”

Al-Sharaa blamed “outlaw groups” whose leaders “rejected dialogue for many months” of committing the recent “crimes against civilians”.

He claimed the deployment of forces from the Ministries of Defence and Interior had “succeeded in returning stability” despite Israel’s intervention, which included bombings in southern Syria and Damascus.

Israel, with its own Druze population, has positioned itself as a protector of the Syrian minority although analysts suggested this may justify its military objective of keeping Syrian forces away from their shared border.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio expressed concern about the Israeli bombings on Wednesday, stating, “We want it to stop.”

Rubio later announced on X that all parties had “agreed on specific steps that will bring this troubling and horrifying situation to an end”, adding that implementation was expected without detailing specifics.

Al-Sharaa praised US, Arab and Turkish mediation efforts for preventing further escalation.

“The Israeli entity resorted to a wide-scale targeting of civilian and government facilities,” he said, adding that it would have triggered “large-scale escalation, except for the effective intervention of American, Arab and Turkish mediation, which saved the region from an unknown fate”.

He did not specify which Arab nations participated in the mediation.

Turkiye strongly supports Syria’s new leaders, and Arab states, including Qatar and Saudi Arabia, have also demonstrated backing for the new government.

A 3,800-year-old citadel of the Caral civilisation – one of the world’s oldest – has reopened for visitors in Peru after eight years of comprehensive restoration and research.

Researchers have identified the Penico archaeological site as a vital trading centre that connected early Pacific coastal communities with those in the Andes and Amazon regions.

Located in the Supe Valley, about 180km (110 miles) north of Lima and only 19km (12 miles) from the Pacific Ocean, Penico was an unremarkable hilly landscape until excavations commenced in 2017.

Archaeologists believe the site could provide crucial information about the enigmatic collapse of the Caral civilisation, which flourished between 3,000 and 1,800 BC.

The opening ceremony featured regional artists playing pututus – traditional shell trumpets – as part of an ancient ritual honouring Pachamama, Mother Earth, with ceremonial offerings of agricultural products, coca leaves, and local beverages.

“Penico was an organised urban centre devoted to agriculture and trade between the coast, the mountains and the forest,” archaeologist Ruth Shady, who leads research at the site, told the AFP news agency. She said the settlement dates to between 1,800 and 1,500 BC.

The site demonstrates sophisticated planning, strategically built on a geological terrace 600 metres (2,000ft) above sea level and parallel to a river to avoid flooding.

Research by the Peruvian Ministry of Culture has uncovered 18 distinct structures, including public buildings and residential complexes. Scholars believe Penico was built during the same period as the earliest civilisations in the Middle East and Asia.

According to Shady, researchers hope the site will shed light on the crisis they believe hastened the Caral civilisation’s decline. This crisis, she explained, was linked to climate change that caused droughts and disrupted agricultural activities throughout the region.

“We want to understand how the Caral civilisation formed and developed over time, and how it came to be in crisis as a result of climate change,” she said.

France is celebrating Bastille Day with nationwide festivities commemorating the 1789 storming of the Bastille prison, a pivotal moment in the French Revolution.

In Paris, the celebration features 7,000 participants marching along the Champs-Elysees, including troops and armoured vehicles, followed by fighter jet flyovers and a spectacular drone light show at the Eiffel Tower.

The holiday showcases revolutionary spirit and military prowess. The parade beneath the Arc de Triomphe began with President Emmanuel Macron reviewing troops and relighting the eternal flame. Each uniform carries symbolic elements, particularly the distinctive French Foreign Legion contingent with their bearded troops wearing leather aprons and carrying axes.

In his Bastille Day speech, Macron highlighted growing global threats and announced increased military spending.

Indonesia’s President Prabowo Subianto was the guest of honour this year as 200 Indonesian drummers joined the parade. The visit is expected to yield agreements on French military equipment purchases, including Rafale jets. Finnish, Belgian, and Luxembourg troops also participated, reflecting the event’s increasingly international character.

Special guests included Fousseynou Samba Cisse, a French man who received a personal invitation from Macron after rescuing two babies from a burning apartment. The holiday period also featured prestigious awards, with this year’s Legion of Honour recipients including Gisele Pelicot, who became a symbol for sexual violence victims during a high-profile trial.

Beyond Paris, the holiday brings family gatherings, firefighters’ balls, and rural festivals throughout France.

Exercise Talisman Sabre, the largest ever war drills in Australia, is under way and expected to attract the attention of Chinese spy ships. Talisman Sabre began in 2005 as a biennial joint exercise between the United States and Australia.

This year, more than 35,000 military personnel from 19 nations, including Canada, Fiji, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, South Korea, Singapore, Thailand, Tonga, and the United Kingdom, will take part over three weeks, Australia’s Department of Defence said on Sunday.

Malaysia and Vietnam are also attending as observers.

The exercise will also take place in Papua New Guinea, Australia’s nearest neighbour. It is the first time Talisman Sabre activities have been held outside Australia.

Chinese surveillance ships have monitored naval exercises off the Australian coast during the last four Talisman Sabre exercises and were expected to surveil the current exercise, Defence Industry Minister Pat Conroy said.

“We will adjust accordingly. We will obviously observe their activities and monitor their presence around Australia, but we will also adjust how we conduct those exercises,” Conroy said.

The exercise, showcasing Australia’s defence alliance with the US, started a day after Prime Minister Anthony Albanese began a six-day visit to China, where he is expected to meet President Xi Jinping in Beijing on Tuesday.

Albanese said Chinese surveillance of Talisman Sabre would not be raised with Xi. “That would be nothing unusual. That has happened in the past and I will continue to assert Australia’s national interest, as I do,” Albanese told reporters in Shanghai on Monday.