Australia news LIVE: ATO credit card ban postponed; Mamdani calls Trump after ICE shooting; Hanson tries to walk back Bondi comments

Leader of the opposition Angus Taylor has promised to take legislation to parliament to reverse the tax office’s decision to ban credit card payments if the government does not take action on the issue.

“They should override the tax office decision today, and if they are not prepared to do it, we will take legislation to the Parliament next week on Monday to do this,” Taylor said in a press conference. “Small businesses deserve better.”

Earlier this morning, Minister for Foreign Affairs Penny Wong said the ATO was an independent body, and the government did not have the power to directly intervene in its decisions: “They are independent. Governments can’t direct the tax office to implement tax in a certain way.”

Taylor said the decision should be reversed: “We don’t need consultation on this, we need change.”

“[The legislation] would overturn the decision that’s been made. It’s pretty simple. It’s not going to be a complicated piece of legislation. The government, if they want to do it, can do it today, and they should.”

Students barricaded a high school in north-eastern Paris with garbage bins on Thursday before police moved in with tear gas, as France’s nationwide protests showed few signs of ending.

The Helene Boucher high school has been a flashpoint for clashes in the French capital and was one of hundreds of schools disrupted by protests on Thursday. Riot police gathered in side streets as students converged on the school. Many protesters wore surgical masks or hoodies, apparently to avoid being recognised.

At least a dozen demonstrations supporting the high school students’ movement were planned across France later in the day, including a rally at Place de la Bastille in Paris, where tear gas and a water cannon were fired at protesters.

Police have made more than 6600 arrests since late September, when students, most of them under 18, began protesting to demand more education funding, according to the Interior Ministry. The Education Ministry said on Thursday that 375 schools were fully or partially closed.

The Australian sharemarket has risen at the open despite falls on US market, with technology stocks weighing on Wall Street.

The S&P/ASX 200 was up 38.7 points, or 0.5 per cent, to 8699.6 in early trade. Meanwhile, data centre start-up Firmus has withdrawn its plans for a blockbuster listing on the ASX after investors baulked at the price and terms, scrapping an initial public offering that would have valued the Australian company at about $43.7 billion.

Overnight, the S&P 500 dipped 0.5 per cent for its second-straight loss after setting its all-time high. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed flat and the Nasdaq finished 1.3 per cent lower.

The Australian dollar was trading at US69.59¢.

Overnight, US stocks bent under a 3.8 per cent rise for the price of a barrel of Brent, the international standard, to $US104.08. It’s been swinging between $US96 and nearly $US110 over the last month on uncertainty about when the war with Iran will allow the global energy industry to return to normal.

More than one-third of sexually abused children told no one or instead turned to an AI chatbot for help, the Australian Federal Police has warned.

“I’ve been describing it as quite heartbreaking,” AFP Commissioner Krissy Barrett said.

One in four children under 18 have experienced online sexual victimisation, or are friends with someone who has, an Adelaide University study found.

About 15 per cent of those crimes involved artificial intelligence, with the technology used as a tool in a quarter of incidents of non-consensual sharing of sexual images.

Cornell University’s administration and president are facing mounting pressure over the school’s handling of an alleged 2024 gang rape that has thrust it into the international spotlight and set off a wave of outrage over sexual violence on college campuses.

Since Monday the administration has faced student protests, a no-confidence resolution from faculty, and criticism by alumni.

Officials in the upstate New York town that’s home to Cornell University placed a moratorium on permits for some student parties as local leaders scrutinise how the Ivy League school handled 2024 assault allegations from a former student.

Ithaca’s city council passed the resolution Wednesday evening local time in an effort to reduce the number of social gatherings “where sexual violence and gender-based harassment proliferate”.

Thousands of Spaniards marched through central Madrid to mark the death of the 87-year-old woman whose eviction from her home ignited protests across the country and led to a snap election next month.

Maricarmen Abascal, who died on Wednesday, had been hospitalised for severe anxiety and exhaustion since her eviction on September 23. No cause of death has been announced.

Protests over home shortages and surging rents following her eviction prompted Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez to call a snap general election for November 29 after parliament rejected his government’s proposals to address a mounting housing crisis.

Firmus has withdrawn its application to list on the ASX, scrapping an initial public offering that would have valued the Australian data centre company at about $43.7 billion.

In a statement the company said its board had weighed recent market volatility and prevailing market conditions.

It concluded that the terms on which the offer could proceed would not appropriately reflect the company’s business and long-term growth outlook, and that going ahead was not in the best interests of the company and its shareholders.

Firmus said it would now pursue capital from private markets and consider other public and private options. It will update shareholders as those options progress.

Some potential investors turned more cautious as the deal progressed, voicing concern over existing shareholders potentially flooding the market soon after the company’s debut, people familiar with the matter have said. The overhang added to questions over what some investors see as an aggressive pricing strategy, they said.

“I’ve never seen an IPO so polarising,” said Jun Bei Liu, co-founder and lead portfolio manager at investment management company Ten Cap, on Bloomberg TV. “There was a lot of international investor interest; however, when it comes to the crunch, the demand seems like it isn’t there when they were asked to put up the capital that’s required.”

The Pentagon says the firing-squad execution of Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan will be livestreamed after Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth said the execution would be “public”.

Hegseth, speaking to the conservative TV outlet Real America’s Voice News on Wednesday, said the execution of Hasan will take place at Fort Hood on December 3. Hasan was convicted of killing 13 people and injuring 32 others in a shooting at the military base in 2009.

“We’ll make sure that people are able to watch it, that it’s public,” Hegseth said.

Hegseth spoke to the outlet while aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier. He was visiting the long-deployed crew, who supported the Iran war, before their arrival at their home port in San Diego.

When asked if Hasan had made any final requests or reached out to the Trump administration, Hegseth simply replied: “Don’t care. We’ll see him on December 3rd.”

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US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner will meet Ukrainian representatives in Miami on Friday (US time) to discuss new ideas and try to produce a unified proposal for resolving the war in Ukraine, an American source familiar with the plan said.

Earlier on Thursday US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the conflict was at a dangerous stalemate. President Donald Trump this week said he planned to talk to Russian President Vladimir Putin by phone soon.

It comes after a Russian-guided bomb exploded next to public buses filled with passengers in eastern Ukraine on Thursday local time, killing 30 people as part of a wave of attacks that also worsened power outages in the capital, authorities said.

The morning attack occurred next to a bus stop in the war-torn city of Kramatorsk in Ukraine’s Donetsk region, prompting public transport to be suspended in the area.

US President Donald Trump said comments he made that Iran could “take out” California cities had been misinterpreted and that he was instead referring to the need for people to tolerate higher petrol prices.

Trump made the remarks at a political rally in Nebraska on Monday as he spoke about Americans’ wartime economic sacrifices.

“Remember, with the war, it’s just artificial, it’s a little bit high, it’s a small price to pay,” he said then. “It’s a small price to ​pay for keeping the world safe, for keeping our country safe. They could take out a city. Let ’em take out Los Angeles, let ’em take out San Diego. This is a ​very small price to pay, and it’s going to be over with very soon.”

California’s Democratic leaders and some fellow Republicans quickly rebuked the remarks.

“What I was talking about was that a temporary increase in the price of Gasoline is a small price to pay for Iran not having a Nuclear Weapon,” Trump said in a Truth Social post on Thursday (US time).

“If you want to see a big price, can you imagine what it would be like if they bombed San Diego and/or Los Angeles?” he continued, saying he loved both cities.