Anthony Albanese claimed victory as the first Australian prime minister to clinch a second consecutive term in 21 years on Saturday and suggested his government had increased its majority by not modeling itself on U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration.

“Australians have chosen to face global challenges the Australian way, looking after each other while building for the future,” Albanese told supporters in a victory speech in Sydney.

“We do not need to beg or borrow or copy from anywhere else. We do not seek our inspiration overseas. We find it right here in our values and in our people,” he added.

His center-left Labor Party had branded Albanese’s rival Peter Dutton, the opposition leader, “DOGE-y Dutton” and accused his conservative Liberal Party of mimicking Trump and his Department of Government Efficiency.

Dutton had earlier conceded his alliance of conservative parties had been defeated at the election and that he had lost his own parliamentary seat that he had held for 24 years.

Ohio man charged with deputy’s death

A man who struck and killed a county deputy with his car Friday is the father of a teen who was shot and killed by a Cincinnati police officer a day earlier as officers were responding to a call about a stolen car, police said. Authorities said the crash appeared to be intentional.

The driver of the car, 38-year-old Rodney Hinton Jr., was charged with aggravated murder in the deputy’s death, police said.

Just a few hours before the crash, Hinton and other family members met at the police chief’s office Friday morning and watched a police body camera video showing an officer shoot the teen, said Michael Wright, an attorney hired by the family of 18-year-old Ryan Hinton.

Rodney Hinton could not make it through the entire video and did not say a word, said Wright, who is not representing Hinton on the crash charges.

Ryan Hinton was shot twice and killed by police Thursday during a chase. The officer who fired told investigators that the suspect pointed a gun at him, said Cincinnati’s police chief.

Abbott signs $1B school voucher bill

Texas will implement a $1 billion school voucher program, one of the largest in the country, that uses public dollars to fund private school tuition under a bill Gov. Greg Abbott signed Saturday, capping off a yearslong effort by Republicans.

Texas joins more than 30 other states that have implemented a similar program, of which about a dozen have launched or expanded their programs in recent years to make most students eligible.

Republican lawmakers and bill supporters say it will give parents more choice by letting them pull their children out of poor-performing public schools.

Democrats and Republicans in rural districts have criticized the program, saying it will drain financial resources from Texas’ more than 5 million public school students and subsidize the private education of wealthy families.

Beginning next school year, Texas families can receive $10,000 per year to help pay for students’ private school tuition. Children with disabilities can qualify for as much as $30,000 a year.

Mississippi River crests in New Orleans

The Mississippi River in New Orleans was finally cresting this past week, as much of the water from deadly storms across the Midwest is ending its long journey south.

The river has been gradually rising for weeks and reached 16.7 feet Thursday. This is just below the flood stage of 17 feet, and far from a record, but it’s the highest water level in New Orleans since 2020, and comes amid a four-year drought in the Mississippi River Basin.

“It looks noticeably different than it was just a year ago,” said Robert Florence, a co-owner of NOLA Historic Tours, who led a tour by the river a week ago.

United cuts 35 flights at Newark airport

Passengers with flights to or from Newark Liberty International Airport encountered long delays and cancellations Saturday due to an air traffic controller shortage, a nationwide problem the Trump administration has pledged to fix.

The busy airport outside New York City experienced disruptions all week. Faulting the Federal Aviation Administration’s alleged failure to address “long-simmering” challenges related to the air-traffic control system, United Airlines cut 35 daily flights from its Newark schedule starting Saturday.

Airport status reports from the FAA said staffing issues were causing average delays of nearly two hours and ones as long as five hours for flights scheduled to arrive at Newark on Saturday morning.

Singapore election keeps ruling party

Singapore’s long-ruling People’s Action Party won another landslide in Saturday’s general elections, extending its 66-year unbroken rule in a huge boost for Prime Minister Lawrence Wong who took power a year ago.

The Election Department announced the PAP won 82 Parliamentary seats after vote counting ended. The party had earlier won five seats uncontested, giving it 87 out of a total 97 seats. The opposition Workers Party maintained its 10 seats.

The PAP’s popular vote rose to 65.6%, up from a near-record low of 61% in 2020 polls. Jubilant supporters of the PAP, which had ruled Singapore since 1959, gathered in stadiums waved flags and cheered.

Military attacks hospital in South Sudan

At least seven people have been killed after a hospital in a remote part of South Sudan was targeted in an aerial bombing, Doctors Without Borders said Saturday.

The medical facility is located in a northern town known as Old Fangak, some 295 miles outside of Juba, the capital. Old Fangak is in an ethnically Nuer part of the country that has been historically associated with the opposition party loyal to Riek Machar, South Sudan’s first vice president, who is now under house arrest for alleged subversion.

The medical charity, also known by its French initials as MSF, released a statement condemning the attack on its hospital, said to be the only source of medical care for 40,000 residents, including many people displaced by flooding.

The attack began after 4 a.m. when two helicopter gunships dropped a bomb on a pharmacy, burning it to the ground, the statement said. In addition to seven deaths, 20 people were injured, according to the statement.

Pakistan test fires ballistic missile

Pakistan test fired a ballistic missile Saturday as tensions with India spiked over last month’s deadly attack on tourists in the disputed Kashmir region.

The surface-to-surface missile has a range of about 280 miles, the Pakistani military said. There was no immediate comment about the launch from India, which blames Pakistan for the April 22 gun massacre in the resort town of Pahalgam, a charge Pakistan denies.

Islamabad-based security analyst Syed Muhammad Ali said Saturday’s missile was named after a prominent Muslim conqueror of India, underlining its symbolic significance.

Voters OK ‘Starbase,’ city for SpaceX

The South Texas home of Elon Musk’s SpaceX rocket company is now an official city with a galactic name: Starbase.

A vote Saturday to formally organize Starbase as a city was approved by a lopsided margin among the small group of voters who live there and are mostly Musk’s employees at SpaceX. With all the votes in, the tally was 212 in favor to 6 against, according to results published online by the Cameron County Elections Department.

Starbase is the facility and launch site for the SpaceX rocket program that is under contract with the Department of Defense and NASA that hopes to send astronauts back to the moon and someday to Mars.

Companion efforts to the city vote include bills in the state Legislature to shift that authority from the county to the new town’s mayor and city council.

— From news services