Sun Cable, the company proposing a multi-billion-dollar solar power export project, has entered voluntary administration.

The company, which boasts high-profile investors including billionaires Mike Cannon-Brookes and Andrew "Twiggy" Forrest, said it had made the "difficult decision" to enter administration but has appointed new voluntary administrators.

"The administrators intend to work with the company's management team and key stakeholders to determine appropriate next steps for the business," the company said in a statement.

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"This will likely involve a process to seek expressions of interest for either a recapitalisation or sale of the business."

FTI consulting executives Christopher Hill, David McGrath and John Park will take on the voluntary administration of the company.

"The appointment followed the absence of alignment with the objectives of all shareholders," the company said.

"Whilst funding proposals were provided, consensus on the future direction and funding structure of the company could not be achieved."

Billionaire investor Cannon-Brookes said the company has already achieved so much in the five years since it was founded and he will continue to fully support it.

"I'm confident it will play a huge role in delivering green energy for the world, right here from Australia," he said.

"I fully back this ambition and the team, and look forward to supporting the company's next chapter." 

READ MORE: Is 'persistence' of ex-tropical cyclone Ellie a sign of future storms to come?

The company said it will continue to "deliver the largest renewable energy project in the world".

Sun Cable has proposed the Asia-Australia Power Link, which would generate solar power from a huge farm in the Northern Territory and export it through a 4200km underwater power cable from Darwin, through Indonesia to Singapore.

It is estimated to cost more than $30 billion.

Construction of the 12,000-hectare solar farm was set to begin in 2024.

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Founder and CEO David Griffin said the project remains "well placed for completion" despite the administration changes.

"As we have progressed our work, the demand for delivering reliable, dispatchable 24/7 renewable energy in the NT and the region has risen materially," he said.

"Sun Cable looks forward to developing and operating the projects to meet this demand."

Booksellers were gearing up for today, the first day the book would be sold in NZ

Australian and global leaders have reacted to the death of Australia's highest-ranking Catholic church official, Cardinal George Pell.

The cardinal, a polarising figure after his conviction and subsequent acquittal on child sexual abuse charges, died at the age of 81 after suffering complications following hip replacement surgery.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese expressed his condolences to "all who are mourning today".

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"For many people, particularly of the Catholic faith, this will be a difficult day and I express my condolences to all those who are mourning today," Albanese said.

"This was a hip operation and the consequences of it unfortunately have been that Cardinal Pell has lost his life, and I'll express my condolences to all those who will be mourning today."

Albanese said the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade is providing assistance to assure the cardinal's body is brought back to Australia.

"I discussed with Archbishop (Anthony) Fisher this morning, I expressed my condolences to Archbishop Fisher on behalf of the government," he said.

"Archbishop Fisher informed me that there will be a service held in the Vatican in coming days but then there will be a service at St Mary's Cathedral at sometime in the future."

Former prime minister Tony Abbott said Australia "has lost a great son and the church has lost a great leader".

"Like everyone who knew him I feel a deep sense of loss but am confident that his reputation will grow and grow and that he will become an inspiration for the ages," Abbott said.

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https://twitter.com/HonTonyAbbott/status/1612967462643040256

Former Coalition minister Joe Hockey also paid tribute to the cardinal.

"He was a man of deep faith and great integrity," he said.

"He was blessed with fortitude, courage, determination and intellect. He was proudly Australian."

Queensland MP Bob Katter described Pell as "a man of powerful determination to do good".

"God bless his eternal soul," he said.

Archbishop of Sydney Anthony Fisher expressed sadness and said the news came as a "great shock".

"Please pray for the repose of the soul of Cardinal Pell, for comfort and consolation for his family and for all of those who loved him and are grieving him at this time," he said in a Facebook post.

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Melbourne Archbishop Peter Comensoli described Pell as "one of the great church men of Australia and internationally".

"He, over many years, has been a forthright defender of the faith, a great gospel man, I find him," he said.

"And that dimension of his life will remain, I think that a very important dimension. There probably has not been a church man in Australia quite like the cardinal.

"His response, both within the Australian context and within international contexts, has been quite instrumental and I think for many years to come, that will be known and thought about and reflected on."

In his life, the cardinal faced criticism for his response to child sexual abuse allegations within the church and was himself convicted of one charge of sexual penetration of a child and four charges of committing an act of indecency.

Pell always maintained his innocence but spent more than a year in jail before the High Court overturned the decision in 2020.

Shine Lawyers chief legal officer Lisa Flynn said the law firm is progressing with a civil claim behalf of the "father of a former altar boy who alleged he was sexually abused by George Pell".

"The Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne is also listed as a defendant in this matter," Flynn said.

"The claim will continue against the church and whatever estate Pell has left behind.

"A civil trial likely would have provided the opportunity to cross examine Pell, and truly test his defence against these allegations.

"There is still a great deal of evidence for this claim to rely on, and the court will be asked in due course to make its ruling on that evidence."

Blue Knot Foundation president Cathy Kezelman acknowledged Pell's death as a difficult event for survivors of child sexual abuse.

"The announcement of the passing of Cardinal George Pell is one of those moments in history in which the world stops," Kezelman said.

"It will do so undoubtedly for many in the Church but also for many survivors of child sexual abuse.

"For many, Cardinal Pell was a divisive figure, whose repeated appearances at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse left many aghast.

"Many survivors were triggered, distressed and outraged."

Victorian government minister Steve Dimopoulos acknowledged today would be particularly challenging for some people.

"Today would be a very difficult day for the cardinal's family and loved ones but also a very difficult for survivors and victims of child sexual abuse and their families and my thoughts are with them," he said.

Comensoli shared a message for survivors of child sexual abuse following the cardinal's death.

"I would hope that my own journey with them, which is something that happens on a weekly basis for me, that's working with, the seeking of justice for, the finding of appropriate compensation and redress, and their ongoing care and support are all things that we as a local church here in Melbourne, strive to do, as best we can," he said.

"And each of us will be judged accordingly on how we might be able to handle that."

The wine sales manager had a yelling match with the big boss at a staff meeting.

A long-awaited ICAC probe around breach of trust allegations aimed at former New South Wales premier Gladys Berejiklian has been delayed until after the upcoming state election.

The Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) said commissioner Ruth McColl is trying to complete the Operation Keppel report as soon as possible.

The commission cited the complex nature of the investigation as well as the thousands of pages of evidence leading to the delay.

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The investigation was launched over allegations Berejiklian had breached public trust while she was in a secret relationship with former Wagga Wagga MP Daryl Maguire.

"Substantial parts of the report have been drafted," an ICAC statement said.

"At the same time, it must be recognised that the report concerns complex matters of law and fact, two public inquiries which proceeded over 30 days, over 2800 pages of transcript, 516 exhibits comprising approximately 10,600 pages and 957 pages of submissions.

"McColl is working to complete a draft of the report as soon as possible but, given these matters, it is not possible to specify a date by which it will be completed."

READ MORE: Leaders react to the death of Cardinal George Pell

ICAC said it is "unlikely" the report will be finished until after the first quarter of 2023, which falls after the March state election.

Once McColl's report has been drafted, it will be reviewed, edited and undergo the commission's production processes before being released.

"The Commission and Ms McColl remain conscious of the obligation under section 74(7) of the ICAC Act to furnish investigation reports as soon as possible after the Commission has concluded its involvement in a matter," ICAC said.

ICAC noted while three other unrelated reports are also being completed the commission will take "all available action" to ensure there isn't a delay in releasing the Keppel report "caused by any bottleneck that might arise".

The report was previously extended in October, 2022, without explanation.

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Operation Keppel investigated whether Berejiklian breached public trust by awarding grants to Wagga Wagga community organisations – Australian Clay Target Association in 2016 and 2017 and the Riverina Conservatorium of Music in 2018 – while in office.

During the ICAC hearings, Berejiklian's years-long secret relationship with former Maguire was sensationally revealed.

Maguire is also at the forefront of the ICAC investigation over allegations he breached public trust and used his position as a member of NSW parliament to improperly gain a benefit for himself or others close to him.

ICAC also investigated whether Berejiklian was liable to "allow or encourage" alleged corrupt conduct by Maguire.

Berejiklian resigned as premier in late 2021 after ICAC announced she was also being investigated.

Berejiklian has denied any wrongdoing.

She quit parliament in December last year and is now working for Optus.

The fierce storm is being described as a one-in-20 year event.

Two supermassive black holes have been spotted feasting on cosmic materials as two galaxies in distant space merge – and are the closest to colliding black holes astronomers have ever observed.

Astronomers spotted the pair while using the Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array of telescopes, or ALMA, in northern Chile's Atacama Desert, to observe two merging galaxies about 500 million light-years from Earth.

The two black holes were growing in tandem near the centre of the coalescing galaxy resulting from the merger. They met when their host galaxies, known as UGC 4211, collided.

READ MORE: 'Difficult day': Leaders react to the death of George Pell

One is 200 million times the mass of our sun, while the other is 125 million times the mass of our sun.

While the black holes themselves aren't directly visible, both were surrounded by bright clusters of stars and warm, glowing gas – all of which is being tugged by the holes' gravitational pull.

Over time, they will start circling one another in orbit, eventually crashing into one another and creating one black hole.

After observing them across multiple wavelengths of light, the black holes are located the closest together scientists have ever seen – only about 750 light-years apart, which is relatively close, astronomically speaking.

The results were shared at the 241st meeting of the American Astronomical Society being held this week in Seattle, and published Monday in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

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The distance between the black holes "is fairly close to the limit of what we can detect, which is why this is so exciting," study coauthor Chiara Mingarelli, an associate research scientist at the Flatiron Institute's Center for Computational Astrophysics in New York City, said in a statement.

Galactic mergers are more common in the distant universe, which makes them harder to see using Earth-based telescopes.

But ALMA's sensitivity was able to observe even their active galactic nuclei – the bright, compact regions in galaxies where matter swirls around black holes.

Astronomers were surprised to find a binary pair of black holes, rather than a single black hole, dining on the gas and dust stirred up by the galactic merger.

"Our study has identified one of the closest pairs of black holes in a galaxy merger, and because we know that galaxy mergers are much more common in the distant Universe, these black hole binaries too may be much more common than previously thought," lead study author Michael Koss, a senior research scientist at the Eureka Scientific research institute in Oakland, California, said in a statement.

"What we've just studied is a source in the very final stage of collision, so what we're seeing presages that merger and also gives us insight into the connection between black holes merging and growing and eventually producing gravitational waves," Koss said.

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If pairs of black holes – as well as merging galaxies that lead to their creation – are more common in the universe than previously thought, they could have implications for future gravitational wave research.

Gravitational waves, or ripples in space time, are created when black holes collide.

It will still take a few hundred million years for this particular pair of black holes to collide, but the insights gained from this observation could help scientists better estimate how many pairs of black holes are close to colliding in the universe.

"​​There might be many pairs of growing supermassive black holes in the centres of galaxies that we have not been able to identify so far," study coauthor Ezequiel Treister, an astronomer at Universidad Católica de Chile in Santiago, Chile, said in a statement.

"If this is the case, in the near future we will be observing frequent gravitational wave events caused by the mergers of these objects across the Universe."

Space-based telescopes like Hubble and the Chandra X-ray Observatory and ground-based telescopes like the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope, also in the Atacama Desert, and the W.M. Keck telescope in Hawaii have also observed UGC 4211 across different wavelengths of light to provide a more detailed overview and differentiate between the two black holes.

"Each wavelength tells a different part of the story," Treister said.

"All of these data together have given us a clearer picture of how galaxies such as our own turned out to be the way they are, and what they will become in the future."

Understanding more about the end stages of galaxy mergers could provide more insight about what will happen when our Milky Way galaxy collides with the Andromeda galaxy in about 4.5 billion years.

Within hours of making landfall three weeks ago, Ellie was downgraded to an ex-tropical cyclone.

But the storm system would linger over the country's north for weeks, causing devastating floods across the Kimberley and fuelling powerful storms across New South Wales, and Queensland.

The "persistence" of the ex-tropical cyclone has forecasters on high alert.

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Professor Kevin Walsh, an expert in cyclones at the University of Melbourne, branded Ellie's behaviour "unusual".

"For Ellie it is very unusual to have remnants going until such a late date" he told 9news.com.au.

"It's not ordinary behaviour."

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Walsh said multiple factors could have played into the severity of ex-tropical cyclone Ellie.

"While Ellie is unusual, it's not unprecedented," he said.

"There's been a number of storms in northern Australia, such as Abigail in 2001, that have stayed active and intense for surprisingly long periods of time.

"There are particular meteorological conditions up there that make them possible to do so. For instance if the sandy soil gets wet and it rains very strongly, that combination of factors can cause a lot of heat to go up into the atmosphere.

"It's an unusual thing, it doesn't just happen in northern Australia, but it happens particularly strongly there every so often.

"It's called the Brown Ocean Effect."

Walsh's comments come after Weatherzone described the behaviour of the storm as "remarkable", explaining ex-tropical cyclones usually dissipate within a week of making landfall.

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Meteorologist Joel Pippard said Ellie was able to linger for longer as the system linked to the monsoon trough.

"Usually the moist feed would break off when it got to the interior and the system would start losing moisture and peter out," he said in a statement.

"That's what eventually happened on January 8, but over the Boxing Day period it stayed joined to the monsoon trough."

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Walsh added a La Niña event could also make cyclones more frequent.

"Certainly La Niña increases the chance of tropical cyclones striking the Australian coast," he said.

"And climate change could increase the severity of future cyclones."

Ellie was the second tropical cyclone of the season and formed less than a week, after Tropical Cyclone Darian developed west of the Cocos (Keeling) Islands in mid-December.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has expressed concern about what the rest of the storm season could bring, as he announced a flood-relief package for Western Australia.

"This is only one-third into the wet season," he said.

"We have received some caution about what's ahead as we are still very much in the wet season and that could have a further impact we have to be mindful of."

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Russia is close to taking control of most of the salt mining town of Soledar in Ukraine's east after a month-long battle with Ukrainian forces.

Ukrainian officials said the fierce fighting is bringing new levels of death and devastation in the grinding battle for control of eastern Ukraine that is part of Moscow's wider war.

"Everything is completely destroyed. There is almost no life left," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said of the scene around Bakhmut and the nearby Donetsk province city of Soledar.

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"The whole land near Soledar is covered with the corpses of the occupiers and scars from the strikes," Zelenskyy said.

"This is what madness looks like."

Russian troops alongside fighters from the infamous Wagner Group, a Russian private military contractor, have advanced in Soledar and "are likely in control of most of the settlement," the UK Defence Ministry tweeted on Tuesday.

https://twitter.com/DefenceHQ/status/1612694326710079488?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

It said that taking Soledar, 10kms north of Bakhmut, was likely Moscow's immediate military objective and part of a strategy to encircle Bakhmut.

But it added that "Ukrainian forces maintain stable defensive lines in depth and control over supply routes" in the area.

The Wagner Group's leader, Dmitry Prigozhin, confirmed in a post on a Russian social media platform on Tuesday that his forces are fighting in the area and acknowledged "heavy battles" in Soledar against a Ukrainian army he said "bravely fights."

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In Russia, two signs emerged on Tuesday that officials were grappling with the military shortcomings revealed during the conflict in Ukraine.

Military communications and control systems will be improved using artificial intelligence, officials said, and troops will be given better tactical gear and equipment.

And NATO Secretary-General has warned that the Russian military is far from defeated.

"You shouldn't underestimate Russia. They're mobilising more troops, working hard to acquire more equipment, ammunition," he said.

"They're showing a willingness to actually suffer but continue the war."

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