London’s Oxford Street, one of Britain’s busiest and most famous shopping districts, will be pedestrianised, Mayor of London Sadiq Khan says, in a move designed to smarten up the area and create a new public space to help drive growth.

The plan to rid Oxford Street of cars and buses, which has been over 20 years in the making, looks set to become a reality after consultations on proposals published in September showed a majority of Londoners and businesses back the idea.

Supporters of pedestrianising the 1.6km-long stretch in central London say similar traffic-free schemes for Times Square in New York and La Rambla in Barcelona have breathed new life into tired areas.

“We want to rejuvenate Oxford Street; establish it as a global leader for shopping, leisure and outdoor events with a world-class, accessible, pedestrianised avenue,” Khan said in a statement announcing the results of the public consultation.

Oxford Street attracts around half a million visitors every day, according to the mayor’s office, but many flagship stores including House of Fraser and Topshop have shut in recent years, and Khan said the area had been neglected.

“Oxford Street was once the jewel in the crown of Britain’s retail sector, but there’s no doubt that it has suffered hugely over the last decade”, Khan said last year.

The mayor will now work with the UK government on legislation to go traffic-free, which would happen “as quickly as possible”. That will require finding new routes for the dozens of buses which travel down it each hour.

The government has said Khan’s plan for a new “beautiful public space” which will attract more tourists, drive new investment in the area and create jobs.

A controversial gas project faces another hurdle, as environmental activists launch an 11th-hour bid to overturn a state government approval.

Friends of Australian Rock Art are challenging the Western Australian government’s environmental approval to extend the life of Woodside Energy’s massive North West Shelf venture.

The Supreme Court action against the WA government and Woodside will argue the state did not consider the impact of climate change that would result from the project, including its effect on Indigenous rock art in the area.

“Woodside’s proposed North West Shelf extension is one of the most polluting fossil fuel projects in the world, and will have severe consequences both for the Murujuga rock art and for the environment of Western Australia as a whole,” the group’s spokeswoman, Judith Hugo, said on Tuesday.

Federal Environment Minister Murray Watt gave provisional approval to push out the life of the project from 2030 to 2070 in May, following WA’s approval in December.

Woodside is currently considering the strict federal conditions on cultural heritage and air quality, which Senator Watt said would ensure the 60,000-year-old Murujuga Indigenous rock art was not destroyed.

A final decision has not been made.

The activists say their case in the WA court could impact the Commonwealth approval, which relies on the state assessment in order to satisfy federal laws.

Mardathoonera woman Raelene Cooper previously launched legal action against the Commonwealth in a bid to compel it to consider a heritage application to protect rock art, with the Federal Court to hear the case in mid-July.

Woodside’s project is based on the Burrup peninsula in northwest WA, an area known as Murujuga.

It is nominated for UNESCO World Heritage listing as it contains the world’s largest collection of Aboriginal rock art.

The company said it was aware of the rock art group’s case.

“We have confidence in the robustness of the state government’s comprehensive approval process,” a spokesman said.

“As the matter is before the court, we have no further comment.”

Australia is looking for certainty from its partners as the prime minister’s impending discussion with Donald Trump looms large.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will continue meeting with world leaders on the sidelines of the G7 summit when he holds talks with the newly-elected South Korean President Lee Jae-myung and North Atlantic Treaty Organisation secretary general Mark Rutte in Canada on Monday local time (Tuesday AEST).

Though Australia is not a member of the G7, Mr Albanese was invited to the event in Kananaskis by Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney.

He has taken the opportunity to build rapport with other nations as the US president’s tariffs cast a shadow over the global trade.

“What’s clear is that in (an) uncertain world, what people are looking for is certainty in relationships, trusted relationships,” Mr Albanese told reporters.

Defence and security will be top of mind in talks with Mr Lee, with the two leaders expected to discuss a shared vision for the Indo-Pacific region.

Mr Albanese will also hold his first face-to-face meeting with the secretary general of NATO, a political and military alliance of European and North American nations.

He and Mr Rutte will likely discuss Australia’s support for Ukraine in its conflict with Russia.

“Australia always has a case for maximising our defence and security relationships in what is an uncertain world” Mr Albanese said.

But the centrepiece of Mr Albanese’s trip is his much-anticipated talk with the US president on Tuesday.

Their first face-to-face meeting presents a crucial opportunity for the prime minister negotiate an exemption from Mr Trump’s controversial tariffs.

Australia faces 50 per cent tariffs on aluminium and steel products sent to the US, while other goods have been hit with a baseline 10 per cent levy.

Tariffs are generally passed on by importers to the citizens of the country imposing the measures, but can reduce demand for the exporting country’s products.

Mr Albanese has argued the tariffs are an “economic act of self-harm” and his government is considering using US beef imports and critical minerals as potential bargaining chips.

The prime minister is not the only world leader hoping to leave the summit with a tariff exemption, with Mr Carney and Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba lining up to speak with the US president.

Mr Albanese has also discussed trade with other world leaders, and called Canada a “true friend” of Australia after meeting with Mr Carney.

Mr Albanese is also scheduled to meet leaders including UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, French President Emmanuel Macron, Mr Ishiba and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz.

The environmental credentials of projects across six industries, from mining to manufacturing, will be assessed and rated under a system experts say could boost international investment in Australia.

The Australian Sustainable Finance Institute released its long-anticipated sustainable finance taxonomy rules on Tuesday, with its chief executive hailing the move a “transformative moment” for green investments.

The framework will be tested in an eight-month pilot by a group of Australian financial institutions, including the nation’s four major banks, the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, and superannuation firms Rest and HESTA.

The announcement follows the development of similar rules for green investments in 47 countries, including China and Singapore, and forecasts Australia could boost its revenue with green metal exports.

The sustainable finance taxonomy rules were developed by the institute across 20 months, led by a 25-member technical expert group.

Unlike rules in other nations, the Australian taxonomy will classify projects in six sectors: mining, minerals and metals, electricity generation and supply, building and construction, manufacturing, transport and agriculture.

Australian Sustainable Finance Institute chief executive Kristy Graham said assessing projects within the uniquely Australian categories would be vital to ensuring local and international investors could be confident about their claims.

“Australia needs to attract a lot of capital to support our net-zero transition,” she told AAP.

“It is a global race for capital and many countries are a bit ahead of us.

“The taxonomy is a framework that credibly, using a scientific basis, defines those assets and activities that are in line with that net-zero transition so both Australian investors and international investors can identify and channel capital towards those activities.”

The framework, which Ms Graham said would be “transformative” for the Australian green investment market, is designed to help businesses assess whether projects can be classified as green or transition activities.

The taxonomy includes rules to set social safeguards, such as engagement with First Nations people, and to exclude projects that cause significant environmental harm.

Having rules to rate and classify green projects could boost international investment in net-zero projects, Clean Energy Finance Corporation chief executive Ian Learmonth said, as the framework was compatible with international standards.

“It is an important step in building further confidence in Australia’s transition to net zero in international markets,” he said.

“The taxonomy facilitates investors and business to work in concert and to channel capital into credible, net-zero-aligned and transition activities.”

The Australian framework would also be compatible with the Climate Bonds Initiative’s certification scheme, its co-founder Sean Kidney said, to “support investor confidence”.

Forty-seven nations use sustainable finance taxonomies to assess environmental projects following the launch of the European Union’s framework in 2020.

Australia’s political and military leaders are warning of dangerous global conditions as violence in the Middle East escalates.

Hundreds of people, including civilians, have been killed in the days since Israel launched a surprise assault on Iranian nuclear and military sites.

The two nations have since exchanged air and missile strikes, with Iran vowing to “open the gates of hell” against its sworn enemy.

As analysts watch the unfolding violence with concern, leaders are also flagging shocks to the global economy.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers said there had already been substantial economic consequences, pointing to a spike in the cost of oil.

“This is a perilous moment for the Middle East, and it’s a perilous moment for the global economy as well,” he told ABC News.

“Now this obviously poses two kinds of risks.

“Higher oil prices do pose a risk to the inflation outlook, but they also pose a risk to global growth.”

Dr Chalmers said despite the events, the market’s expectations for interest rate cuts in Australia had increased rather than decreased.

“What that tells us is that the market is more focused on the implications for global growth,” he said.

Australia’s defence force chief, Admiral David Johnston, called for restraint and for all countries to pursue a diplomatic solution.

“The recent strikes between Israel and Iran represent a deeply concerning escalation,” he told a News Corp defence summit in Canberra.

“The risk of further regional instability is severe, particularly recognising ongoing volatility across the Middle East region in Gaza, Syria and Yemen.”

Admiral Johnston said all Australian Defence Force personnel assigned to the region were safe, and Defence would continue to monitor events and provide for their protection.

Foreign Minister Penny Wong said on Monday 350 Australians had registered for help to flee Iran, while 300 had asked for assistance in Israel.

WhatsApp says users will start seeing ads in some parts of the app, as owner Meta Platforms moves to cultivate a new revenue stream by tapping the billions of people that use the messaging service.

Advertisements will be shown only in the app’s Updates tab, which is used by as many as 1.5 billion people each day.

However, they will not appear where personal chats are located, developers said.

“The personal messaging experience on WhatsApp isn’t changing, and personal messages, calls and statuses are end-to-end encrypted and cannot be used to show ads,” WhatsApp said in a blog post.

It is a big change for the company, whose founders Jan Koum and Brian Acton vowed to keep the platform free of ads when they created it in 2009.

Facebook purchased WhatsApp in 2014 and the pair left a few years later.

Parent company Meta has long been trying to generate revenue from WhatsApp.

WhatsApp said ads will be targeted to users based on information like the user’s age, the country or city where they’re located, the language they’re using, the channels they’re following in the app, and how they’re interacting with the ads they see.

WhatsApp said it will not use personal messages, calls and groups that a user is a member of to target ads to the user.

It is one of three advertising features that WhatsApp unveiled on Monday as it tries to monetise the app’s user base.

Channels will also be able to charge users a monthly fee for subscriptions so they can get exclusive updates.

And business owners will be able to pay to promote their channel’s visibility to new users.

France has shut down the four main Israeli company stands at the Paris Airshow for apparently displaying bombs and other offensive weapons, in a move condemned by Israel that highlights the growing tensions between the traditional allies.

A source familiar with the matter told Reuters on Monday that the instruction came from French authorities after Israeli firms failed to comply with a direction from a French security agency to remove offensive or kinetic weapons from the stands.

The stands were being used by Elbit Systems , Rafael, IAI and Uvision. Three smaller Israeli stands, which didn’t have hardware on display, and an Israeli Ministry of Defence stand, remain open.

France, a long-time Israeli ally, has gradually hardened its position on the government of Benjamin Netanyahu over its actions in Gaza and military interventions abroad.

French President Emmanuel Macron made a distinction last week between Israel’s right to protect itself, which France supports and could take part in, and strikes on Iran it did not recommend.

Israel’s defence ministry said it had categorically rejected the order to remove some weapons systems from displays, and that exhibition organisers responded by erecting a black wall that separated the Israeli industry pavilions from others.

This action, it added, was carried out in the middle of the night after Israeli defence officials and companies had already finished setting up their displays.

“This outrageous and unprecedented decision reeks of policy-driven and commercial considerations,” the ministry said in a statement.

Rafael described the French move as “unprecedented, unjustified, and politically motivated,” adding it fully supported the Israeli ministry of defence’s decision not to comply with the order to remove some equipment from display.

An Air India Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner plane bound for New Delhi has returned to its origin of Hong Kong as a precautionary measure, after the pilot suspected a technical issue mid-air, a source with direct knowledge of the matter told Reuters.

The incident comes days after an Air India flight to London, using the same type of Boeing aircraft, crashed in the western Indian city of Ahmedabad moments after take-off, killing 241 of the 242 people on board.

The Dreamliner aircraft flying Air India flight AI315 out of Hong Kong on Monday is now undergoing checks, said the source with knowledge of the matter.

Flight AI315 took off from Hong Kong at 12.16pm local time and landed just over an hour later, according to tracking data on Flightradar24.

Boeing and Air India did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the Hong Kong-New Delhi flight.

Hundreds of stranded Australians are trying to escape the conflict zone as Israel and Iran trade strikes, prompting leaders to call for calm.

The rival nations began tit-for-tat missile and air strikes on Friday after the Israeli military launched attacks with the stated aim of wiping out Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs.

Iran vowed to “open the gates of hell” in retaliation, while Israel has also hit critical oil refineries.

Foreign Minister Penny Wong said 350 Australians had registered for help getting out of Iran, while 300 had asked for aid in Israel.

“We are currently in the process of planning for assisted departures in the event that it is safe to do so,” she said on Monday.

“The timeline is primarily dictated by safety, and as long as governments have closed down airspace because of the risk to civilian aircraft, obviously no one can fly – and we certainly can’t fly.”

Senator Wong said the government was considering all options, including the use of Australian Defence Force or private charter planes.

Among those trapped in Israel are a delegation hosted by the Australian/Israel and Jewish Affairs Council that includes Olympian and former senator Nova Peris.

The military strikes were also discussed between Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and his Canadian counterpart Mark Carney ahead of the G7 summit in Canada.

Mr Albanese has called for a de-escalation of the conflict amid fears it could spread into a wider war.

“Both of us share a view wanting to see a de-escalation of conflict, wanting to prioritise dialogue and diplomacy,” he told reporters in Calgary.

“I have expressed before our concern about Iran gaining the capacity of nuclear weapons as something that is a threat to security in the region.

“But we, along with other like-minded countries, do want to see that priority on dialogue and diplomacy.”

Iran’s health ministry reported that hundreds of people had been killed in the attacks since Friday, including many civilians.

More than a dozen Israelis have been reported killed in retaliatory strikes.

Defence Minister Richard Marles said the conflict would have a number of knock-on effects for the economy, including increasing petrol prices.

“We saw this with the war in Ukraine, that does disrupt global supply chains and that has an economic impact around the world,” he told ABC TV on Monday.

Experts have warned that Iran’s threat to close the Strait of Hormuz – the only maritime entry point into the Persian Gulf – would also send oil prices soaring.

Mr Marles added Australian diplomatic staff in Iran and Israel had all been accounted for, as had military personnel in the region.

He reiterated safety warnings to Australians in the Middle East, with the situation remaining volatile.

NRMA spokesman Peter Khoury said drivers would most likely have to pay more for petrol as a result of the conflict but tipped prices to settle in the longer-term.

“It’s inevitable every time the Middle East flares up you see an immediate reaction from oil prices before they stabilise again,” he told AAP.

“What we saw over the weekend, where one of the Iranian refineries was also targeted, adds another layer of complexity.”

While Australia imports most of its oil from Asia, Mr Khoury said events in the Middle East had a bearing on the market.

“If the Middle East sneezes when it comes to the price of oil per barrel, the rest of the world catches a cold,” he said.

When US President Donald Trump last came to Canada for a G7 summit, the enduring image was of him seated with his arms folded defiantly as then-German Chancellor Angela Merkel stared daggers at him.

If there is a shared mission at this year’s G7 summit, which begins on Monday in Canada’s Rocky Mountains, it is a desire to minimise any fireworks at a moment of combustible tensions.

The central issue will be whether the group of major industrialised nations can find a common position despite significant differences between Washington and the other members.

Canada’s new Prime Minister Mark Carney is hosting the event and the visit marks Trump’s first visit to Canada during his new term.

Leaders who are not part of the G7 but have been invited to the summit by Carney include the heads of state of India, Ukraine, Brazil, South Africa, South Korea, Australia, Mexico and the UAE. Avoiding tariffs will continue to be top of mind.

In recent months, the US president has caused severe tensions with his northern neighbour by imposing punitive tariffs and repeatedly demanding that Canada relinquish its independence and become part of the US. This has sparked widespread outrage in Canada.

Trump has also hit several dozen nations with severe tariffs that risk a global economic slowdown.

There is little progress on settling the wars in Ukraine and Gaza and now a new and escalating conflict between Israel and Iran over Tehran’s nuclear program.

Add to all of that the problems of climate change, immigration, drug trafficking, new technologies such as artificial intelligence and China’s continued manufacturing superiority and chokehold on key supply chains.

Asked if he planned to announce any trade agreements at the G7 as he left the White House on Sunday, Trump replied: “We have our trade deals. All we have to do is send a letter, ‘This is what you’re going to have to pay.’ But I think we’ll have a few, few new trade deals.”

At stake might be the survival of the G7 itself at a time when the Trump administration has sent mixed signals about whether the president will attend the November Group of 20 summit in South Africa.

What Trump opposed at the 2018 summit in Quebec was a focus on having alliances with a shared set of standards seeking to shape policies.

The German, UK, Japanese and Italian governments have each signalled a belief that a friendly relationship with Trump this year can reduce the likelihood of outbursts.

“Well, I have got a good relationship with President Trump, and that’s important,” UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer said on Saturday as he flew to Canada.

There is no plan for a joint statement this year from the G7, a sign that the Trump administration sees no need to build a shared consensus with fellow democracies if it views such a statement as contrary to its goals of new tariffs, more fossil fuel production and a Europe that is less dependent on the US military.

The White House has stayed decidedly mum about its goals for the G7, which originated as a 1973 finance ministers’ meeting to address the oil crisis and steadily evolved into a yearly summit that is meant to foster personal relationships among world leaders and address global problems.

Trump will have at least three scheduled bilateral meetings during the summit with other world leaders while in Canada, staring on Monday with Carney.

The US president is also expected to have bilateral meetings with Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, according to an administration official.

The Trump administration has insisted that its broad tariffs will produce trade agreements that box out China, though it’s unclear how antagonising trade partners would make them want to strengthen their reliance on the US.

Carney has been outspoken in saying his country can no longer look to the U.S. as an enduring friend.

That might leave Trump with the awkward task of wanting to keep his tariffs in place while also trying to convince other countries that they’re better off siding with the US than China.

with dpa