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The young activist who chained herself to a car and blocked traffic in Sydney this morning said she was doing so to demand climate action in Australia.

Mali locked herself to the steering wheel and parked her car across both lanes at the southbound entrance of the Harbour Tunnel.

The 22-year-old filmed herself sitting in the driver's seat, explaining she was doing so "in protest of the climate destruction that is happening on this continent right now".

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"There are some really angry people who are screaming and threatening me and banging on doors.

"The police are on their way, and I'm not sure how long this is going to happen for. I'm not sure what is about to happen."

In the video a man can be heard screaming at the protester calling her a "dumb c—" and saying "you're f—ing everyone's day up".

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"You f—ing selfish c—, you're a f—ing selfish c—", he said.

"To this man I say I stand with you," Mali responded.

She was among 10 people arrested for their involvement in the protests. As of Monday afternoon no one had been charged.

The stunt was part of a wider week of disruption planned by climate activist group Blockade Australia.

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https://twitter.com/LiveTrafficSyd/status/1541193267827642369

This morning activists caused chaos across the city, marching through the CBD, and have vowed they have more action planned.

This is despite a raid on a property supposedly being used as a training camp for protesters leading to a number of arrests.

The protests come months after the NSW government announced it would crack down on protesters who disrupt traffic.

A new mother who returned to hospital twice after a Caesarean section for fluid leaking from her vagina, was sent home either undiagnosed or misdiagnosed because of systemic deficiencies at a district health board.It wasn’t until…

Russia has just defaulted on its foreign debt for the first time since the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, according to Bloomberg, further alienating the country from the global financial system following sanctions imposed over its war in Ukraine.

The country missed a Sunday night deadline (local time) to meet a 30-day grace period on interest payments originally due May 27.

Last month, the US Treasury Department ended Russia's ability to pay its billions in debt back to international investors through American banks.

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In response, the Russian Finance Ministry said it would pay dollar-denominated debts in rubles and offer “the opportunity for subsequent conversion into the original currency".

Russia calls any default artificial because it has the money to pay its debts but says sanctions have frozen its foreign currency reserves held abroad.

“There is money and there is also the readiness to pay," Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said last month.

“This situation, artificially created by an unfriendly country, will not have any effect on Russians’ quality of life.”

Tim Ash, senior emerging market sovereign analyst at BlueBay Asset Management, tweeted that the default “is clearly not" beyond Russia's control and that sanctions are preventing it from paying its debts because it invaded Ukraine.

Here are key things to know about a Russian default:

HOW MUCH DOES RUSSIA OWE?

About $57.6 billion in foreign bonds, about half of that to foreigners.

Before the start of the war, Russia had around $922 billion in foreign currency and gold reserves, much of which was held overseas and is now frozen.

Before today, Russia had not defaulted on its international debts since the Bolshevik Revolution more than a century ago, when the Russian Empire collapsed and the Soviet Union was created.

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Russia defaulted on its domestic debts in the late 1990s but was able to recover from that default with the help of international aid.

Investors have expected Russia to default for months.

Insurance contracts that cover Russian debt have priced a 80 per cent likelihood of default for weeks, and rating agencies like Standard & Poor’s and Moody’s have placed the country’s debt deep into junk territory.

HOW DO YOU KNOW IF A COUNTRY IS IN DEFAULT?

Ratings agencies can lower the rating to default or a court can decide the issue.

Bondholders who have credit default swaps — contracts that act like insurance policies against default — can ask a committee of financial firm representatives to decide whether a failure to pay debt should trigger a payout, which still isn’t a formal declaration of default.

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The Credit Default Determination Committee — an industry group of banks and investment funds — ruled on June 7 that Russia had failed to pay required additional interest after making a payment on a bond after the April 4 due date.

But the committee put off taking further action due to uncertainty over how sanctions might affect any settlement.

WHAT CAN INVESTORS DO?

The formal way to declare default is if 25 per cent or more of bondholders say they didn’t get their money.

Once that happens, provisions say all Russia’s other foreign bonds are also in default, and bondholders could then seek a court judgment to enforce payment.

In normal circumstances, investors and the defaulting government typically negotiate a settlement in which bondholders are given new bonds that are worth less but that at least give them some partial compensation.

But sanctions bar dealings with Russia’s finance ministry.

And no one knows when the war will end or how much defaulted bonds could wind up being worth.

In this case, declaring default and suing “might not be the wisest choice", Auslander said. It's not possible to negotiate with Russia and there are so many unknowns, so creditors may decide to “hang tight for now".

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Investors who wanted out of Russian debt have probably already headed for the exits, leaving those who may have bought bonds at knocked-down prices in hopes of profiting from a settlement in the long run.

And they might want to keep a low profile for a while to avoid being associated with the war.

Once a country defaults, it can be cut off from bond-market borrowing until the default is sorted out and investors regain confidence in the government’s ability and willingness to pay.

But Russia has already been cut off from Western capital markets, so any return to borrowing is a long way off anyway.

The Kremlin can still borrow rubles at home, where it mostly relies on Russian banks to buy its bonds.

WHAT WOULD BE THE IMPACT OF RUSSIA'S DEFAULT?

Western sanctions over the war have sent foreign companies fleeing from Russia and interrupted the country's trade and financial ties with the rest of the world.

Default would be one more symptom of that isolation and disruption.

Investment analysts are cautiously reckoning that a Russia default would not have the kind of impact on global financial markets and institutions that came from an earlier default in 1998.

Back then, Russia’s default on domestic ruble bonds led the US government to step in and get banks to bail out Long-Term Capital Management, a large US hedge fund whose collapse, it was feared, could have shaken the wider financial and banking system.

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Holders of the bonds — for instance, funds that invest in emerging market bonds — could take serious losses.

Russia, however, played only a small role in emerging market bond indexes, limiting the losses to fund investors.

While the war itself is having devastating consequences in terms of human suffering and higher food and energy prices worldwide, default on government bonds would be “definitely not systemically relevant”, the IMF's Kristalina Georgieva has said.

With Associated Press

A Melbourne woman has been given the shock of a lifetime after becoming almost $3 million richer overnight.

The woman, from Knoxfield, initially thought the win "was a hoax" after discovering she was the lucky recipient of a $2.8 million TattsLotto win.

She was getting ready for work this morning when she got the "mind-blowing call".

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"Oh my god! Oh my god! I want to scream; I want to shout!" she said.

"I can't grasp this news. I'm speechless.

"I thought it was a hoax… I thought to myself: 'Who is playing mind games with me on a Monday morning'."

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After falling "on tough times" recently, the woman says the money will totally transform her life and her family's.

"My heart is going a thousand miles an hour – I'm getting goosebumps," she said.

"It's such a beautiful feeling."

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There were seven division one winning entries across Australia in TattsLotto draw 4271 on Saturday June 25. Each entry scored a division one prize of $2,857,142.86.

The winner said she has a couple of ideas in mind about how she will spend the money – paying off the house mortgage, visiting family overseas, and upgrading the car.

Her winning 12-game Quickpick was purchased online at thelott.com.

Iranian state television said on Sunday that Tehran had launched a solid-fuelled rocket into space, drawing a rebuke from Washington ahead of the expected resumption of stalled talks over Tehran's tattered nuclear deal with world powers.

It's unclear when or where the rocket was launched, but the announcement came after satellite photos showed preparations at Imam Khomeini Spaceport in Iran's rural Semnan province, the site of Iran's frequent failed attempts to put a satellite into orbit.

State-run media aired dramatic footage of the blastoff against the backdrop of heightened tensions over Tehran's nuclear program, which is racing ahead under decreasing international oversight.

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Iran had previously acknowledged that it planned more tests for the satellite-carrying rocket, which it first launched in February of last year.

Ahmad Hosseini, spokesman for Iran's Defence Ministry, said Zuljanah, a 25.5 metre-long rocket, was capable of carrying a satellite of 220 kilograms that would ultimately gather data in low-earth orbit and promote Iran's space industry. Zuljanah is named for the horse of Imam Hussein, the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad.

The White House said it was aware of Iran's announcement and criticised the move as "unhelpful and destabilising."

The launch comes just a day after the European Union's foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, travelled to Tehran in a push to resuscitate negotiations over Iran's nuclear program that have stalemated for months. A few significant sticking points remain, including Tehran's demand that Washington lift terrorism sanctions on its paramilitary Revolutionary Guard.

Borrell said on Saturday that talks over the nuclear deal would resume in an unnamed Persian Gulf country in the coming days, with Iranian media reporting that Qatar would likely host the negotiations.

Former President Donald Trump withdrew the US from the nuclear deal in 2018 and reimposed crushing sanctions on Iran. Tehran responded by greatly ramping up its nuclear work and now enriches uranium closer than ever to weapons-grade levels.

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In a further escalation that limits the international community's view into its nuclear program, Iran removed over two dozen International Atomic Energy Agency cameras from its nuclear sites this month. The agency's director called the move a "fatal blow" to the tattered nuclear deal.

Tehran's rocket launches have raised alarm in Washington amid the unraveling of the nuclear deal. The US warns the launches defy a United Nations Security Council resolution calling on Iran to steer clear of any activity related to ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons.

The White House on Sunday said it was committed to using sanctions and other measures to prevent further advances in Iran's ballistic missile program.

The US intelligence community's 2022 threat assessment, published in March, claims such a satellite launch vehicle "shortens the timeline" to an intercontinental ballistic missile for Iran as it uses "similar technologies."

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Iran, which long has said it does not seek nuclear weapons, maintains its satellite launches and rocket tests do not have a military component.

Even as Iran's government has sharpened its focus on space, sending several short-lived satellites into orbit and in 2013 launching a monkey into space, the program has seen recent troubles. There have been five failed launches in a row for the Simorgh program, a type of satellite-carrying rocket. A fire at the Imam Khomeini Spaceport in February 2019 also killed three researchers.

The launch pad used in the preparations for the launch of the Zuljanah rocket remains scarred from an explosion in August 2019 that even drew the attention of then-President Trump. He later tweeted what appeared to be a classified surveillance image of the launch failure. Satellite images from February suggested a failed Zuljanah launch earlier this year, though Iran did not acknowledge it.

Meanwhile, Iran's paramilitary Revolutionary Guard in April 2020 revealed its own secret space program by successfully launching a satellite into orbit. The Guard operates its own military infrastructure parallel to Iran's regular armed forces.

There has been an explosion of fury, fear and mourning across streets of the US after a landmark ruling of abortion rights was overturned.

A man who was caught riding an e-scooter on a Melbourne road at almost 60km/h has lost his scooter, been hit with a hefty fine and is set to face charges.

Police pulled the man over when they found him riding his e-scooter on Clow Street in Dandenong in Melbourne's south-east on Friday.

They explained that under current laws the speed at which he was travelling meant the scooter was classified as a motorcycle.

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"If the e-scooter motor exceeds a continuous power output of more than 200 Watts, or they are capable of being ridden at speeds greater than 10km/h, then YES, they meet the definition of a motor vehicle," police said.

"In cases where the device has two wheels, they are deemed to be motorcycles."

This then brought the man into trouble because he wasn't wearing a helmet, was found to be unlicensed and also under the influence of methylamphetamine.

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The e-scooter was immediately impounded for 30 days at a cost of $1038.

Police said the 45-year-old Dandenong man could also expect a summons in the mail for numerous traffic offences.