WASHINGTON (AP) — Attorney General Jeff Sessions is rescinding the Obama-era policy that had paved the way for legalized marijuana to flourish in states across the country, two people with knowledge of the decision told The Associated Press. Sessions will instead let federal prosecutors where pot is legal decide how aggressively to enforce federal marijuana law, the people said.

The people familiar with the plan spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it before an announcement expected Thursday.

The move by President Donald Trump’s attorney general likely will add to confusion about whether it’s OK to grow, buy or use marijuana in states where pot is legal, since long-standing federal law prohibits it. It comes days after pot shops opened in California, launching what is expected to become the world’s largest market for legal recreational marijuana and as polls show a solid majority of Americans believe the drug should be legal.

While Sessions has been carrying out a Justice Department agenda that follows Trump’s top priorities on such issues as immigration and opioids, the changes to pot policy reflect his own concerns. Trump’s personal views on marijuana remain largely unknown.

Sessions, who has assailed marijuana as comparable to heroin and has blamed it for spikes in violence, had been expected to ramp up enforcement. Pot advocates argue that legalizing the drug eliminates the need for a black market and would likely reduce violence, since criminals would no longer control the marijuana trade.

The Obama administration in 2013 announced it would not stand in the way of states that legalize marijuana, so long as officials acted to keep it from migrating to places where it remained outlawed and out of the hands of criminal gangs and children. Sessions is rescinding that memo, written by then-Deputy Attorney General James M. Cole, which had cleared up some of the uncertainty about how the federal government would respond as states began allowing sales for recreational and medical purposes.

The pot business has since become a sophisticated, multimillion-dollar industry that helps fund schools, educational programs and law enforcement. Eight states and the District of Columbia have legalized marijuana for recreational use, and California’s sales alone are projected to bring in $1 billion annually in tax revenue within several years.


Sessions’ policy will let U.S. attorneys across the country decide what kinds of federal resources to devote to marijuana enforcement based on what they see as priorities in their districts, the people familiar with the decision said.

Sessions and some law enforcement officials in states such as Colorado blame legalization for a number of problems, including drug traffickers that have taken advantage of lax marijuana laws to hide in plain sight, illegally growing and shipping the drug across state lines, where it can sell for much more. The decision was a win for pot opponents who had been urging Sessions to take action.

“There is no more safe haven with regard to the federal government and marijuana, but it’s also the beginning of the story and not the end,” said Kevin Sabet, president and CEO of Smart Approaches to Marijuana, who was among several anti-marijuana advocates who met with Sessions last month. “This is a victory. It’s going to dry up a lot of the institutional investment that has gone toward marijuana in the last five years.”

Threats of a federal crackdown have united liberals who object to the human costs of a war on pot with conservatives who see it as a states’ rights issue. Some in law enforcement support a tougher approach, but a bipartisan group of senators in March urged Sessions to uphold existing marijuana policy. Others in Congress have been seeking ways to protect and promote legal pot businesses.

Marijuana advocates quickly condemned Sessions’ move as a return to outdated drug-war policies that unduly affected minorities.

Sessions “wants to maintain a system that has led to tremendous injustice ... and that has wasted federal resources on a huge scale,” said Maria McFarland Sanchez-Moreno, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance. “If Sessions thinks that makes sense in terms of prosecutorial priorities, he is in a very bizarre ideological state, or a deeply problematic one.”

A task force Sessions convened to study pot policy made no recommendations for upending the legal industry but instead encouraged Justice Department officials to keep reviewing the Obama administration’s more hands-off approach to marijuana enforcement, something Sessions promised to do since he took office.

The change also reflects yet another way in which Sessions, who served as a federal prosecutor at the height of the drug war in Mobile, Alabama, has reversed Obama-era criminal justice policies that aimed to ease overcrowding in federal prisons and contributed to a rethinking of how drug criminals were prosecuted and sentenced. While his Democratic predecessor Eric Holder told federal prosecutors to avoid seeking long mandatory minimum sentences when charging certain lower level drug offenders, for example, Sessions issued an order demanding the opposite, telling them to pursue the most serious charges possible against most suspects.

Author and columnist Michael Wolff was given extraordinary access to the Trump administration and now details the feuds, the fights and the alarming chaos he witnessed while reporting what turned into a new book.

Australian wildlife rescuers have removed 43 reptile eggs from a sandpit at a school in New South Wales.

The incident sparked alarm after initial reports suggested the eggs belonged to the eastern brown snake, the country's deadliest species.

Volunteers from the Fawna NSW animal aid group were called to remove the eggs from St Joseph's Catholic primary school, near Laurieton.

The few eggs they were expecting turned out to be seven nests.

At first, rescuers Yvette Attleir and Rod Miller thought the eggs might belong to water dragons - river-dwelling lizards that can grow to 90cm (3ft) long.

They then announced they were probably brown snake eggs, prompting widespread debate on social media from snake experts (official and self-appointed).

"I believed they were brown snake eggs due to the fact that they were seen in the area and that when I shone a light through the egg, I saw a small striped baby snake," Mr Miller explained.

However, Fawna later updated its position after questions were raised about the shape of the eggs.
"We believed at the time, and still do... that we may have had snake eggs," it said in a Facebook post. "We couldn't take the chance of them not being a harmless reptile."

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Fawna president Meredith Ryan told the BBC the eggs has been carefully relocated to a new site well away from people. When volunteers went to check on them, they found all but three had hatched and dispersed, so they were unable to identify the hatchlings.
Brown snakes are among the world's most venomous, and kill more Australians each year than any other snake.

President Donald Trump said Tuesday the US is watching the "brutal and corrupt Iranian regime" amid deadly protests in the country, continuing his public support for anti-government demonstrations.

"The people of Iran are finally acting against the brutal and corrupt Iranian regime," Trump tweeted. "All of the money that President Obama so foolishly gave them went into terrorism and into their 'pockets.' The people have little food, big inflation and no human rights. The U.S. is watching!"

Trump was apparently referring to the Obama administration's unfreezing of certain Iranian assets and payment of a cash settlement related to a legal claim on those assets that was negotiated in the wake of the Iran nuclear deal. The money was Iranian money that had been frozen by the US following the revolution.

While there's no evidence to suggest Iran used that money directly to fund terrorism, the US State Department lists Iran as a state sponsor of terrorism. There is no evidence the money was used to enrich government officials.

Trump has voiced criticism of the Iranian regime since protests broke out in the country several days ago, earning a rebuke from Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, who said Monday the US President has no right to sympathize with Iran because he has called the Iranian people "terrorists," according to Iran's semi-official Tasnim News Agency.

On Sunday, state television broadcast Rouhani saying that Trump is "constantly creating problems" for Iranians, including with regard to visas and financial issues.

And on Tuesday, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei blamed Iran's "enemies" for stirring up unrest in the country, though he didn't mention Trump by name.

The leaders' tit-for-tat follows a weekend of escalating rhetoric in response to the protests and violence in Iran, with Trump warning Sunday that the United States is watching Tehran's treatment of protesters for human rights violations after anti-government protests turned deadly.

Iran's government on Saturday warned its citizens against holding "illegal" public gatherings, following rare anti-government protests that spread to a number of cities.

The protests -- described as the largest public display of discontent since the 2009 Green Movement in Iran -- have emerged against a backdrop of rising food and gasoline prices.
CNN's Laura Koran, Daniella Diaz and Dan Merica contributed to this report.

Hoda Kotb will be Savannah Guthrie's new co-anchor of "Today." The position opened up after longtime-host Matt Lauer was fired over sexual misconduct violations.

Kotb had been filling in for Lauer since his departure at the end of November, and NBC News Chairman Andy Lack made Kotb's new job official on Tuesday.

"It's 2018 and we are kicking off the year right because Hoda is officially the co-anchor of 'Today,'" Guthrie said Tuesday of Kotb's new gig. "This has to be the most popular decision NBC News have ever made and I’m so thrilled."

"There's no one I'd rather be sitting next to in 2018 than you," Kotb, 56 told Guthrie.

The new co-anchors will host the 7-9 a.m. hours of "Today." Kotb will also keep her co-hosting job of the 10 a.m. hour with Kathie Lee Gifford which she has been doing since 2008.

Lauer was fired from NBC last year over claims of sexual misconduct. Hours after Lauer's dismissal was announced on "Today," the show that had been his domain for nearly two decades, Variety and The New York Times published reports detailing allegations of the host's tawdry behavior -- including that he sexually assaulted one woman in his office until she passed out.

California became a "sanctuary state" Monday, as a bill that Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law in October officially took effect.

The law bars police in the nation's most populous state from asking people about their immigration status or participating in federal immigration enforcement activities in most cases, Fox News reported.

The Golden State is home to an estimated 2.3 million illegal immigrants.

“These are uncertain times for undocumented Californians and their families, and this bill strikes a balance that will protect public safety, while bringing a measure of comfort to those families who are now living in fear everyday,” Brown said on the day he signed the bill.

But the measure has drawn a rebuttal from an unidentified source, as signs mocking the law have appeared below the "Welcome to California" signs that greet motorists as they enter from Arizona and Nevada.

"OFFICIAL SANCTUARY STATE," the signs declare. "Felons, Illegals and MS13 Welcome! Democrats Need The Votes!"

California passed the bill just as the Trump administration was pledging to crack down on sanctuary cities that refuse to cooperate with federal immigration authorities.

Trump repeatedly pointed to the case of Kate Steinle, a woman who was fatally shot July 1, 2015, on a San Francisco pier by an illegal immigrant. The defendant went on trial for murder, but was acquitted in November 2017.

“No wonder the people of our Country are so angry with Illegal Immigration," the president tweeted after the verdict, which he labeled "disgraceful."

Other members of the Trump administration spoke out against the California proposal.

“The bill risks the safety of good law enforcement officers and the safety of the neighborhoods that need their protection the most,” Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in September, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Added Thomas Homan, acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement: “By passing this bill, California politicians have chosen to prioritize politics over public safety.

“Disturbingly, the legislation serves to codify a dangerous policy that deliberately obstructs our country’s immigration laws and shelters serious criminal alien offenders," Homan's statement continued.

Prior to Brown's approval, California's Legislature passed the measure in September.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.

For those who tuned out over the holiday weekend, this front-page New York Times story, published on New Year’s Eve, is worth considering in detail.

During a night of heavy drinking at an upscale London bar in May 2016, George Papadopoulos, a young foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign, made a startling revelation to Australia’s top diplomat in Britain: Russia had political dirt on Hillary Clinton.

About three weeks earlier, Mr. Papadopoulos had been told that Moscow had thousands of emails that would embarrass Mrs. Clinton, apparently stolen in an effort to try to damage her campaign.

When some of the stolen materials were released to the public, Australian officials notified the FBI about Papadopoulos’ comments. As the Times’ report added, the Trump campaign adviser’s claims, coupled with the theft of the Democratic documents, led the bureau “to open an investigation in July 2016 into Russia’s attempts to disrupt the election and whether any of President Trump’s associates conspired.”

Why is this important? A few reasons, actually.

1. Donald Trump and his allies continue to insist the Christopher Steele dossier was the initial basis for the FBI’s investigation. The New York Times’ reporting points in a very different direction: the bureau apparently began its prove months before Steele shared his findings.

2. After Papadopoulos pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI, Trump World eagerly dismissed his relevance, with one former Trump confidant describing the campaign adviser as an inconsequential “coffee boy.” This line of defense has now effectively been discredited: low-level, coffee-distributing aides do not play active roles trying to broker meetings between presidential candidates and the president of Russia, while “keeping senior campaign officials abreast of his efforts.”


3. The FBI was investigating Trump’s political operation for the months leading up to the presidential election, but never told the public. Voters were, however, kept apprised of the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails. The idea that the bureau was somehow anti-Trump, taking steps to help the Democratic ticket, is obviously impossible to take seriously.

4. The FBI heard from Australian intelligence officials, but didn’t hear from the Trump campaign – despite the FBI’s explicit warnings.

5. At the risk of sounding reductive, the Trump campaign apparently learned quite early on that Russia had stolen Democratic documents. The Republican campaign then covered for their Russian benefactors and lied repeatedly about the communications between Trump World, its allies in Putin’s government, and its associates.

Netizens have spoken! With more than 20 million reactions on social media, they ranked 2017’s “100 Most Beautiful Women in the Philippines” from no. 1 to no. 100!

100 MOST BEAUTIFUL WOMEN IN THE PHILIPPINES FOR 2017

1. Nadine Lustre (=)
2. Kathryn Bernardo (=)
3. Janella Salvador (=)
4. Maymay Entrata (new entry)
5. Elisse Joson (=)

6. Angel Locsin (=)
7. Maine Mendoza (=)
8. Sarah Geronimo (+3)
9. Liza Soberano (-1)
10. Maris Racal (+43)

11. Kisses Delavin (new entry)
12. Anne Curtis (-2)
13. Julia Barretto (+6)
14. Loisa Andalio (new entry)
15. Maja Salvador (+13)

16. Julia Montes (-3)
17. Marian Rivera (-2)
18. Pia Wurtzbach (-4)
19. Bela Padilla (+1)
20. Kim Chiu (-16)

21. Bea Alonzo
22. Erich Gonzales
23. Gabbi Garcia
24. Jennylyn Mercado
25. Heart Evangelista

26. Sarah Lahbati
27. Angelica Panganiban
28. Solenn Heussaff
29. Dawn Zulueta
30. Carla Abellana

31. Alex Gonzaga
32. Megan Young
33. Jodi Sta. Maria
34. Coleen Garcia
35. Janine Gutierrez

36. Shaina Magdayao
37. Ritz Azul
38. Julie Anne San Jose
39. Lovi Poe
40. Arci Muñoz

41. Alessandra de Rossi
42. Cristine Reyes
43. Jessy Mendiola
44. Kris Bernal
45. Yassi Pressman

46. Sue Ramirez
47. Sofia Andres
48. Jasmine Curtis Smith
49. Miles Ocampo
50. Iza Calzado

51. Bianca Gonzales
52. Judy Ann Santos
53. Toni Gonzaga
54. Denis Laurel
55. Ellen Adarna

56. Rachel Peters
57. Barbie Forteza
58. Venus Raj
59. Devon Seron
60. Sharlene San Pedro

61. Ella Cruz
62. Shy Carlos
63. Max Collins
64. Kim Domingo
65. Sanya Lopez

66. Bea Binene
67. Louise delos Reyes
68. Teresita Marquez
69. Pauleen Luna
70. Kylie Versoza

71. Myrtle Sarroza
72. Mariel de Leon
73. Thea Tolentino
74. Andrea Torres
75. Barbie Imperial

76. Jane Oineza
77. Karen Reyes
78. Kate Valdez
79. Angel Aquino
80. Dimples Romana

81. Isabelle Daza
82. Georgina Wilson
83. Glaiza de Castro
84. LJ Reyes
85. Ryza Cenon

86. Shamsey Supsup
87. Rachelle Ann Go
88. Maxene Magalona
89. Alodia Gosiengfiao
90. Nicole Cordoves

91. Kamille Filoteo
92. Catriona Gray
93. Laura Lehmann
94. Katarina Rodriguez
95. Jane de Leon

96. Maxine Medina
97. Morisette Amon
98. Kristine Hermosa
99. Kylie Padilla
100. Miho Nishida

Byron Katie was deeply depressed when a radical change left her joyful. She now uses her secret to help others – whether brutalised by war or merely stressed

For a long time, Byron Katie’s children thought she was having them on. Her character seemed to change overnight, and they didn’t trust her one bit.

For 10 years – until that day – she had spiralled into rage, paranoia and despair, becoming so depressed she seldom left her house. She’d stayed in bed for weeks at a time, and her children learned to tiptoe past her door to avoid her furious outbursts.

But one morning, when she was 43, she woke up on the floor of a halfway house for women with eating disorders, and everything seemed different.

Something in her mind had shifted, and Katie suddenly understood that all the things that had been giving her so much stress were just thoughts.

Stressful thoughts, but not reality. So she could let them go.

“Laughter welled up from the depths and just poured out,” she remembers. “Everything was unrecognisable.”

The change that came over her was astonishing. And everybody at home thought it was too good to be true.

Her daughter Roxann was particularly suspicious and used to be scared to be in the same room as her mother. What was she to make of this woman who seemed “joyful and innocent like a child, and filled with love” (as Roxann put it)?

Was it a scam? Was Katie pretending to be happy all the time, and sweet and kind? Would there be some kind of payback after a few weeks?

Not that quickly, no. In a short time, people who heard about the change started knocking on Katie’s door, asking her to help effect the same kind of transformation on them. Then she started getting invitations to meet small groups in people’s living rooms, then larger groups, in church halls, community centres and hotels.

Since 1993, she has been on the road almost constantly, bringing what she calls The Work to anyone who wants it. The “new” Katie was here to stay.

Today, on YouTube, you can watch hundreds of videos in which Katie helps people from around the world to dismantle stressful thoughts, using a line of inquiry that seems laughably simple when written down.

Just spell out clearly your stressful thoughts, she explains, then ask four questions about each thought in turn:

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Is it true?

Can you absolutely know it’s true?

How do you react, what happens, when you believe the thought?

Who would you be without the thought?

It doesn’t sound like much, but it’s extremely diverting – often actually funny – to watch Katie walking people through these questions, from the brink of rage and despair to some kind of bliss, in front of a live audience.

How can that be possible? She explains: “Most people spend a large part of their life thinking, essentially: ‘This shouldn’t be happening. I shouldn’t have to experience this. God is unjust. Life is unfair.’”

Katie shows them that it’s much easier to stop struggling with reality and accept whatever is happening.

Some people adore her to the point of worship. When I told friends I was interviewing her, a few responded as if I said I was meeting Gandhi, or the Buddha. And that’s not entirely off-whack, because now Katie has published a book with her husband, the Buddhist scholar Stephen Mitchell, exploring similarities between The Work and the Buddhist Diamond Sutra.

I interviewed them together, in a recorded video call. Katie and Mitchell sat on a sofa against the same black background you can see on her YouTube videos. And Mitchell described his wife’s special talent: “One of the revolutionary insights Katie’s had is: no one else can possibly cause my problems. The only way that I can have any kind of problem or stress in this world is if I’m believing an untrue thought.

I can transform the situation by becoming aware of what it is I’m thinking and then questioning those stressful thoughts
Stephen Mitchell, husband of Byron Katie
“This makes everything extremely simple. Because if the problem is with me, then the solution is with me.

“I don’t have to change anybody in my family, my children, my spouse. I can absolutely transform the situation by becoming aware of what it is I’m thinking and then questioning those stressful thoughts.”

Many people will find this hard to swallow. They might even say it sounds like victim-blaming.

But Katie has helped people do The Work on rape, war in Vietnam and Bosnia, torture, internment in Nazi concentration camps, the death of a child and the prolonged pain of illnesses such as cancer. “Many people think it’s not humanly possible to accept extreme experiences like these,” she says. But she has seen that it is. (You can watch some of those conversations online, and judge for yourself.)

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Of course, most people’s stressful thoughts are more humdrum.

But that’s good, because Katie says the “teachers” we need most are the people we live with: “You can write an entire worksheet on your mother, and later find that your relationship with your daughter has dramatically improved, because you were attached to the same thoughts about her, though you weren’t aware of it.”

I ask how long it took for her family to embrace The Work. “One day, after disappearing for three days, Roxann came home and pleaded: ‘Mom, I can’t do this any more. Please help me. Whatever this thing is that you’re giving to all these people who come to our house, I want it.’”

Katie obliged. And her older son Bobby came to trust Katie enough to share something that had troubled him for years: “You always favoured Ross [his brother] over me, always loved him the most.” But instead of scolding Bobby for saying this, as she would have done in the past, Katie asked herself if what he said was true. “I’d invited my children to speak honestly, because I wanted to know the truth. So I said, ‘Honey, I see it. You’re right. I was very confused then.’”

Family life throws up constant surprises, and opportunities for stressful thoughts – about the tasks we have to do, or the people we live with, she says. We must make a habit of investigating them. It’s a process. It never ends.

“Roxann called me one day and said she wanted me to attend my grandson’s birthday party. I said I had a commitment that day in another city. She was so hurt and angry that she hung up on me. Then maybe 10 minutes later she called and said, ‘I’m so excited, Momma. I just did The Work on you, and I saw that there is nothing you can do to keep me from loving you.”

There was still no way past Steve Smith. The pitch may have been as docile as a lamb yet it still required wonderful concentration from Australia’s phenomenal captain to bat for almost seven hours to save the Melbourne Test match. In the process he recorded his 23rd Test century. Finding the key to removing Smith from the crease would have taxed the team at Bletchley Park, let alone the one led by Joe Root.

Abusive calls were made to embassy in Australia over gesture 30 years ago, declassified state papers show

Ireland’s Australian embassy got “threatening and abusive phone calls” over the government’s gift of a statue of Queen Victoria to the city of Sydney, Irish cabinet papers declassified after 30 years have revealed.

The statue, which had been in storage in Ireland for almost 40 years, was sent despite opposition from Ireland’s then finance minister, John Bruton, and the director of the National Museum of Ireland, John Teahan. It has stood outside Sydney’s Queen Victoria Building ever since.


UVF claimed MI5 urged it to kill former Irish PM, state papers reveal
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Ireland’s Australian embassy wrote to the country’s Department of Foreign Affairs on 23 December 1987 with a report on the unveiling on 20 December, the Irish Times reported. Dermot Brangan, first secretary at the embassy, said he has spoken at the ceremony and Australian officials were very grateful for the statue, but the gift had not gone down well in some quarters.

“In the days preceding the unveiling, you should be aware that the embassy received a number of threatening and abusive phone calls about the propriety of an Irish government giving a statue of Victoria as a gift. The callers demanded to know the name of who was going to represent the Irish government at the ceremony and to warn him/her to stay away,” Brangan said.

He said a call had also been made to the Sydney’s Daily Telegraph newspaper “from someone claiming to represent the Irish Defence Force – a group unknown to the embassy or indeed the police, warning the people of Sydney to stay away from the unveiling ceremony, threatening to bomb the statue and to picket the ceremony”.

“The caller is also reported to have issued a threat against the unnamed Irish government representative.”


Irish minister opposed Queen Victoria statue being sent to Sydney, cabinet papers reveal
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The embassy was also warned of threats by police special branch officers, whose members escorted Brangan during his stay in Sydney for the unveiling.

The statue of Queen Victoria was originally unveiled at Dublin’s Leinster House in 1908.

After Irish independence from the UK in 1922, Leinster House became the home of Ireland’s parliament, the Dáil, and the statue stayed there until 1948 when it was moved to storage after decades of protests.

In June 1986, Ireland’s ambassador to Australia, Joseph Small, received a request from the office of the lord mayor of Sydney, Doug Sutherland, asking if it would be possible to send Queen Victoria to Australia on loan.

Despite the objections, the cabinet agreed to send the statue to Australia “on loan until recalled” and it arrived in 1987.

Brangan’s cable to Dublin reported the weather in Sydney at the unveiling was “most inclement with very heavy rain falling”.

Russia thought to be extending its Pacific influence after nuclear-capable aircraft carry out military exercises in Indonesia

An Australian air force base was put on alert while Russian strategic bombers conducted exercises in neutral waters off Indonesia, a move experts said showed Moscow was looking to extend its influence in the Pacific.


Russian ships escorted through North Sea by British naval vessels
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The base in Darwin was briefly put on a state of “increased readiness” in early December during the Russian exercises, which, according to the Russian Ministry of Defence, involved two nuclear-capable Tu-95MS bombers and more than 100 personnel.

RT, the Kremlin-backed English-language news channel, reported the exercise was the first Russian air patrol in the Pacific launched from Indonesia.

One of Australia’s foremost national security experts, Peter Jennings of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, said the exercises showed Russia was again extending its influence to the peripheries of the world. “It is a reminder Russia is here and wants to be a player in Pacific security and will use military force to demonstrate that,” he told the ABC, which first reported the story.

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The aircraft took off from Indonesia’s Biak airfield, on an island north of Papua, and stayed in the air for more than eight hours. The aircraft flew only above neutral waters, according to the Russian military.

“Flights over neutral waters in Arctic, northern Arctic, Black and Caspian seas, and Pacific Fleet are conducted regularly by long-range aircraft,” its defence ministry said in a statement. “All the missions of the Russian Aerospace Forces are carried out in strict accordance with the international air law.”

The two bombers had earlier arrived at the Biak airfield from the Amur region in Russia’s south-east. The Russian military said the bombers were refuelled by Il-78 aircraft over the Pacific ocean on their way to Indonesia.

The bombers, commonly referred to as “bears”, have a range of almost 15,000km without refuelling.

The Australian Department of Defence confirmed to Guardian Australia “there was a brief period of increased readiness” in early December but said the base was not in lockdown.


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“The [Australian Defence Force] maintains appropriate levels of readiness and posture to respond to evolving circumstances,” the spokesman said. “In early December there was a brief period of increased readiness. There were no instances of unalerted or unscheduled foreign aircraft operating in Australian airspace during this period.”

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It’s not the first time Russia has sought to demonstrate influence in the Pacific. Last year, it was revealed Russia had sent a secret shipment of 20 containers of weapons and military hardware to its newfound regional partner, Fiji. The shipment was followed by Russian military personnel, who were to train the Fijians in the use of the weapons.

In 2014, Russian naval vessels moved to the north of Australia, days before the G20 summit in Brisbane and at a time of heightened tensions between Moscow and Canberra.

In a 2015 paper, Alexey Muraviev, a strategic analyst and Russian military expert at Perth’s Curtin University, said Russia had tangibly intensified its engagement in the Asia-Pacific since about 2000.

Muraviev argued the 2014 Ukraine tensions and a need to diversify trade had “deepened Moscow’s long-standing impulse to re-engage with both Asia and the Pacific”.

“Economically, Moscow is responding to the rise of the Asia-Pacific as an engine of the global economy,” he wrote. “Politically, Moscow sees in the region a number of potential partners also striving to establish a multipolar world, notably China. In the military-strategic sphere, Russia is sensitive to the risk of armed conflict on its eastern flank.”

Australia’s acting opposition leader, Tanya Plibersek, said it appeared Russia had abided by international laws and norms during the exercises. She made no other comment on the response of the Australian defence force.

“I think it is very important that any country doing military exercises abides by laws and norms, international laws and norms, and the reporting suggests that this has been the case in this instance,” Plibersek said on Saturday.

Jennings said defence forces might have feared the bombers were being used to gather intelligence.

“There would be concerns about Russian intelligence gathering because they wouldn’t come this far south without wanting to look at the one significant Allied presence in this part of the world, which is what operates out of Darwin and RAAF base Tindal further south,” he told the ABC. “So there would be have been intelligence gathering we would have been geared to resist.”