BRISBANE, Australia (AP) — Sailing the Whitsunday islands. Surfing an iconic Gold Coast break. Rowing in a crocodile-inhabited river in Rockhampton.
Extra tourism-focused venues and a new 60,000-seat Olympic stadium to be built in inner-city parkland have been unveiled as part of a major overhaul of planning for the 2032 Brisbane Games.
David Crisafulli, the third premier of Queensland state in the almost four years since the International Olympic Committee awarded the 2032 Games to the capital of Queensland state, announced the latest plans on a rainy Tuesday.
He said it’s not going to be like last year’s Paris Olympics or the 2028 Summer Games in Los Angeles, promising instead it'll be uniquely-Queensland.
It’s been more than 1,340 days since that IOC decision in 2021, and local organizers still haven’t started the Olympic venue construction program.
“The time has come to just get on with it — get on with it, and build,” Crisafulli said, marking his 150th day in office. “We are going to start immediately. We’ve got seven years to make it work — and make it work we will.”
A 25,000-seat aquatics center has also been proposed in an Olympic precinct that includes the new main stadium at Victoria Park, a former golf course near downtown Brisbane.
The 11 years that Brisbane had to prepare is now down to seven, and leaders at federal, state and local levels agree it’s time to stop squabbling over venues and start building them.
Newly elected IOC president Kirsty Coventry, who oversaw the initial planning stages as head of the IOC’s coordination commission, has been updated on the changes by Andrew Liveris, chairman of the 2032 organizing committee.
“The stage matters,” Liveris said. “We’ve still got 7½ years to go, and we have a plan. This is a go-get-it-done plan.”
Brisbane was the first Summer Games host picked in a new process to put a preferred candidate into exclusive, fast-track talks without facing a rival bidder in a vote. With it, the IOC aimed to cut the cost of campaigning and building venues.
Domestic media earlier this week raised concerns about crocodiles at the Olympic rowing venue when it emerged that events would be staged on the Fitzroy River.
Crisafulli confirmed the Fitzroy River venue at Rockhampton, on the central Queensland coast, and said a “multitude” of events had been staged there — including Australia’s pre-Olympic rowing camps. He said local kids swam and paddled in the river and crocodiles wouldn’t be a problem.
Sarah Cook, the head of Rowing Australia, said the crocodile concerns were overblown in the media. But she raised some issues about the river current and its suitability for Olympic competition.
Liveris, who said World Rowing would visit the venue in May, also wasn’t worried about crocs.
“There are sharks in the ocean and we still do surfing ... this is can do, not can’t do, please flip the mindset here,” he said. “Creatures below the water .. that’s a bit kind of Hollywood-ish.”
It’s been a year since local organizers scrapped initial plans to demolish and rebuild the Gabba, an iconic cricket ground, as the Games centerpiece when a previous review panel appointed in 2023 recommended a new stadium in city parkland.
The costs soared and the concept lost the support of the Australian Olympic Committee.
The premier at the time, Steven Miles, rejected the recommendations of that review led by former Brisbane Mayor Graham Quirk. Miles instead planned to use a rugby stadium to host the ceremonies, and to renovate the aging facility built to host the 1982 Commonwealth Games.
Crisafulli went to a state election late last year promising no new stadiums, but then instituted another independent review quickly after taking power for the Liberal-National coalition. His cabinet went through the recommendations of the 100-day review and approved new plans Monday.
A group of protesters gathered outside the riverside location where Crisafulli confirmed the revised venue plan. Dozens more protestors converged on Victoria Park, holding up “Hands OFF Victoria Park” signs and shouting “shame” while listening to news of the announcement.
The Save Victoria Park community group is fundraising for a legal challenge in a bid to prevent the stadium being built in the hilly, 64-hectare (158-acre) park.
Brisbane organizers plan to host Olympic sports in coastal cities and sites from the Gold Coast and Sunshine Coasts in the south to Cairns in Queensland’s far north and to the gateway of the Outback at Toowoomba, where an equestrian hub will be built.
The state and federal governments initially agreed a 50-50 funding split on a venue budget of just over 7 billion Australian dollars ($4.4 billion).
The bulk of federal money was for an indoor arena adjacent to the city center that was initially set to host Olympic aquatics in a drop-in pool and later be transformed to host the National Basketball League and concerts.
That project has been scrapped, with Crisafulli’s government aiming to spread the federal funding around other venues and seeking private-sector funding to build a similar arena on state-owned land near the Gabba, outside the scope of the Olympics.
Under the new plan, the Gabba is set to be demolished after the 2032 Games and replaced with housing. The main existing tenants — the Brisbane Lions in the Australian Football League and Queensland Cricket — have endorsed the plan to relocate them to the Victoria Park stadium that will have a post-Olympic and Paralympic capacity of 63,000.
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This photo shows the entrance to Victoria Park, where a new 60,000-seat stadium will be built for the 2032 Olympics in Brisbane, Australia Tuesday, March 25, 2025. (AP Photo/John Pye)
Kirsty Coventry speaks during a press conference after she was elected as the new IOC President at the International Olympic Committee 144th session in Costa Navarino, western Greece, Thursday, March 20, 2025. (AP Photo/Thanassis Stavrakis)
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — The United States said Tuesday that it had reached a tentative agreement for Ukraine and Russia to stop fighting and ensure safe navigation in the Black Sea in separate talks with both sides, but many details were unresolved, and the Kremlin made the deal conditional on lifting some Western sanctions.
The announcement was made as the U.S. wrapped up three days of talks with Ukrainian and Russian delegations in Saudi Arabia on prospective steps toward a limited ceasefire.
While a comprehensive peace deal still looked distant, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy praised the talks as the early “right steps” toward a peaceful settlement of the 3-year-old war.
“These are the first steps — not the very first but initial ones — with this presidential administration toward completely ending the war and the possibility of a full ceasefire, as well as steps toward a sustainable and fair peace agreement,” he said at a news conference.
U.S. experts met separately with Ukrainian and Russian representatives in the Saudi capital of Riyadh, and the White House said in separate statements after the talks that the sides “agreed to ensure safe navigation, eliminate the use of force, and prevent the use of commercial vessels for military purposes in the Black Sea.”
Details of the prospective deal were not released, but it appeared to mark another attempt to ensure safe Black Sea shipping after a 2022 agreement that was brokered by the U.N. and Turkey but halted by Russia the next year.
“We are making a lot of progress,” U.S. President Donald Trump said Tuesday at the White House. “So that’s all I can report.”
When Moscow withdrew from the shipping deal in 2023, it complained that a parallel agreement promising to remove obstacles to Russian exports of food and fertilizer had not been honored. It said restrictions on shipping and insurance hampered its agricultural trade. Kyiv accused Moscow of violating the deal by delaying the vessels’ inspections.
After Russia suspended its part of the deal, it regularly attacked Ukraine’s southern ports and grain storage sites.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in televised comments Tuesday that Moscow is now open to the revival of the Black Sea shipping deal but warned that Russian interests must be protected.
In an apparent reference to Moscow's demands, the White House said the U.S. “will help restore Russia’s access to the world market for agricultural and fertilizer exports, lower maritime insurance costs, and enhance access to ports and payment systems for such transactions.”
Kirill Dmitriev, Putin’s envoy for investment and economic cooperation, hailed the results of the talks as a “major shift toward peace, enhanced global food security and essential grain supplies for over 100 million additional people.”
Trump "is making another global breakthrough by effective dialogue and problem-solving,” he said on X.
But the Kremlin warned in a statement that the Black Sea deal could only be implemented after sanctions against the Russian Agricultural Bank and other financial organizations involved in food and fertilizer trade are lifted and their access to the SWIFT system of international payments is ensured.
The agreement is also conditional on lifting sanctions against Russian food and fertilizer exporters and ships carrying Russian food exports, and removing restrictions on exports of agricultural equipment to Russia, the Kremlin said.
The deal emphasized that inspections of commercial ships would be necessary to ensure they aren't used for military purposes.
Zelenskyy bristled at Russia's demand for lifting sanctions, saying that doing so “would weaken our position.”
Still, Trump indicated that the U.S. was considering the Kremlin’s conditions: “We’re thinking about all of them right now.”
A senior official in the Ukrainian government, who is directly familiar with the talks and spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment publicly, said the Kyiv delegation does not agree to lifting sanctions as a condition for a maritime ceasefire and that Russia has done nothing to have sanctions rolled back. The official also said European countries are not involved in the sanctions discussions, despite sanctions being within the European Union’s responsibility.
Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov warned that Kyiv would see the deployment of Russian warships in the western Black Sea as a “violation of the commitment to ensure safe navigation" there and "a threat to the national security of Ukraine.”
“In this case, Ukraine will have full right to exercise right to self-defense,” he said.
The White House also said the parties agreed to develop measures for implementing an agreement reached in Trump’s calls with Zelenskyy and Putin to ban strikes against energy facilities in Russia and Ukraine.
The talks in Riyadh, which did not include direct Russian-Ukrainian contacts, were part of an attempt to work out details on a partial pause in the fighting in Ukraine, which began with Moscow's invasion in 2022. It has been a struggle to reach even a limited, 30-day ceasefire, which both sides agreed to in principle last week, even while continuing to attack each other with drones and missiles.
After the Trump-Putin call last week, the White House said the partial ceasefire would include ending attacks on “energy and infrastructure,” while the Kremlin emphasized that the agreement referred more narrowly to “energy infrastructure." Tuesday's White House statement reverted to the wording used by Russia.
The Kremlin, which has accused Ukraine of breaching the agreement to stop strikes on energy infrastructure, on Tuesday published a list of energy facilities subject to a 30-day halt on strikes that began on March 18. It warned that each party was free to opt out of the deal in case of violations by the other side.
Zelenskyy noted that significant uncertainties remain.
“I think there will be a million questions and details,” he said, adding that the responsibility for potential violations also remains unclear.
He emphasized that Ukraine is open to a full, 30-day ceasefire that Trump has proposed, reaffirming that Kyiv is “ready to quickly move toward an unconditional ceasefire.”
Putin has made a complete ceasefire conditional on a halt of arms supplies to Kyiv and a suspension of Ukraine’s military mobilization — demands rejected by Ukraine and its Western allies.
The U.S. noted its commitment to helping achieve the exchange of prisoners of war, the release of civilian detainees and the return of forcibly transferred Ukrainian children.
In other developments, the Russian Foreign Ministry warned in a statement that Moscow would not agree to surrender control over the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Europe's largest, that Russia captured in the opening days of the invasion.
Trump suggested that Zelenskyy consider transferring ownership of Ukraine’s power plants to the U.S. for long-term security, while the Ukrainian leader said they specifically talked about the Zaporizhzhia plant in last week's call.
The Russian Defense Ministry said Ukraine had "continued deliberate drone strikes against Russia’s civilian energy facilities.”
One Ukrainian drone attack on Monday knocked down a high-voltage power line linking the Rostov nuclear power plant with the city of Tikhoretsk in the southern Krasnodar region, the ministry said, adding that another drone strike had occurred on the Svatovo gas distribution station in the Russia-occupied Ukrainian region of Luhansk.
Russian state media said six people, including three Russian journalists, died Monday after a Ukrainian missile strike in the Luhansk region.
In Ukraine, the number of people injured Monday in a Russian missile strike in the city of Sumy rose to 101, including 23 children, according to the Sumy regional administration.
The strike on Sumy, across the border from Russia’s Kursk region that has been partially occupied by Ukraine since August, hit residential buildings and a school, which had to be evacuated.
Meanwhile, Russia launched a missile and 139 long-range drones into Ukraine overnight, according to the Ukrainian air force. Those attacks affected seven regions of Ukraine and injured multiple people.
Associated Press writer Dasha Litvinova in Tallinn, Estonia, contributed to this report.
A worker of DTEK company walks in front of transformers of a substation destroyed by a Russian drone strike in undisclosed location, Ukraine, March 25, 2025. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
A worker of DTEK company walks in front of a transformer of a substation destroyed by a Russian drone strike in undisclosed location, Ukraine, March 25, 2025. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
A worker of DTEK company climbs up stepladder during repair works of a substation destroyed by a Russian drone strike in undisclosed location, Ukraine, March 25, 2025. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
Russian President Vladimir Putin chairs a meeting of the Presidential Council for Culture and Art via videoconference at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, on Tuesday, March 25, 2025. (Vyacheslav Prokofyev, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy speaks during a briefing in Kyiv, Ukraine, Tuesday, March 25, 2025. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)
In this photo provided by the Ukrainian Emergency Service, a paramedic evacuates an elderly resident whose house was hit by Russian attack in Sumy, Ukraine, Tuesday, March 25, 2025. (Ukrainian Emergency Service via AP)
In this photo provided by the Ukrainian Emergency Service, firefighters put out the fire following a Russian attack in Sumy, Ukraine, Tuesday, March 25, 2025. (Ukrainian Emergency Service via AP)
In this photo provided by the Ukrainian Emergency Service, a psychologist works with residents of houses which were hit by a Russian attack in Sumy, Ukraine, Tuesday, March 25, 2025. (Ukrainian Emergency Service via AP)
In this photo provided by the Ukrainian Emergency Service, firefighters put out the fire following a Russian attack in Sumy, Ukraine, Tuesday, March 25, 2025. (Ukrainian Emergency Service via AP)
