Cuba has restored ‌power to nearly half of the capital Havana, less than 24 hours after the national grid collapsed for the second time in a week, ‌amid a US oil blockade that has dealt a major blow to the island’s already ailing energy infrastructure.

The grid failed on Saturday evening after a major power ‌plant in Nuevitas, in eastern Cuba’s Camaguey province, went offline, The Cuban Electric Union (UNE) said, causing a cascade effect that knocked out power to the nation’s approximately 10 million people.

Nearly 500,000 homes and businesses in Havana – approximately 55 per cent of the total – as well as 43 hospitals, were back online by Sunday afternoon, UNE said.

The grid operator was also preparing to fire the country’s largest oil-fired power plant and expected it to be operating by day’s end, sharply boosting generation.

Life carried on as normal across most ‌of Havana despite the ongoing ‌blackouts, which have become ⁠a regular part of the daily routine in the capital even when the national grid is operational.

“We’re stuck ​in the same rut,” said Havana resident Leoni Alberto, who said he was forced to cook with firewood several times a week due to the outages.

“It’s absolute madness. There’s no other way around it.”

Outlying provinces also reported a gradual restoration of power, though a dramatic shortage of diesel fuel means only a portion of the grid’s capacity is available for generation, meaning many areas will continue to see lengthy blackouts despite restoration efforts, officials said.

Mobile phone service and internet remained spotty countrywide but had improved in many areas by ⁠afternoon.

Havana resident Yordanis Lopez, like many in the waterfront capital, was still waiting for ‌the lights to ​come back on at midday on Sunday. He said the outage had left him in the dark in more ways than one.

“When the power grid fails, social media ​networks go down ‌as well,” he said.

“You have no idea what is happening.”

Cuba’s electrical grid has been teetering on the edge of collapse and unreliable for ​months, with hours, and sometimes day-long blackouts the norm.

But Saturday’s grid failure marks the third major power outage this month, as a majority of the system went down on March 4 when a key thermoelectric generating plant stopped suddenly. The power grid also went completely offline on Monday for unexplained reasons.

Cuba ​has ​experienced a series of total outages in recent years, but two ​nationwide blackouts in the space of a week is exceptional.

US President Donald Trump began taking measures to block oil from reaching the Caribbean island after Washington deposed Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro on January 3. Venezuela had previously provided oil to its close ally on favourable terms.

Since then, Trump has cut ​off Venezuelan exports to Cuba and threatened other countries with punitive tariffs if they sell oil to the island.

The prime minister has been phoning his global counterparts to try and shore up Australia’s fuel stocks over the coming weeks and months, as the Middle East war sends shockwaves through global supply chains.

The government will bring together business leaders for a food security summit on Monday, as logistics companies warn petrol and diesel price hikes are putting their operations under increasing pressure.

Australia is heavily reliant on fuel imports, bringing much of it in from South Korea and Singapore, which in turn rely on oil from the Middle East.

Anthony Albanese was working the phones to ensure Australia’s imports were not forgotten in the global rush for oil, Assistant Foreign Minister Matt Thistlethwaite said.

“The prime minister’s negotiating with our Asian neighbours and counterparts to try and maximise the amount of fuel that is available in Australia,” he told Sky News on Monday morning.

Mr Thistlethwaite suggested Australia could leverage its natural gas exports to incentivise countries such as South Korea to continue sending fuel.

The International Energy Agency has suggested encouraging people to work from home in a bid to reduce demand for petrol, a move the government described as “sensible” on Sunday.

Energy Minister Chris Bowen also revealed six tankers bound for Australia had their journeys cancelled or postponed because of the war in the Middle East.

Fuel companies had increased their imports from the United States in response, Labor minister Mark Butler said on Monday.

“We’re seeing, as I understand it, an increase in shipments from the US that we haven’t seen for many, many years,” he told Nine’s Today program.

“I think the companies, but also the government, (are) working very hard to make sure that we can get supplies from wherever possible,” he said

Deputy Opposition Leader Jane Hume said stronger supply chains were the solution to the fuel crisis.

“The way to deal with the crisis we’re facing now is to address those distribution channels and to make sure that we have the supply chains in place to deliver fuel where it’s needed,” she told ABC TV.

“Without that, the economy simply runs to a stop.”

US singer Chappell Roan has responded to claims her security guard made the daughter of footballer Jorginho cry, saying the situation makes her feel “really sad” and she “did not deserve that”.

The Premier League footballer posted on Instagram on Saturday to criticise Roan after her security spoke “in an extremely aggressive manner” to his wife and daughter after they saw the popstar at a hotel in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

Jorginho, 34, said his 11-year-old daughter was “extremely shaken and cried a lot” after the interaction and also hit out at the singer for not appreciating her supporters.

“Without your fans, you would be nothing.”

Roan took to Instagram on Sunday and shared a video to her almost eight million followers as she addressed the incident.

“I’m just going to tell my half of the story of what happened today with a mother and child who were involved with a security guard who is not my personal security.

“I didn’t even see, I didn’t even see a woman and a child like … no-one came up to me, no one bothered me like I was just sitting at breakfast in my hotel. I think these people were staying at the hotel as well.

“So, the fact that, like a security guard, who was – I did not ask the security guard to go up and talk to this mother and child, I did not.

“They did not come up to me. They weren’t doing anything. It’s unfair for security to just assume someone doesn’t have good intentions when they have no reason to believe, because there’s no action even taken.”

Roan, 28, who was lying down in bed as she spoke in the video.

“I do not hate people who are fans of my music. I do not hate children – that is crazy.

“I’m sorry to the mother and child that someone was assuming something, that you would do something, and that … if you felt uncomfortable, that makes me really sad. You did not deserve that.”

Jorginho is married to Irish singer Catherine Harding and the pair have one child together.

Harding has a daughter from a previous relationship with actor Jude Law and Jorginho has two children from a previous marriage to Natalia Leteri.

The Grammy-winning singer, whose real name is Kayleigh Rose Amstutz, previously hit out at “entitled” fans for their “creepy” behaviour in a series of TikToks in 2024, where she emphasised the need for boundaries between celebrities and their fans.

Australia’s most populous state could slash gas use by more than 50 per cent by 2035 if economy-wide reductions in the expensive, emissions-intensive fuel are pursued.

Modelling commissioned by Lock the Gate found commercially available technologies could cut NSW gas use by three-quarters.

The anti-fossil fuel organisation has joined forces with environmental groups, unions, health professionals and community organisations to call for a comprehensive gas reduction strategy from the state government.

The alliance has recommended phasing out gas connections in new homes, fast-tracking cuts in low-heat manufacturing and statewide gas reduction targets to wean the state off the fuel more rapidly.

Gas use is expensive and has implications for NSW’s climate commitment to reach net zero by 2050.

NSW gas prices have climbed almost 277 per cent since 2011, the commissioned Springmount Advisory report finds, piling pressure on manufacturers and contributing to higher electricity prices.

Burning gas in the home can also be harmful to health, with gas stovetops linked to childhood asthma.

The coalition – including Doctors for the Environment Australia, the NSW and ACT Australian Manufacturing Workers Union and the Nature Conservation Council NSW – says the upcoming update to the state’s Net Zero Plan should include an economy-wide gas plan.

The alliance wants new gas connections phased out, starting with apartments, a step already taken by the Victorian and ACT governments and some NSW councils. 

While movement on household and small business electrification is expected in an upcoming Gas Decarbonisation Roadmap, industrial use has received less attention.

Manufacturing steel, glass, bricks and cement still face high costs to electrify but gas-free opportunities are available for lower-heat processing, including for food and paper. 

An electrification target for low-heat manufacturing and supporting policies has been recommended to prevent industry closures and preserve finite gas supplies for sectors that need more time to develop alternatives.

The report noted gas use was already in structural decline, falling 17 per cent since 2020, suggesting formal targets would accelerate the existing trend.

Australia is staring down a $90 billion-a-year obesity crisis by 2032 but spending below the OECD average on preventative health to tackle it.

Two-thirds of those costs will be felt in days off work, premature death and other productivity losses, a report commissioned by Novo Nordisk finds.

Obesity is already costing the nation roughly $39 billion a year, equivalent to two per cent of GDP.

Produced by progressive McKell Institute and conservative Menzies Research Centre on behalf of the company behind weight-loss wonder drug Ozempic, the report calls for “all of the above” policy response.

That includes phased subsidies for GLP-1 drugs, which include Ozempic and Wegovy, initially targeted at high-risk groups and disadvantaged populations in the interests of keeping pressure off the public purse.

The drugs are already subsidised on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme to treat type 2 diabetes but the federal health minister has been considering expanding accessibility so more Australians can access them at reduced cost.

The report recommends providing nutrition, exercise and behavioural support to those eligible for government-subsidised pharmaceuticals.

Preventative health spending should be boosted from two per cent to at least three-to-four per cent of the total health budget, in line with OECD averages.

Australia’s move to mandatory health star ratings is also supported in the report.

Roughly 67 per cent of Australian adults are classified as overweight or obese, up from 56 per cent in 1995.

One-in-four children are overweight or obese and 80 per cent of those adolescents go on to be obese adults. 

Obesity also disproportionately affects lower-income groups and people living in regional and remote areas, entrenching existing health inequalities. 

Slovenia’s ruling Freedom Movement of incumbent Prime Minister Robert Golob was on ‌track to win a parliamentary election, but it will need to find more ‌coalition partners to form a government after seeing its projected seat count drop, an ‌exit poll showed.

Freedom Movement (GS) won 29.9% of the votes or 30 seats in the 90-seat parliament, compared with 41 in the previous election, an exit poll published by public broadcaster TV Slovenia and commercial Pop TV television showed.

The opposition Slovenian Democratic Party of populist ‌leader Janez Jansa is ‌set ⁠to come second with 27 seats in parliament, a poll ​by Mediana polling agency showed.

“If someone wants a government like the one we’ve had so far, then they are probably satisfied with what these parallel results indicate,” Jansa said after the exit polls were published.

“Whoever wants change will likely have to wait for the ⁠final results, just as we will, and then ‌we ​will analyse the situation. But we have done everything that was within our power,” he ​said.

The election ‌campaign, which observers described as dirty from the start, heated up this month when ​covert videos were published on an anonymous website purportedly exposing government corruption. 

A report this week alleged that Jansa met with officials from Israeli private spy firm ​Black ​Cube, which LinkedIn alleged in 2023 ​was behind a hidden camera campaign that ‌targeted activists and journalists in the lead-up to Hungary’s 2022 vote. 

“No politeness, some lies that came out on one side or the other, so I didn’t feel they were telling us, the voters, the story that we could follow,” Ifigenija Simonovic, a ​73-year-old writer, said after voting in Ljubljana. 

“So to decide today, it really wasn’t ​easy.” 

The US economy was supposed to start the year with a bang, fuelled by an unusually large jump in tax refunds from President Donald Trump’s tax cut legislation. 

Yet spiking petrol prices are on track to eat up those refunds, leaving most Americans with little extra to spend. 

“Next spring is projected to be the largest tax refund season of all time,” Trump said in a prime-time speech in December that was intended to address voters’ concerns about the economy and stubbornly high prices. 

But that was before the Iran war, which began on February 28. 

Oil and gas prices have soared since then, with the nationwide average price of petrol reaching $US3.94 ($A5.62) per gallon on Sunday, up more than a dollar from just a month earlier. 

Petrol prices are likely to remain elevated for some time, even if the war ends soon, because shipping and production have been disrupted and will take time to recover. 

Economists now expect slower growth in the coming months and for the year as a whole, as people have less money for restaurant meals, new clothes, or entertainment. 

Lower and middle-income households are likely to be hit particularly hard because they receive lower refunds, while spending a greater proportion of their earnings on petrol. 

“The energy shock is going to hit those who have the least cushion,” said Alex Jacquez, chief of policy at the left-leaning Groundwork Collaborative and a former economist in the Biden White House. 

“And it doesn’t look like those tax refunds are going to be here to save them.”

Neale Mahoney, director of the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, calculates that petrol prices could peak in May at $US4.36 ($A6.22) a gallon, based on oil price forecasts by Goldman Sachs, followed by slow declines for the rest of the year. 

The notion that petrol prices decline much more slowly than they rise is so ingrained among economists that they refer to it as the “rocket and feathers” phenomenon.

In that scenario, the average household would pay $US740 m ($A1.1 billion) more in petrol this year, nearly equal to the $US748 ($A1,066) increase in refunds that the Tax Foundation has estimated the average household will receive.

Through March 6, refunds have risen by much less than that, according to IRS data. 

They have averaged $US3676 ($A5241), up $US352 ($A502) from $US3324 ($A4739) in 2025. 

Still, average refunds could rise as more complex returns are filed.

Other estimates show similar impacts. Economists at Oxford Economics, a consulting firm, estimate that if petrol prices average $US3.70 ($A5.28) a gallon all year, it will cost consumers about $US70 billion ($A100 billion) — more than the $US60 billion ($A86 billion) in increased tax refunds. 

The petrol price spike comes with many consumers already in a precarious position, particularly compared to 2022, when petrol prices also soared because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. 

At that time, many households still had fattened bank accounts from pandemic-era stimulus payments and companies were hiring rapidly and sharply lifting pay to attract workers. 

Now, hiring is nearly at a standstill and Americans’ saving rate has steadily fallen in the past few years as many households borrow more to sustain their spending. 

“When you start looking across the perspective from a consumer side, you’re seeing people who have maxed out their credit cards, are using ‘buy now, pay later’ to purchase their groceries,” said Julie Margetta Morgan, president of The Century Foundation, a think tank. 

“They’re making it work for now, but that can fall apart quite quickly.” 

The impact will likely worsen the “K-shaped” narrative around the US economy, analysts said, in which higher-income households have fared better than lower-income households. 

The bottom 10 per cent of earners spend nearly 4.0 per cent of their incomes on petrol, Pantheon Macroeconomics estimates, while the top 10 per cent spend just 1.5 per cent.

For now, most analysts still expect the US economy to expand this year, even if more slowly, given the gas price shock. 

Higher petrol prices will likely worsen inflation in the short run, but over time, weaker spending will also slow growth. 

Cuba is prepared for the unlikely possibility of military engagement with ‌the US, Cuban Deputy Foreign Minister Carlos Fernandez de Cossio says in response to US President Donald Trump’s threats to take over ‌the Caribbean island nation.

Havana and Washington entered talks earlier this month as an oil blockade imposed by Trump pushes the Communist-run nation deeper into economic crisis. 

Trump on Monday escalated his rhetoric against Cuba, ‌saying he ‌expected to ⁠have the “honour” of taking Cuba.

“Our country has historically ​been ready to mobilise as a nation as a whole for military aggression … We don’t believe it is something that is probable, but we would be naive if we do not prepare,” de Cossio told ⁠NBC ‌on ​Sunday. 

“We don’t see why it would have to occur, and we find ​no justification ‌whatsoever.”

Reports had suggested the Trump administration was seeking to remove Cuban ​President Miguel Diaz-Canel from power.

De Cossio also said any suggestion of the nature, the structure, or members of the ​Cuban ​government being subject to negotiation ​in talks with the US is ‌untrue.

He added that a regime change is “absolutely” off the table in discussions with the United States.

The US military is not rehearsing for an invasion of Cuba or actively preparing to militarily take over the ​island, the top general overseeing American forces in Latin America ​told MPs on Thursday.

Adding to clean energy supply and minimising water footprints will become national expectations for new data centres built on Australian soil.

Operators that further invest in worker training and supply affordable computing power to local startups and researchers can also expect priority treatment.

The keenly anticipated data centre national principles are not legal requirements, but development proposals that meet expectations will be prioritised under federal regulatory assessments.

Australia has the second-largest pipeline of data centre construction in the world,  after the US, with investment booming globally to accommodate the computing needs of artificial intelligence. 

The federal government has welcomed the economic uplift and job creation but the massive energy and water needs of the facilities have given policymakers pause.

Unions, environmental groups and clean energy industry bodies joined forces in February to demand an energy and water-self-sufficient sector committed to upskilling workers.

Energy has been a particular focus as the nation struggles to roll out renewable sources fast enough to meet climate goals and supply fledgling green export industries.

Data centres consume about two per cent of grid-supplied electricity, but that share is expected to triple by 2030 due to the AI surge. 

In addition to bringing their own clean energy or storage to offset demand on the grid, operators will be expected to cover the full share of power connection costs and support network stability.

Energy Minister Chris Bowen said it was important to get the investment settings right to keep the electricity system secure and prices low.

“Data centres have great potential to support our grid and expand new renewable investment,” he said.

Sustainable water use will also be viewed favourably to protect local drinking supplies, with recycled and non-potable water use encouraged where possible. 

Assistant minister Andrew Charlton said the national expectations would maintain community confidence in the fast-growing sector. 

“We will do what is necessary to ensure the growth of AI is sustainable and underpinned by a strong social license,” he said.

Work to implement the principles is under way with state and territory governments and industry.

The federal opposition has been critical of the government’s response to the AI infrastructure boom, saying Australia risks losing investment to competitors without faster planning processes and ready access to affordable and reliable energy.

Opposition industry spokesman Andrew Hastie favours using Australia’s abundant fossil fuels and uranium to power data centres and high-tech manufacturing.

Ukrainian President ‌Volodymyr Zelenskiy has urged allies to keep up sanctions pressure on Russia ahead of a second day of talks ‌between Ukrainian and US officials on ways to end the four-year-old war, triggered by Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Russian representatives ‌were not present at the weekend talks, which opened in Florida. 

They were originally expected to attend the negotiations, which were due to take place in Abu Dhabi.

The US team is led by special envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law.

Zelenskiy on Sunday ‌called for tougher action ⁠against Russia’s so-called shadow fleet and for Moscow to be denied oil ​revenue.

“Revenues give Russia a sense of impunity and the ability to continue the war. That is why pressure must continue and sanctions must work,” Zelenskiy said on X.

“Russia’s shadow fleet must not feel safe in European waters or anywhere else. Tankers that serve the war budget can and must be stopped and blocked, not just let go.”

The ⁠French Navy seized an oil tanker in the Western Mediterranean last ‌week ​that President Emmanuel Macron said was part of Russia’s shadow fleet, a network of vessels used to export oil despite ​Western sanctions.

The ‌shadow fleet, which has grown following Western sanctions on Russia aimed at curbing Moscow’s oil revenues, has helped to ​keep Russian oil exports flowing.

Elements of the peace plan being promoted by the US include a presidential election in Ukraine, alongside territorial concessions.

Zelenskiy, whose term has already expired, is under renewed pressure ​from ​Trump to hold a vote as Washington ​pushes Kyiv towards a peace deal.

Ukrainian law bars wartime elections, ‌but Zelenskiy has said Ukraine would be ready to hold democratic elections if the US secured a two-month ceasefire to allow time to prepare infrastructure and put security guarantees in place.

But Ukraine’s former top general, Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, now ambassador to Britain and seen as a potential presidential candidate, said Ukraine needed not elections, but peace won through war.

“What Ukraine ​needs is not time to prepare for and hold elections, but a peace won through war, which ​will secure a future for our ⁠children,” he wrote in an article published on Sunday by Ukrainian outlet NV.