Political and religious leaders are pleading for calm amid a “combustible situation” set off by a stabbing at a western Sydney church and subsequent riot, as the state mulls tighter knife laws following two serious stabbing incidents in as many days.

The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, held a joint press conference with police and security chiefs in Canberra on Tuesday morning, hours after New South Wales declared as a terrorist attack the stabbing of Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel at a service at the Assyrian Christ the Good Shepherd church in Wakeley just after 7pm on Monday.

Counter-terrorism investigators – a joint team comprising NSW and federal police as well as the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (Asio) – now have extraordinary powers under NSW laws to investigate the attack, as well as conduct searches to prevent any further suspected attacks.

• Sign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup

A live stream of the service on the church’s website showed a person approaching the altar who then appeared to stab toward the bishop’s head multiple times.

The congregation then swarmed forward, with a scuffle ensuing between the worshippers and the attacker. Police arrested a 16-year-old and were forced to hold him at the church for his own safety as a large crowd of several hundred people gathered outside the church. Riot police were called in to forcibly move the crowd on after police cars were smashed.

The NSW premier, Chris Minns, gathered leaders of the local Muslim, Assyrian and Melkite communities for an emergency meeting at 10.30pm on Monday, organising for them to put their names to a statement condemning the violence and calling for calm.

However, tensions remained fresh on the ground as Minns, local MPs and the Fairfield mayor visited near the site of the incident.

Meanwhile, leaders of the Lakemba mosque in Sydney’s west revealed they had received threats to firebomb the mosque on Monday night and would have heightened security over the next week.

“It’s a combustible situation and I’m not going to sugarcoat it,” Minns told 2GB on Tuesday afternoon. Communities in western Sydney were on high alert for the potential for “tit for tat” retaliations, he said.

Minns also confirmed the teenager had been found in possession of a flick knife at a train station in November last year and that a magistrate had placed him on a good behaviour bond over the incident earlier this year. Minns also said the boy had been found with a knife at school in 2020.

“Part of the reason the commissioner for police made a terrorism designation investigation at 1.30 this morning was because of the person of interest’s history,” Minns said.

Asked if knife laws should be strengthened in NSW following the incidents at the church and Bondi Junction in recent days, Minns noted rules had already been tightened following the murder of a paramedic in recent months, but said he was open to exploring reforms.

“I’m not prepared to rule anything out right now. Obviously when people are being killed and you’ve got a situation where a knife is being used, then it would be irresponsible not to look at,” Minns said.

Albanese on Tuesday expressed his sympathies to the Assyrian community in western Sydney. “This is a disturbing incident. There is no place for violence in our community.”

“There’s no place for violent extremism. We’re a peace-loving nation. This is a time to unite, not divide, as a community and as a country.”

Albanese declined to state the religion of the attacker, but the Asio chief, Mike Burgess, at the joint press conference with the prime minister said he was aware of video of the alleged offender speaking in Arabic.

“If he [the bishop] didn’t get himself involved in my religion, if he hadn’t spoken about my prophet, I wouldn’t have come here … if he just spoke about his own religion, I wouldn’t have come,” the alleged attacker can be heard saying in the video.

The video reportedly shows the mayhem that followed the attack, with people in bloodied clothes walking around as the alleged attacker is held against the ground.

Emmanuel, who has a popular online presence, has previously criticised Islam and the prophet Muhammad in public sermons.

On the declaration of the event as a terrorist attack, Burgess said: “To call it a terrorist act, you need indications of information or evidence that suggest actually the motivation was religiously motivated or ideologically motivated.

“In the case of Saturday [the stabbing at Bondi Junction], that was not the case. In this case, the information we have and the police have before us indicates that is strongly the case. That is why it was called an act of terrorism.”

By declaring the event a terrorist attack, police will have greater investigative powers under NSW’s terror laws. It includes powers to search properties and vehicles, among other methods, to examine a past attack or prevent a suspected one from occurring.

Burgess said that despite the declaration of a terrorist attack, the current terror level threat for Australia – “possible” – would not be raised: “One incident like this does not change the threat level but we keep it under review.”

He said that while there were no indications of others connected to the attacker, Asio was investigating to determine there were no further threats.

The Australian federal police commissioner, Reece Kershaw, also at the joint press conference, called the subsequent commotion “a disgraceful act from the community who attacked police at that scene”.

Minns said the decision to make the terror declaration was taken early on Tuesday morning and validated by the police minister.

The NSW police commissioner, Karen Webb, said a strike force had been established to investigate the incident.

“We’ll allege there’s a degree of premeditation on the basis this person has travelled to that location, which is not near his residential address, he has travelled with a knife and subsequently the bishop and the priest have been stabbed,” Webb said.

Webb said that after the stabbing a crowd of people then “converged on that area and began to turn on police”. Police estimate the crowd grew from 50 people to approximately 500.

The alleged attacker severed his own finger during the attack, Minns said, after earlier questions of whether his finger was cut in retaliation.

“People used what was available to them in the area, including bricks, concrete, palings, to assault police and throw missiles at police and police equipment and police vehicles.”

Some police officers were injured and taken to hospital overnight, while 20 police vehicles were damaged and 10 rendered unusable, Webb said.

The NSW ambulance commissioner, Dominic Morgan, said 30 patients had been assessed and treated overnight, with seven taken to hospital, about 20 of them having been affected by capsicum spray.

Paramedics had come “directly under threat” and had to retreat into the church during the riot, with six of them stuck in the church for three and a half hours, Morgan said.

The alleged offender had not previously been on any terror watch list.

Facebook’s parent company Meta and X/Twitter have been told to remove violent and distressing videos and imagery of the stabbing of a prominent Orthodox Christian leader in Sydney’s west on Monday evening.

The eSafety commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, told reporters on Tuesday that X and Meta had been issued with notices to remove material within 24 hours that depicted “gratuitous or offensive violence with a high degree of impact or detail”, with the companies facing potential fines if they fail to comply.

The notices relate to the alleged stabbing of Emmanuel at a service at the Assyrian Christ the Good Shepherd church in Wakeley just after 7pm on Monday. The service was being livestreamed and a recording of it has circulated online.

“While the majority of mainstream social media platforms have engaged with us, I am not satisfied enough is being done to protect Australians from this most extreme and gratuitous violent material circulating online,” Inman Grant said.

“That is why I am exercising my powers under the Online Safety Act to formally compel them to remove it.”

X has been contacted for comment.

After the notice was issued, Meta said it had added versions of the video to its database to ensure that it would block people attempting to upload it again in future. The company has been removing uploads as of Tuesday.

“Our priority is to protect people using our services from seeing this horrific content even if bad actors are determined to call attention to it,” a Meta spokesperson said. “We have taken steps to prevent possible copies of the incident being re-shared and are in contact with law enforcement and the eSafety commissioner’s office to provide any necessary assistance.”

Inman Grant said the level of any fines could depend on the gravity of the noncompliance, and said more removal notices to other platforms could be issued.

Notices have not been issued in relation to imagery from the fatal Bondi Junction Westfield Junction stabbing which has continued to circulate on social media since Saturday.

• Sign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup

The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, told reporters on Tuesday he was concerned about the videos circulating online and the communications minister, Michelle Rowland, had been in contact with Inman Grant about getting videos removed.

“We remain concerned about the role of social media, including the publication of videos that can be very harmful, particularly for younger people who have access. Anyone with a phone essentially can do that,” he said.

“We continue to work with the eSafety commissioner and to use what powers are at our disposal to demand that material be taken down. I know the AFP commissioner and the security agencies are engaged in that as well.”

Those in the crowd outside the church on Monday night were being incited by inflammatory posts being spread on social media, one member of the Assyrian community, Maria, told Guardian Australia.

“They were reacting to what they were seeing on social media, there were many inflammatory posts making the rounds, people advocating for violence and the such. It was making lots of people very angry.”

Monday’s attack came just days after 40-year-old Queensland man Joel Cauchi killed five women and one man at Bondi Junction Westfield shopping centre in Sydney. In the immediate aftermath of the incident, TikTok and Meta were prepared for the possibility of the attack being streamed and shared online, as the 2019 Christchurch terror attack had been.

“Within 30 minutes of the tragic news breaking, our trust and safety team were notified and immediately activated our longstanding procedures that relate to managing these types of tragic events,” a TikTok spokesperson said.

“Moderators have been proactively removing content that breaches our community guidelines.”

Guardian Australia understands Meta began monitoring for live streams, as well as the bullying or harassment of victims and accounts praising the victims. As the victims were named, the company temporarily deactivated the accounts of those victims at the request of families.

The company also put interstitials on disturbing images to blur them in users’ feeds.

A spokesperson for the eSafety commissioner said on Monday platforms had been responsive to the office’s request to take down material that included depictions of real violence that are gratuitous or offensive and show a very high degree of impact or detail.

“In the immediate aftermath of the Bondi attack, eSafety took steps to respond to material circulating on major platforms depicting detailed scenes of death and violence given its potential to cause a significant amount of distress and harm to Australians, especially to the victims’ families and loved ones,” the spokesperson said.

While the fears over livestreaming the Bondi attack did not eventuate, the platforms became flooded with misinformation about the event in the hours after.

As Guardian Australia reported on Monday, before Cauchi was named as the attacker, social media accounts shaped their own narrative about the tragedy’s cause without any information provided by authorities. Early on, social media accounts speculated whether the man was Muslim, with other accounts countering by speculating he was Jewish.

Despite the police naming Cauchi on Sunday, Guardian Australia has seen posts across platforms that still incorrectly name a Benjamin Cohen as the attacker. At least one post on Facebook, not mentioning that name but containing other misinformation about the attack, has been labelled as factchecked as false by Meta’s factcheck partner AAP.

The federal government is expected to introduce legislation later this year aimed requiring social media companies to toughen their policies on “content [that] is false, misleading or deceptive, and where the provision of that content on the service is reasonably likely to cause or contribute to serious harm”.

The introduction was delayed last year after initial consultation on the proposal led to claims it would stifle speech online and would not protect religious speech. Rowland said after “constructive consultation” with industry about amendments, it was considering refinements including definitions, additional transparency measures, and improving workability.

“We know that seriously harmful misinformation and disinformation spreads fast on social media,” she said “That’s why the Albanese government is committed to holding digital platforms to account for their public commitments to address this content.”

A 16-year-old-boy was arrested on Monday night after allegedly stabbing a bishop and several others at an Assyrian church service in Wakeley in Sydney’s west. The incident triggered a riot among worshippers and violence towards police and paramedics.

As leaders call on various religious communities in Sydney’s west to remain calm, here is what we know so far about what has been declared by authorities as a terrorist incident.

• A live stream of the service at Assyrian Christ the Good Shepherd church in Wakeley showed a person approaching the altar who then appeared to stab toward the head of Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel just after 7pm.

• A priest was also allegedly stabbed in the attack.

• In a video reportedly filmed in the wake of the alleged attack, the teenager can be heard saying in Arabic: “If he [the bishop] didn’t get himself involved in my religion, if he hadn’t spoken about my Prophet, I wouldn’t have come here … if he just spoke about his own religion, I wouldn’t have come.”

• Emmanuel, who has a popular online presence, has previously criticised Islam and the prophet Muhammad in public sermons.

• The congregation then swarmed forward, with a scuffle ensuing between the worshippers and the attacker. Others travelled to the church, with 2,000 reportedly gathering on the suburban street.

• Police were called and arrested the 16-year-old, who had one of his fingers severed in the alleged incident. Authorities believe he severed his own finger.

• The attacker, bishop and priest all underwent surgery.

• The NSW premier, Chris Minns, said on Monday the 16-year-old had been found in possession of a flick knife at a train station in November last year, and a magistrate had placed him on a good behaviour bond over the incident earlier this year. Minns also said the boy had been found with a knife at school in 2020.

• The alleged offender had not previously been on any terror watch list.

• Police and paramedics came under attack during the riot. Six paramedics became stuck in the church for three and a half hours, while 30 people were injured – about 20 of whom were affected by capsicum spray.

• The alleged attack was declared a terror incident in the early hours of Tuesday morning, which gives counter-terrorism police extraordinary powers under NSW laws to investigate, as well as conduct searches to prevent any further suspected attacks.

• Minns gathered leaders of the local Muslim, Assyrian and Melkite communities for an emergency meeting at 10.30pm on Monday, organising for them to put their names to a statement condemning the violence and calling for calm.

• Leaders of Lakemba mosque in Sydney’s west revealed they had received threats to firebomb the mosque on Monday night.

• The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, has pleaded for unity after the alleged attack.

• The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (Asio) chief, Mike Burgess, said there was evidence the alleged attack was religiously motivated.

• Authorities have so far declined to state the religion of the alleged offender.

• The NSW police commissioner, Karen Webb, said the police would allege a degree of premeditation, as the church was not near the alleged offender’s home, and he allegedly travelled there with a knife.

• The alleged offender had not previously been on any terror watch list.

• The NSW government will now consider strengthening knife laws, following the incident as well as the attack in Bondi Junction on Saturday in which six people were stabbed to death.

A woman has died and two other people have been taken to hospital after police say they consumed a drink at a retreat near the regional Victorian city of Ballarat on the weekend.

A police spokesperson confirmed that Moorabool detectives were investigating the death of a woman in Clunes, west of Melbourne, on Sunday.

“It is believed a woman was at a retreat on Fraser Street when she became ill after ingesting a drink just after 12am,” the spokesperson said.

“The 53-year-old Ringwood North woman died at the scene.

“Two other people were taken to hospital for observation.”

Officers were examining whether the drink contained mushrooms.

The retreat describes itself on social media as an alternative and holistic health service. It had no events listed for Saturday night, according to a newsletter and social media posts, but said in a Facebook post that a subsequent event had been cancelled.

The retreat’s owner has been contacted for comment.

An Ambulance Victoria spokesperson confirmed that paramedics responded to the incident and two people were transported by road ambulance to the Ballarat Base hospital.

Police had earlier said they believed woman became ill after consuming the drink on Saturday, but issued a clarification about the time on Tuesday afternoon.

A verdict has been handed down in Bruce Lehrmann’s defamation trial – but the case will be back in court in less than a week.

The former Liberal staffer lost the defamation case he brought against Network Ten and Lisa Wilkinson, with Justice Michael Lee finding on Monday that on the balance of probabilities Lehrmann raped Brittany Higgins on the minister’s couch in Parliament House in 2019.

“As a result of the inconclusive criminal trial, Mr Lehrmann remains a man who has not been convicted of any offence, but he has now been found, by the civil standard of proof, to have engaged in a great wrong,” Lee said. “It follows Ms Higgins has been proven to be a victim of sexual assault.”

Having lost the case, Lehrmann now faces a potentially large legal bill.

How much could Lehrmann have to pay?

The case will be back in court on Monday 22 April for a hearing on costs, where Lehrmann may be ordered to pay Ten’s legal bill, possibly to the tune of $8m, on top of his own.

It is open to Lehrmann to appeal against the judgment, but Lee said if he were to win on appeal his damages would only be $20,000 “because he is only entitled to be compensated for the reputation he deserves”.

• Sign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup

Defamation expert Peter Bartlett, a partner at MinterEllison and the lead solicitor for Nine in the Ben Roberts-Smith trial, estimates Ten’s bill to be $8m because the network was paying for three firms of lawyers.

“The Ben Roberts-Smith case, for example, ran for 110 days and the costs were some $30m,” Bartlett told the Guardian.

“This case went for 23 days but Channel Ten had three firms of lawyers and three different silks.”

Bartlett said Fairfax, now Nine Entertainment, was able to recoup its costs in the defamation case because Seven West Media’s billionaire chairman Kerry Stokes was funding the former soldier’s case.

“We got an order for indemnity costs out of Stokes, so that way we got all our money back,” he said. “Ten can’t do that.”

What if Lehrmann can’t afford the bill?

By all accounts Lehrmann is jobless, homeless and is lacking significant means to pay Ten’s costs, so having successfully defended the case, the network could be saddled with the bill.

Wilkinson, a former Project presenter, filed a cross-claim against Ten over a dispute about payment of more than $700,000 in legal costs, and won, so she will be for the most part covered by Ten.

All the outstanding issues, including Wilkinson’s cross-claim, will be decided next week.

Bartlett said Lee’s judgment will be very well received and many journalists will be jealous of his excellent turn of phrase.

“I think the judgment very clearly analysed all of the evidence,” Bartlett said. “He was in an impossible position, having all of those witnesses in the box, and he took the view that, you know, a lot of them were not telling entirely the truth.

“So he had a very, very difficult job. A job that no one would want, and he did it very, very well.”

Could there be more legal action against Lehrmann?

Lehrmann also faces potential prosecution by the ACT after he was found by Lee to have breached the Harman undertaking when he leaked material he received in his criminal trial to Seven for its Spotlight program.

Lee said this action was “seriously wrong” and reflects very poorly upon Lehrmann’s character.

“Consistently with the instructions provided to his lawyers, Mr Lehrmann gave evidence during the trial to the effect that he did not give documents to the Seven Network, he just gave an interview,” Lee said.

“As I explained at the trial, I am not some sort of roving law enforcement official, and if any issue concerning an alleged breach of the Hearne v Street obligation is to be pursued in relation to anyone, it will not be by me, and it will not be by this Court.”

As the material Lehrmann leaked to Spotlight was provided to him as part of an ACT supreme court trial, he is subject to the court’s rules.

Those rules mean a person could be charged with contempt of court if they give those documents to people outside his case “without reasonable excuse”, a spokesperson for the ACT’s justice agency said.

The decision over whether to prosecute Lehrmann with contempt of court now lies with the ACT Director of Public Prosecutions, the same party that dropped the charges in 2022 after concern for Higgins’ mental health after the first trial was aborted due to jury misconduct.

Elsewhere, Lehrmann is facing two charges of rape relating to an incident in Toowoomba in October 2021 and a committal cross-examination has been set down for 17 June.

What about other cases?

Former Liberal minister Linda Reynolds is suing Higgins for defamation over an Instagram post that included a list of complaints against the senator. The Western Australia supreme court case is ongoing and is likely to head for trial after a closed-door mediation earlier this year failed.

Neither Lehrmann nor Higgins had commented on the judgment as of Tuesday afternoon.

• Additional reporting by Sarah Basford Canales

Bruce Lehrmann has cancelled his headline speaking role at June’s “Restoring the Presumption of Innocence” conference in the wake of his defamation trial judgment, as survivor advocacy groups label the event “cooked”.

Before Justice Michael Lee found that, on the balance of probability, Lehrmann raped his former colleague Brittany Higgins in Parliament House in 2019, Lehrmann was due to appear at the conference as a “poster boy for trial by media”.

Advertisements for the Sydney event described it as challenging “the believe-all-women ideology”.

The event’s sponsors, Mothers of Sons, said Lehrmann “decided not to appear”. Australians for Science and Freedom (ASF), who have been working with Mothers of Sons, said Lehrmann agreed with their assessment that he should not be on the program.

Sarah Williams, founder of the advocacy group What Were You Wearing, is running a petition to cancel the conference altogether. She said the organisations and speakers supported Lehrmann.

“It’s good that he’s pulled out but I’m still very concerned that it’s going ahead,” she said.

“The event’s as cooked as it was before. It is people getting together to victim-blame.

“We’re already struggling to get any crimes convicted. Things like this make it a million times harder. It’ll make victims not want to go further any more.”

Mothers of Sons posted on Facebook that Lehrmann was “subject to extremely aggressive pursuit by the media”.

“[He] is concerned that his participation may threaten the audience, jeopardise this important event, and distract from its main purpose.”

They describe themselves as a group of women whose “sons have faced extraordinary ordeals in our unjust, anti-male legal systems and workplaces”.

They claim men are routinely subjected to false accusations of sexual assault, and treated as guilty from the very first accusation.

Statistics show very few women ever report sexual assaults. Of those who do, few of the complaints get to court. Of those that get to court, sexual assault cases have the highest acquittal rate compared to other offences.

Bettina Arndt, a writer who describes her work as “denouncing feminism and advocating for men’s rights”, is organising the conference along with ASF and Mothers of Sons.

In promotional material shared by Arndt before the trial, Lehrmann is described as the “poster boy for trial by media” who has “endured years of having his reputation trashed”.

Arndt wrote on her blog that she would speak at the conference about a “fake rape crisis” on university campuses.

In February, education ministers gave the go ahead to an independent watchdog to tackle gender-based violence on campuses after a survey found one in 20 students had been sexually assaulted since starting university.

Arndt has often been at the centre of controversies, including having her Australia Day honour for services “to gender equity through advocacy for men” reviewed after a public backlash. The former Australians of the Year Grace Tame and Rosie Batty as well as former Victorian premier Daniel Andrews were among those who wanted Arndt stripped of the award.

Mothers of Sons said the conference would go ahead with an alternative presenter.

“(While) ensuring that the Lehrmann case still receives appropriate attention at the conference as a powerful example of trial by media undermining the vital legal principle of the presumption of innocence,” they said.

Gigi Foster, co-founder and co-director of ASF, said Mothers of Sons and Arndt were responsible for “drawing up the specific program for the conference”.

“ASF supports the principle of presumed innocence,” she said.

“We are not involved in this conference in order to support any particular person, including Bruce Lehrmann, or any convicted criminal.

“After Monday’s ruling, ASF did not see Bruce as someone who should be on the conference program, and we are glad that he agreed with this assessment (as did Bettina).”

She said most Australians would agree with ASF’s position that the “presumption of innocence should apply to all human beings”.

The conference will be held at a mystery venue in Rushcutters Bay.

Guardian Australia has contacted Arndt and Mothers of Sons for comment.

The security of nearly 1 billion people across Europe and North America is under threat from Russian attempts to target the extensive vulnerabilities of underwater infrastructure including windfarms, pipelines and power cables, a Nato commander has warned.

V Adm Didier Maleterre, the deputy commander of Nato’s Allied Maritime Command (Marcom), said the network of underwater cables and pipes on which Europe’s power and communications depend were not built to withstand the “hybrid warfare” being pursued by Moscow and other Nato adversaries.

“We know the Russians have developed a lot of hybrid warfare under the sea to disrupt the European economy, through cables, internet cables, pipelines. All of our economy under the sea is under threat,” he said.

“And, to be very clear, we know what Russians have developed as far as nuclear submarines to operate under the sea. So we are not naive and we [Nato countries] are working together.”

The comments come after two incidents of suspected sabotage on gas pipelines in the Baltic in the last 18 months – first on Nord Stream 1 and 2 in September 2022, followed by the Balticconnector in October last year. Despite extensive investigations by multiple states both remain unsolved, although Finland said in December that “everything indicated” a Chinese ship had purposely damaged the Balticconnector with its anchor.

Maleterre, a submariner who said he had himself spent “more than 1,000 days under the sea”, said the environment had changed dramatically since much of the current infrastructure was first developed by the private sector, leaving it extremely vulnerable.

“They [the companies responsible for them] didn’t know that such hybrid warfare would develop so rapidly. More than 90% of [the] internet is under the sea. All our links between the US, Canada and Europe are transmitting under the sea, so there are a lot of vulnerabilities.”

Despite the increasing role of offshore wind power to meet climate goals, the infrastructure still has “system vulnerabilities,” he said. Offshore wind will need to increase by 25% by 2050 to meet EU wind energy capacity targets, according to industry association WindEurope, while the Biden administration wants to deploy 30,000 megawatts of offshore wind along the coastlines of the US by 2030.

At any one time Maleterre said that Marcom had “more than 100 ships, nuclear submarines and conventional submarines” patrolling waters including the Arctic, Black Sea, Atlantic, Baltic and the Mediterranean.

“That’s a very important concern because it’s a security issue for nearly 1 billion Nato-nation civilians. We need to be protected and well supplied by our vital undersea infrastructures.”

But even with a significant presence it was impossible for Nato to guard every piece of undersea infrastructure, he said, with primary responsibility lying with nations to protect their own infrastructure.

“We know there are a lot of vulnerabilities … When we have offshore installation, first of all the responsibilities are in the states’ hands,” he said.

He added: “We have particular attention on the Russians at the moment, but it’s very difficult to have a permanent surveillance of every cable; it’s not possible. A lot of nations – Norway, Sweden, Denmark as well – have developed drones, sensors, UUVs [unmanned underwater vehicles] to be able to detect very rapidly [something] suspicious or something going wrong.”

Such is the heightened nature of fears over undersea security that Nato is in the process of setting up a centre dedicated to the issue at Marcom’s UK-based headquarters in Northwood, on the north-west outskirts of London, alongside Nato’s shipping centre.

Using artificial intelligence software, Marcom can detect and follow suspicious activity at sea, such as ships switching off their automatic identification system (AIS) to prevent them from being traced or loitering in a particular area.

They are also using satellites. “We are using all our sensors from the seabed to space, particularly the satellite capabilities of Nato, to be able to identify suspicious activity,” Maleterre said.

Being able to identify the actors behind hybrid attacks was vital, said Maleterre, but he admitted it could be challenging, comparing it to tracking down the perpetrator of a cyber-attack. “If the Russians are using very high-handed capabilities – and I cannot go into details but we are talking about submarines and nuclear submarines – that’s very, very tough; very difficult,” he said.

The addition of Finland to Nato’s fleet last year, and more recently that of Sweden, which became a full Nato member in March, is seen as especially important for the protection of the Baltic and Arctic. Sweden’s experience in both regions “will immediately increase Nato’s ability to detect and deter any regional aggression.

“And when we talk about aggression, we think about Russia obviously,” added Maleterre, who said Sweden’s membership in particular brought submarines, mine warfare ships, special forces and fast, powerful boats.

The security of nearly 1 billion people across Europe and North America is under threat from Russian attempts to target the extensive vulnerabilities of underwater infrastructure including windfarms, pipelines and power cables, a Nato commander has warned.

V Adm Didier Maleterre, the deputy commander of Nato’s Allied Maritime Command (Marcom), said the network of underwater cables and pipes on which Europe’s power and communications depend were not built to withstand the “hybrid warfare” being pursued by Moscow and other Nato adversaries.

“We know the Russians have developed a lot of hybrid warfare under the sea to disrupt the European economy, through cables, internet cables, pipelines. All of our economy under the sea is under threat,” he said.

“And, to be very clear, we know what Russians have developed as far as nuclear submarines to operate under the sea. So we are not naive and we [Nato countries] are working together.”

The comments come after two incidents of suspected sabotage on gas pipelines in the Baltic in the last 18 months – first on Nord Stream 1 and 2 in September 2022, followed by the Balticconnector in October last year. Despite extensive investigations by multiple states both remain unsolved, although Finland said in December that “everything indicated” a Chinese ship had purposely damaged the Balticconnector with its anchor.

Maleterre, a submariner who said he had himself spent “more than 1,000 days under the sea”, said the environment had changed dramatically since much of the current infrastructure was first developed by the private sector, leaving it extremely vulnerable.

“They [the companies responsible for them] didn’t know that such hybrid warfare would develop so rapidly. More than 90% of [the] internet is under the sea. All our links between the US, Canada and Europe are transmitting under the sea, so there are a lot of vulnerabilities.”

Despite the increasing role of offshore wind power to meet climate goals, the infrastructure still has “system vulnerabilities,” he said. Offshore wind will need to increase by 25% by 2050 to meet EU wind energy capacity targets, according to industry association WindEurope, while the Biden administration wants to deploy 30,000 megawatts of offshore wind along the coastlines of the US by 2030.

At any one time Maleterre said that Marcom had “more than 100 ships, nuclear submarines and conventional submarines” patrolling waters including the Arctic, Black Sea, Atlantic, Baltic and the Mediterranean.

“That’s a very important concern because it’s a security issue for nearly 1 billion Nato-nation civilians. We need to be protected and well supplied by our vital undersea infrastructures.”

But even with a significant presence it was impossible for Nato to guard every piece of undersea infrastructure, he said, with primary responsibility lying with nations to protect their own infrastructure.

“We know there are a lot of vulnerabilities … When we have offshore installation, first of all the responsibilities are in the states’ hands,” he said.

He added: “We have particular attention on the Russians at the moment, but it’s very difficult to have a permanent surveillance of every cable; it’s not possible. A lot of nations – Norway, Sweden, Denmark as well – have developed drones, sensors, UUVs [unmanned underwater vehicles] to be able to detect very rapidly [something] suspicious or something going wrong.”

Such is the heightened nature of fears over undersea security that Nato is in the process of setting up a centre dedicated to the issue at Marcom’s UK-based headquarters in Northwood, on the north-west outskirts of London, alongside Nato’s shipping centre.

Using artificial intelligence software, Marcom can detect and follow suspicious activity at sea, such as ships switching off their automatic identification system (AIS) to prevent them from being traced or loitering in a particular area.

They are also using satellites. “We are using all our sensors from the seabed to space, particularly the satellite capabilities of Nato, to be able to identify suspicious activity,” Maleterre said.

Being able to identify the actors behind hybrid attacks was vital, said Maleterre, but he admitted it could be challenging, comparing it to tracking down the perpetrator of a cyber-attack. “If the Russians are using very high-handed capabilities – and I cannot go into details but we are talking about submarines and nuclear submarines – that’s very, very tough; very difficult,” he said.

The addition of Finland to Nato’s fleet last year, and more recently that of Sweden, which became a full Nato member in March, is seen as especially important for the protection of the Baltic and Arctic. Sweden’s experience in both regions “will immediately increase Nato’s ability to detect and deter any regional aggression.

“And when we talk about aggression, we think about Russia obviously,” added Maleterre, who said Sweden’s membership in particular brought submarines, mine warfare ships, special forces and fast, powerful boats.

Parents are terrified their children are still being exposed to asbestos at a primary school, alleging a patch-up job has not made the classrooms safe.

They fear children may have been exposed to asbestos for months or even years at a Queensland school.

A teacher reported seeing dust falling from a ceiling at Rochedale state school, south of Brisbane, on 8 March, leading to the evacuation of two classroom blocks housing year one, two and three students.

The Education Department took 89 samples and four days later parents received confirmation 14 had tested positive for the banned building material.

Children were moved into libraries or unaffected classrooms while further testing and reports were done.

But parents allege students are returning to asbestos-impacted classrooms with only sealant applied to the ceilings.

The Education Department says asbestos removal from the classrooms has been scheduled for the Christmas holidays.

Concerned parents expressed their fears for their children outside Queensland parliament on Tuesday, with some mothers breaking down as they spoke to reporters.

“[The school] told us they can’t give us 100% reassurance that exposure won’t occur from the same source,” parent Adam Littlefield said.

Some mothers, who did not wish to be identified, sobbed while sharing concerns their children may have long-term health impacts from exposure to asbestos which can cause lethal disease.

Littlefield said he was afraid all three of his children who go to the school have been affected.

“I can’t put my son back in that classroom because the risk is too high,” he said.

Parents have called for demountable classrooms to be provided while the asbestos is removed but claim their request is being ignored.

“It’s very frustrating. We are shocked at the way this has been handled,” Littlefield said.

The Education Department said it was confident every measure had been taken to ensure the classrooms were safe to reoccupy.

“Ongoing air monitoring in these classrooms and physical inspections of the ceilings will continue until the scheduled removal occurs in the Christmas holiday period in order to provide an additional level of assurance to the school community,” it said in a statement.

Premier, Steven Miles, was pressed on the issue during state parliament’s question time on Tuesday.

Miles said the health and wellbeing of the Rochedale students was a priority and testing was being done.

“Advice from experts is that all the classrooms are safe for staff and students to return,” he said in response to a question from LNP member Christian Rowan.

“I’m advised there have been three separate clearance certificates issued by independent occupational hygienists with the most recent certificate issued last week.”

Rowan said the government could not give complete certainty to parents that there were no ongoing risks and exposure.

“I’m calling upon the government to be open and transparent in relation to this incident, to provide assurances to these parents and to communicate and work with the parent cohort to ensure that their children are safe,” he said.

Former Australian Test cricketer Michael Slater will remain behind bars after being refused bail in a Sunshine Coast court.

Slater is facing 19 charges relating to alleged offences perpetrated on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast on various dates between 5 December 2023 and 12 April.

The 54-year-old was represented by a legal aid duty lawyer in applying for bail in the Maroochydore magistrates court on Tuesday after a brief mention in the same court the previous day.

Slater is charged with domestic violence offences of unlawful stalking or intimidation, breaking into a dwelling with intent at night, common assault, assault occasioning bodily harm and choking or suffocation.

• Sign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup

The former opening batsman and TV commentator is also charged with breaching bail and 10 counts of contravening a domestic violence order.

Police confirmed they arrested a 54-year-old Noosa Heads man at a Sunshine Coast address on Friday following alleged domestic violence incidents over several days.

Slater was remanded in custody, with his case due to be mentioned in the same court on 31 May.

After making his debut during the 1993 Ashes tour, Slater played 74 Tests for Australia, amassing 5,312 runs at an average of 42.83 with 14 tons.

He also played 42 one-day internationals.

Slater retired from cricket in 2004, embarking on a successful TV commentary career.

The Bureau of Meteorology has declared the El Niño weather event of 2023-24 to be over, with odds increasing that its cooler counterpart, the La Niña, will return by the coming spring.

Conditions in the central equatorial Pacific have now returned to neutral conditions, about seven months after the El Niño had got under way, the bureau said on Tuesday.

For Australia, an El Niño typically delivers below-average rainfall for much of the country’s east, while La Niñas are associated with wetter than usual weather for northern and eastern parts during the winter-spring period, the bureau said. August to October was Australia’s driest three-month period ever recorded by the bureau.

The El Niño-Southern Oscillation – which gauges air pressure differences between Darwin and Tahiti – is one of the key drivers affecting global climate.

“International climate models suggest ENSO is likely to continue to remain neutral until at least July 2024,” the bureau said, adding the main climate models it uses are predicting a La Niña may form by spring if not before.

Should a La Niña get under way later this year it would be the fourth such event in the past five years. Such a sequence – of three La Niñas followed by an El Niño and La Niña – hasn’t been recorded previously, Cai Wenju, a former senior CSIRO researcher, told Guardian Australia earlier this year.

Other agencies have also been forecasting the possibility of a La Niña event later this year. The US’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, for instance, last week put the odds of a La Niña at about 85% although its thresholds are slightly lower than the bureau’s.

La Niñas typically see a strengthening of the easterly equatorial winds, shifting rainfall patterns towards Australia and south-east Asia. The number of cyclones affecting Australia are usually above average during La Niña years.

The Pacific tends to absorb more warmth than during El Niño years, exacerbating the background warming from climate change.

“Global sea surface temperatures (SSTs) have been the warmest on record for each month between April 2023 and March 2024,” the bureau said. “Month-to-date data for April 2024 indicates this month is tracking warmer than April 2023.”

The bureau noted that predictions made in mid-autumn “tend to have lower accuracy than predictions made at other times of the year. This means that current forecasts of the ENSO state beyond July should be used with caution”.

That run of record-breaking heat might also add to the uncertainty about how conditions evolve in the Pacific and the resulting weather impacts.

“The global pattern of warmth is affecting the typical historical global pattern of sea surface temperatures associated with ENSO variability,” it said. “As the current global ocean conditions have not been observed before, inferences of how ENSO may develop in 2024 that are based on past events may not be reliable.”

The Bureau of Meteorology has declared the El Niño weather event of 2023-24 to be over, with odds increasing that its cooler counterpart, the La Niña, will return by the coming spring.

Conditions in the central equatorial Pacific have now returned to neutral conditions, about seven months after the El Niño had got under way, the bureau said on Tuesday.

For Australia, an El Niño typically delivers below-average rainfall for much of the country’s east, while La Niñas are associated with wetter than usual weather for northern and eastern parts during the winter-spring period, the bureau said. August to October was Australia’s driest three-month period ever recorded by the bureau.

The El Niño-Southern Oscillation – which gauges air pressure differences between Darwin and Tahiti – is one of the key drivers affecting global climate.

“International climate models suggest ENSO is likely to continue to remain neutral until at least July 2024,” the bureau said, adding the main climate models it uses are predicting a La Niña may form by spring if not before.

Should a La Niña get under way later this year it would be the fourth such event in the past five years. Such a sequence – of three La Niñas followed by an El Niño and La Niña – hasn’t been recorded previously, Cai Wenju, a former senior CSIRO researcher, told Guardian Australia earlier this year.

Other agencies have also been forecasting the possibility of a La Niña event later this year. The US’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, for instance, last week put the odds of a La Niña at about 85% although its thresholds are slightly lower than the bureau’s.

La Niñas typically see a strengthening of the easterly equatorial winds, shifting rainfall patterns towards Australia and south-east Asia. The number of cyclones affecting Australia are usually above average during La Niña years.

The Pacific tends to absorb more warmth than during El Niño years, exacerbating the background warming from climate change.

“Global sea surface temperatures (SSTs) have been the warmest on record for each month between April 2023 and March 2024,” the bureau said. “Month-to-date data for April 2024 indicates this month is tracking warmer than April 2023.”

The bureau noted that predictions made in mid-autumn “tend to have lower accuracy than predictions made at other times of the year. This means that current forecasts of the ENSO state beyond July should be used with caution”.

That run of record-breaking heat might also add to the uncertainty about how conditions evolve in the Pacific and the resulting weather impacts.

“The global pattern of warmth is affecting the typical historical global pattern of sea surface temperatures associated with ENSO variability,” it said. “As the current global ocean conditions have not been observed before, inferences of how ENSO may develop in 2024 that are based on past events may not be reliable.”

The Albanese government has further delayed a commitment to rewrite Australia’s failing national environment laws.

The environment minister, Tanya Plibersek, said the government would introduce legislation in coming weeks to create two previously announced bodies – an environment protection agency and a second organisation called Environment Information Australia, which will provide public data on ecosystems, plants and animals.

But a commitment to introduce a suite of laws to address Australia’s extinction crisis, including new national environmental standards against which development proposals would be assessed, has been pushed back to an unspecified date.

• Sign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup

At a media conference on Tuesday, Plibersek said the announcement of legislation for a national EPA – to be known as Environment Protection Australia – was a “historic day for the environment”.

But she did not guarantee that the broader package of environment laws, including the national standards, would be introduced before the next election. “They’ll be introduced when they’re ready,” she said.

The delay to wider reforms sparked accusations that the government was failing to deliver the overarching environment reform it announced in 2022. The Greens’ environment spokesperson, Sarah Hanson-Young, accused Labor of breaking a promise.

James Trezise, the director of the not-for-profit Biodiversity Council, said the delay was a “significant step back from what the Albanese government committed to in its nature positive plan”.

“Nature in Australia is in crisis and can’t afford delays in the comprehensive reforms needed to fix our weak and broken environmental laws,” he said.

Plibersek had initially promised to introduce new laws – first in draft form for consultation and then to the parliament – by last year.

Speaking in 2022, she said multiple reviews had shown the existing law, the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act, was “broken” and promised changes that would be better for business and the environment. She promised legislative changes in 2023 to introduce national environmental standards, speed up decision making and improve trust and integrity in the system.

On Tuesday, she said splitting up the changes would allow more time for consultation and to “make sure we get this right”.

“When I first announced the nature-positive plan, I said it would take a bit of cooperation, compromise and common sense to deliver. That’s exactly how we’re approaching the rollout,” she said.

Plibersek said the EPA legislation would create an agency with “strong new powers to better protect nature”, including being able to issue environment protection orders – effectively “stop-work” orders. She said the laws would allow the EPA to act as a delegate for the minister and make decisions on whether development proposals went ahead.

The agency would initially be focused on cracking down on illegal land clearing and enforcing environmental offsetting conditions. A government audit found about one in seven developments approved under the existing laws could be in breach of offset conditions that required some form of compensation in return for being allowed to damage nature.

Plibersek said the EPA chief would be an independent statutory appointment similar to the Australian federal police commissioner “to make sure no government can interfere with the new agency’s important enforcement work”. The agency would initially sit within the environment department before becoming an independent statutory authority in July 2025.

Plibersek said the second new body, Environment Information Australia, would release a national state of the environment report every two years. Its primary role would be to provide “up-to-the-minute” information on Australia’s environment to assist the public and business.

The Coalition’s environment spokesperson, Jonathon Duniam, said the announcement showed Plibersek had failed as environment minister, describing it as the creation of a “new bureaucracy with no new laws to administer”.

Hanson-Young said the changes did not go far enough to protect nature and accused the government of giving in to a two-year-long campaign by “the mining industry and big developers”. She said the government was engaged in “piecemeal tinkering”, when it had promised a full environment law reform package.

“Labor promised to fix Australia’s broken environment laws, but without stopping native forest logging and fossil fuel expansions, the government will be failing to protect our planet and failing to keep its promise to the Australian people,” she said.

Conservation groups called on the government to deliver the promised full package of reform before the election and expressed disappointment over the delays.

The Australian Conservation Foundation chief executive, Kelly O’Shanassy, said the promised crackdown on illegal land clearing and the establishment of an EPA were “welcome and necessary”, but without comprehensive reform, the agency would be “enforcing a flawed and ineffective law that still needs serious surgery”.

Environment groups are expected to air their concerns with the changes at a Senate inquiry hearing into the extinction crisis on Wednesday.

The Australian government will grant permanent residency to a French citizen who confronted the Bondi Junction attacker with a bollard, but not citizenship, because it cannot waive residency requirements.

The clarification comes after the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, offered him the ability to stay in Australia as long as he liked and said he was someone the country would “welcome becoming an Australian citizen”.

French construction worker Damien Guerot was dubbed “bollard man” after CCTV footage showed him confronting Joel Cauchi on an escalator in Westfield Bondi Junction, where Cauchi allegedly fatally stabbed six people on Saturday before he was shot dead by police.

On Tuesday Albanese thanked Guerot for his “extraordinary bravery” and offered to resolve visa issues for the French citizen after reports his visa is due to expire in July.

• Sign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup

“I say this to Damien Guerot – who is dealing with his visa applications – that you are welcome here, you are welcome to stay for as long as you like,” Albanese told reporters in Canberra.

“This is someone who we would welcome becoming an Australian citizen, although that would of course be a loss for France.

“It says a lot about the nature of humanity at a time when we are facing difficult issues, that someone who is not a citizen of this country stood bravely at the top of those escalators and stopped this perpetrator from getting on to another floor and potentially inflicting further carnage on citizens.

“I think that on Saturday we saw some of the best of human character at the same time as we saw such devastating tragedy. And I thank Damien for his extraordinary efforts.”

The promise of permanent residency was “amazing news”, Guerot told his lawyer, Belinda Robertson, after being contacted by the department of immigration. He was told he would be informed on when permanent residency can be officially granted “as soon as possible”.

“It is truly heartwarming for something positive to come out of all the pain and tragedy,” Robinson told Guardian Australia.

“Mr Guerot’s extraordinary bravery is an example of the character we all want to see in our society,” Giles said.

“I am aware of Mr Guerot’s case and have asked my Department to look into visa options for him. Once again, we thank Mr Guerot as well as other members of the public, our heroic police officers and first responders who have helped protect others from danger.”

Earlier, Albanese told WSFM radio that Australia needs “to do more” to protect women in the wake of the Bondi Junction attack, after New South Wales police confirmed they are investigating whether Cauchi deliberately targeted women and children.

“Women should be safe going about their shopping on a Saturday afternoon,” Albanese said. “They also should, of course, be safe in their home.”

“And we’ve seen too many incidents of domestic violence as well already this year. It is a tragic statistic that tells a story well beyond just numbers. That a woman loses their life to someone that they know on average once a week in Australia.

“We need to do more on the scourge of domestic violence.”

On ABC Melbourne, Albanese declined to get into a “definitional debate” about whether violence motivated by misogyny could constitute terrorism.

Albanese said the Bondi Junction attack was “completely unacceptable” and “horrific”, but said there is an “ongoing investigation as to motivation”.

Albanese said that it is “absolutely” up to every Australian – including men – to deal with violence against women.

“Women shouldn’t feel like they have to change their behaviour [or that] they shouldn’t be able to walk home from the train station or bus stop at night.

“Men are overwhelmingly the perpetrators of this violence and men as a group have to change their behaviour.”

Astronomers have discovered an enormous black hole which formed in the aftermath of an exploding star a mere 2,000 light years from Earth.

BH3 is the most massive stellar black hole yet found in the Milky Way and revealed itself to researchers through the powerful tug it exerts on a companion star that orbits the object in the constellation of Aquila, the Eagle.

The serendipitous discovery is so important that scientists released details of the object earlier than planned to enable other astronomers to perform further observations as soon as possible.

“It’s a complete surprise,” said Dr Pasquale Panuzzo, an astronomer and member of the Gaia collaboration at the Observatoire de Paris. “It is the most massive stellar origin black hole in our galaxy and the second nearest discovered so far.”

Stellar black holes form when massive stars collapse at the end of their life. Dozens have been found in the Milky Way, most weighing in at around 10 times the mass of the sun.

The most impressive black hole in the Milky Way, Sagittarius A, has the combined mass of several million suns. It lurks at the heart of the galaxy and formed not from an exploding star but the collapse of vast clouds of dust and gas.

Researchers spotted BH3 in the latest trove of data gathered by the European Space Agency’s Gaia mission. The space telescope launched in 2013 with the aim of compiling a 3D map of a billion stars.

As researchers were reviewing the Gaia observations, they noticed a distinct wobble in one of the stars in Aquila, a constellation that is visible in the summer sky in the northern hemisphere. The movement suggested the star was being pulled around by a black hole 33 times more massive than the sun.

Further observations from the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope in Chile’s Atacama desert confirmed BH3’s mass and the star’s orbit, which circles the black hole once every 11.6 years. “Only the central black hole in the Milky Way is more massive than this one,” Panuzzo said.

While BH3 is more massive than other stellar black holes in the Milky Way, it is similar to some of those revealed by gravitational waves, or ripples in spacetime, which are generated when black holes collide in distant galaxies.

“We have only seen black holes of this mass with gravitational waves in faraway galaxies,” said Panuzzo. “This makes the link between the stellar black holes we see in our galaxy and those gravitational wave discoveries.” Details are published in Astronomy and Astrophysics.

There may be 100m stellar black holes in the Milky Way, but despite their vast mass and the powerful forces they generate, they can be extremely difficult to spot. “Most of them don’t have a star orbiting around them, so they are almost invisible to us,” said Panuzzo.

Measurements of BH3’s companion star found no sign that it was contaminated with material blasted out from the stellar explosion that formed the black hole. The finding suggests the black hole formed long before it trapped the companion star in its powerful gravitational field.

The next tranche of Gaia data is due for release in late 2025 at the earliest, but the importance of the discovery led the international team to release details of BH3 early so astronomers can study it immediately.

“As soon as this comes out people will rush to observe it to see if there are any emissions from the black hole,” Panuzzo said. “That will tell us about the wind that comes from stars like the one orbiting the black hole, and also about the physics of the black hole and how matter falls into it.”