Prince Harry made a sweet surprise appearance on the July 26 episode of “MasterChef Australia,” phoning in to check on wife Meghan Markle while she served as a guest judge on the reality cooking competition.

The Duke of Sussex made the appearance while his wife was doing a stint as a guest judge on the show. The surprise call came during the episode as the judges were reviewing a contestant’s dish, catching the contestants and other judges in the room off guard.

“My Husband’s Here”

The video call kicked off with a lighthearted greeting from Harry, who appeared unsure of exactly what he had dialed into. “G’day,” Harry began in the video call as Meghan turned the phone to the crowd, excitedly saying, “My husband’s here.” Harry then asked his wife, “What’s going on? Have I interrupted something important?”

Meghan quickly brought her husband up to speed, introducing him to the judging panel and explaining what the group was in the middle of. “Well, we are actually in the middle of tasting all the dishes,” she told him. “We have four incredible cooks here.” She went on to gush about the contestants’ skills, telling her fellow judges, “It’s amazing, they’re so talented. We wish you were here,” before noting that Harry was in Canberra at the time, spending time with veterans.

Judges Get in on the Fun

Harry also took a moment to compliment the show’s set design during the call, telling the judges, “The chandeliers in the background, that’s very nice.” One of the judges quipped back, “Yeah, we fancied the joint up for your beautiful wife,” before Harry signed off warmly. “Go and enjoy it,” he said. “I’m very sorry to disturb you. All is well here and I’ll see you later.”

During the same segment, just as Meghan was tasting the competitors’ dishes, she referred to her husband as “my love” while lamenting that he couldn’t try the food himself. “I wish you could try this,” she said. “These dishes are fantastic.”

A Playful Nod to Meghan’s Cooking

The Duchess of Sussex also used her time on set to tease the judges about one particular dish. Meghan later called her husband “a charmer” after his surprise video call during the guest judging appearance. Describing a hot sauce among the dishes she sampled, Meghan said, “There’s a hot sauce that — well you know me, it’s a sambal and it is so good,” before adding playfully, “I think it might be too much for you, though. It’s spicy.”

Filmed During the Couple’s April Trip to Australia

Meghan filmed her guest-judging appearance during a recent trip to Australia with Prince Harry, with the cameo initially teased after being shot during their visit to the country in April. The As Ever founder introduced the contestants to their challenge for the day, which involved picking a “hero” ingredient to spotlight in a dish that told a personal story or family memory.

During the episode, four contestants were challenged to create a dish using a set of Meghan’s favorite seasonal ingredients, including Brussels sprouts, local Australian honey, quince and strawberries, with the goal of crafting something “fit for a duchess.”

Family Stories and a More Casual Approach

Meghan used her introduction of the ingredients as an opportunity to share glimpses into her family life. She shared that her children, Prince Archie, 7, and Princess Lilibet, 5, are big fans of Brussels sprouts, and that she personally grows strawberries and mandarins on her farm in California.

The “With Love, Meghan” host also opted for a more informal approach to her role on the show, telling the judges they did not need to address her as Duchess and could instead simply “call me Meghan.”

Part of a Broader Australian Visit

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s four-day Australian trip in April included a mix of private, business and philanthropic engagements. The couple had previously visited the country eight years earlier on their first official joint royal tour as newlyweds, before stepping back from their senior royal roles two years after that visit.

A Well-Known Format for Australian Viewers

“MasterChef Australia,” based on the original British format, features amateur home cooks competing for the chance to publish their own cookbook, along with a cash prize of 250,000 Australian dollars, worth roughly $174,500 in U.S. currency. Meghan’s cameo added a celebrity spotlight to a show already known for drawing prominent guest judges throughout its run.

No Stranger to Surprise Calls

This is not the first time the couple has used a well-timed video call to surprise one another publicly. During a 2019 visit to Nalikule College of Education in Malawi as part of a royal tour of Africa, Harry was surprised when Meghan appeared unexpectedly on a video call to a room full of young women he was meeting with, delighting both Harry and the group in attendance.

A Continued Public Presence

Meghan’s MasterChef appearance arrives amid a steady stream of public projects for the couple, including her Netflix lifestyle series “With Love, Meghan,” which ran for two seasons and featured a rotating cast of celebrity guests joining her for cooking and lifestyle segments. The MasterChef Australia episode aired just after Meghan shared new photos on social media from a recent family vacation with Harry and their two children, continuing the couple’s pattern of blending personal milestones with their public-facing projects.

For fans of the couple, Monday’s viral clip offered a rare, unscripted glimpse of their relationship playing out on a reality television set, a lighthearted moment that quickly circulated online following the episode’s broadcast.

Mercedes-Benz faces a potential ban on selling connected vehicles in the U.S. under legislation targeting automakers with significant ownership ties to China.

The Senate Commerce Committee advanced a measure last week that would bar the sale of connected vehicles in the U.S. by companies with more than 15% ownership by Chinese entities, potentially affecting German automaker Mercedes-Benz, in which two Chinese investors hold stakes totaling nearly 20%.

Sens. Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich., and Bernie Moreno, R-Ohio, sponsored the bipartisan legislation, which would codify and expand restrictions established under the ​Biden administration, arguing that it “closes the door on Chinese-origin vehicles, software, and key components at every stage, from production, importation, to sale, so that data gathered on U.S. roads can’t be funneled back to the Chinese government.”

“Chinese cars are surveillance packages on wheels, with the ability to collect on American citizens and transmit that data back to Beijing,” Slotkin said in a statement.

FORD ENTERS COMPETITION TO DEVELOP NEW US ARMY TACTICAL TRUCK

Mercedes-Benz faces a potential ban on selling connected vehicles in the U.S. under legislation targeting automakers with significant ownership ties to China. (Eric Thayer/Bloomberg via Getty Images / Getty Images)

Moreno said the measure aims to prevent “an absolute, total, and complete destruction of our industrial base.”

“China’s auto industry was not built to compete, it was built to destroy American manufacturing, gut the middle class, and undermine our national security,” he said.

But Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, who chairs the Commerce Committee, warned that Mercedes-Benz could effectively be shut out of the U.S. market if the legislation becomes law without changes and said the bill needed changes.

Cruz accused General Motors of pushing for the measure to cut Mercedes-Benz out of the market and make its Cadillac brand more appealing.

“We would never consider” banning Mercedes-Benz sales in the U.S., he said.

GM ​contended that the legislation does not attempt to target an individual automaker, saying it “supports policies that protect and strengthen American manufacturing and the ​global competitiveness of U.S. automakers.”

The Senate Commerce Committee advanced a measure last week that would bar the sale of vehicles in the U.S. by companies with more than15% ownership by Chinese entities. (ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images / Getty Images)

“As we have said many times, we can compete with anyone in the world when we are given a level playing field,” GM said.

Mercedes-Benz highlighted its extensive U.S. operations while stressing that it “continues to support legislation designed to protect U.S. national security.”

“Mercedes-Benz also remains ‌committed to ⁠ensuring that any legislation does not impact our operations. The company will continue to safeguard its employees, dealers, suppliers, and customers,” the automaker said.

The bill includes a process through which manufacturers could seek Commerce Department authorization for vehicles that otherwise would be prohibited.

Moreno said GM intends to move production of its Chinese-made Buick Envision to the U.S. for the 2028 model year and that Ford has agreed to transfer Chinese-made Lincolns to the U.S.

“I view that as a big victory,” Moreno said.

JAGUAR LAND ROVER RECALLS MORE THAN 15,000 VEHICLES OVER VISIBILITY-LIMITING DEFECT

Sen. Ted Cruz warned that Mercedes-Benz would be removed from the U.S. market if the legislation becomes law. (Artur Widak/NurPhoto via Getty Images / Getty Images)

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He also said Google’s ​self-driving vehicle company, Waymo, which had ​been in talks with Chinese automaker ⁠Geely about platforms coming from China, has committed to looking at a Detroit-based manufacturer for its future platforms.

Cruz said another bill provision backed by GM would require automakers to purchase more expensive batteries from GM, adding $5,000 to the vehicles’ cost.

This comes after the Trump administration last month banned Polestar from selling new connected vehicles in the U.S. starting in the 2027 model year due to the Sweden-based automaker being majority-owned by Geely.

Polestar’s sister brand and co-founder, Volvo Cars, said in May that it was given a green light to continue selling cars in the U.S.

The legislation must still pass the full Senate and House and be signed by the president before becoming law.

Reuters contributed to this report.

DroneShield Ltd. shares tumbled sharply Tuesday, falling 12.02% to $1.83, marking another painful session for the once high-flying Australian counter-drone technology company as easing Middle East tensions and lingering governance concerns continued to weigh on the stock.

The decline of $0.25 comes amid a broader retreat in oil prices and defense-sector sentiment following a weekend pause in hostilities between the United States and Iran, a development that has sharply reduced the geopolitical risk premium that had driven a defense-stock rally across the ASX earlier in the year.

A Stock That Has Fallen Dramatically From Its Peak

Tuesday’s slide extends a brutal stretch for DroneShield shareholders that has now stripped away the vast majority of the stock’s once-spectacular gains. The stock reached its all-time high of $6.71 on Oct. 9, 2025, a level far above where shares now trade. Shares have fluctuated anywhere between $4.74 in January and a low of $2.14 in late July, leaving the stock down roughly 35% year to date and 54% below its January 2026 peak, and about 41% below trading levels from a year earlier.

A Rally Fueled by Global Defense Spending, Then Reversed

DroneShield’s meteoric rise earlier this year was driven by a powerful narrative around rising global defense budgets and geopolitical instability. There had been a strong start to the year for DroneShield shares, supported by higher global defense budgets and geopolitical volatility following conflict in the Middle East, with investors flocking to defense-related shares as governments around the world hiked their defense budgets and geopolitical risk worsened.

The stock rallied from around 56 cents in early 2024 to its all-time high above $6.71 by October 2025, a gain of more than 1,000% during that primary uptrend. But that momentum began reversing sharply in the following months. A combination of governance and regulatory concerns dampened investor sentiment beginning in mid-May, when DroneShield announced it had received a notice from the Australian Securities and Investments Commission requesting assistance with an investigation under the Corporations Act, related to market announcements and share trading between Nov. 1 and Nov. 20, 2025.

Regulatory Cloud Continues to Weigh on Sentiment

That ASIC investigation has remained a persistent overhang on the stock in the months since it was first disclosed. Reuters reported that Australia’s corporate regulator was investigating DroneShield’s disclosures and share trading, contributing to the stock’s decline even as the company continued to report strong underlying business results.

Wall Street Turns More Cautious

As the governance concerns have persisted, analyst sentiment on DroneShield has grown increasingly split. Jefferies Financial Group lowered its revenue projections for DroneShield across 2026 through 2028 by roughly 9% and cut its earnings-per-share estimates by a range of 5% to 16%, reducing its price target by 27% to 2.05 Australian dollars. The level of short positioning in DroneShield shares was nearly double that of peer Electro Optic Systems Holdings, with short interest climbing by 7.01 million shares since July 1 while the number of shares outstanding remained steady at around 924.1 million.

Other analysts remain divided on the stock’s outlook. Out of four analysts tracked by TradingView, two hold a strong buy rating while two hold a sell or strong sell rating, though all agree there is some element of potential upside ahead, with an average price target of $3.41 implying about 49% upside and a maximum target of $4.80 implying the stock could climb another 110% from recent levels.

Strong Contract Wins Have Failed to Offset Selling Pressure

The declines have come despite the company continuing to secure notable new business. Among its recent wins, DroneShield secured a $24.9 million contract with a U.S. defense customer combining mobile and fixed counter-drone systems with software subscriptions and ongoing support services, reflecting the company’s shift toward higher-margin recurring revenue. A separate roughly $50 million European military contract secured via a reseller, with substantial hardware deliveries weighted to the first quarter of 2026, briefly drove the share price above $2.80 before those gains evaporated, while an additional $6.2 million Asia-Pacific military contract further validated the global breadth of demand for the company’s AI-enabled electronic warfare systems.

Despite that operational strength, the stock has failed to find insulation from selling pressure, in large part due to the ongoing governance cloud, with DroneShield having established a reputation as a high-beta, momentum-driven play within the defense technology space that tends to lead sector moves in both directions.

Business Fundamentals Remain Solid

Beyond the near-term share price volatility, DroneShield’s underlying financial performance has continued to show substantial growth. The company reported fiscal 2025 revenue of $216.5 million, up 276% year-over-year, along with $104 million in secured fiscal 2026 revenue and $21.7 million in new contracts. DroneShield has also been expanding its manufacturing footprint, announcing in March an EU manufacturing facility targeting annual production capacity of about $2.4 billion Australian dollars by the end of 2026.

A Cooling Geopolitical Backdrop

Tuesday’s decline also fits within the broader pullback across defense-linked assets following the weekend pause in U.S.-Iran hostilities, which has sharply reduced the acute geopolitical risk that had underpinned demand for counter-drone and defense technology stocks throughout the first half of the year. As tensions in the region have shown signs of easing and oil prices have retreated sharply from their recent highs, investors appear to be reassessing how much of a risk premium defense stocks like DroneShield deserve.

DroneShield is scheduled to release its next earnings report on Sept. 1, 2026, a date that could offer investors a clearer read on how the company’s underlying business is performing amid the ongoing volatility in its share price. Until then, DroneShield’s stock is likely to remain caught between genuinely strong operational momentum, including a growing pipeline of international military contracts, and a market increasingly focused on the unresolved ASIC investigation and the broader cooling of the geopolitical backdrop that originally fueled the stock’s dramatic rise. For now, investors appear to be pricing in considerably more caution than conviction, leaving the stock trading well below both its all-time high and the levels many analysts still consider achievable over the next 12 months.

Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 climbed further into record territory Tuesday afternoon, rising 0.45% to 8,933.8 points, adding 39.8 points as investors weighed a sharp overnight drop in global oil prices against a wave of corporate earnings updates and continued optimism tied to easing Middle East tensions.

The gain builds on a strong recent run for Australian equities, with the benchmark index continuing to trade within striking distance of the all-time high it set earlier this year.

A Market Buoyed by Easing Middle East Tensions

The S&P/ASX 200 was set to rise Monday as the United States paused strikes for a second day, a development that helped fuel broader optimism across regional markets heading into the new trading week. That momentum appeared to carry through into Tuesday’s session, even as falling oil prices created a mixed picture for specific sectors of the market.

Energy Stocks Under Pressure as Oil Tumbles

While the broader index advanced, Australia’s energy sector faced significant headwinds from the overnight collapse in global crude prices. ASX 200 energy shares including Beach Energy and Santos were expected to come under pressure Tuesday after oil prices sank sharply overnight, with West Texas Intermediate crude down 7.3% to $82.78 a barrel and Brent crude down 8.5% to $88.58 a barrel, according to Bloomberg data.

That decline followed reports over the weekend that the United States and Iran had paused military strikes, easing fears of a prolonged disruption to Middle East oil shipments and sending crude prices tumbling from their recent highs.

China’s Blockbuster Chip Listing Reverberates Across Markets

Tuesday’s session also came against the backdrop of one of the most dramatic corporate listings of the year, with China’s ChangXin Memory Technologies making waves across Asia-Pacific markets. China’s fourth-largest DRAM maker exploded higher in its Shanghai debut as investors chased a rare pure-play bet on Beijing’s chip self-sufficiency push, with shares closing at 49 yuan, up 466%, valuing the company at about 3.3 trillion yuan, or roughly $488 billion, and making it the biggest company listed in mainland China.

The IPO raised as much as 66.6 billion yuan, the second-largest offering in Chinese history, generating 141 billion yuan in turnover on the day, nearly 7% of all onshore market transactions. The retail portion of the offering was 212 times oversubscribed, with 9.4 million orders worth 7.07 trillion yuan submitted, roughly 10 times the size of SpaceX’s record order book. That listing added to a broader narrative of volatility across global chipmakers, with flow-on effects felt across memory and semiconductor stocks worldwide.

Corporate Earnings and Buybacks Add to the Mix

Several individual company updates also shaped Tuesday’s trading session on the ASX. Webjet-owned WebBeds flagged first-half 2027 revenue growth of 11% to 15% compared with the same period a year earlier, alongside an on-market buy-back of up to $90 million, funded from existing cash and running from mid-August 2026 through late July 2027. The company’s total transaction value margin was seen at approximately 6.7%, up from 6.5% in the first half of 2026, marking a third consecutive half of margin gains, with cash conversion above 100% for the coming half.

Elsewhere, defense and space technology company Electro Optic Systems posted standout results heading into the new trading week. Electro Optic Systems flagged a 284% jump in first-half revenue and upgraded its base-business guidance, citing a record order book driven by strong counter-drone demand. The company’s first-half 2026 revenue reached about $169 million, up 284%, or $125 million, from the same period a year earlier, marking the highest first-half revenue total in the company’s history, while its order book stood at $846 million as of June 30, up 84%, or $387 million, from the end of 2025.

Bell Potter analysts maintained a bullish stance on the defense contractor following the update, retaining a buy rating and raising the firm’s price target to $12.60 from $12.50, citing the company’s leadership position across multiple counter-drone technology verticals and its exposure to rising global defense spending.

A Historic Backdrop for Australian Equities

Tuesday’s gains continue to build on a remarkable run for the ASX 200 over the past several years. The index hit an all-time high of 9,198.6 points in February 2026 before settling closer to the 8,800 mark by July, with the benchmark having achieved a long-term annualized historical return of roughly 8.2% on a total return basis, including dividends, over its more than 25-year history. The index remains heavily weighted toward the financial and materials sectors, with financials making up around 28% of the index and including major players such as Commonwealth Bank of Australia.

Global Backdrop Remains Supportive

Beyond the immediate catalysts of falling oil prices and the CXMT listing, Tuesday’s session took place against a broader global backdrop of continued merger and acquisition activity and green energy investment. M&A deal volumes were projected to hit $173 billion in 2026, the highest level since 2019, aided by faster regulatory approvals. Green energy financing also hit a record $20.1 billion in the first half of 2026, topping the full-year 2025 total, split between $11.8 billion in construction financing and $8.3 billion in investment financing.

With the index continuing to trade near record territory and a heavy slate of domestic earnings reports still to come during the Australian reporting season, investors are likely to remain focused on how individual companies navigate a market environment shaped by volatile oil prices, geopolitical developments in the Middle East, and continued ripple effects from China’s blockbuster semiconductor listing. Whether the ASX 200 can push toward fresh record highs in the sessions ahead may hinge heavily on how energy stocks absorb the overnight oil price shock and whether broader risk appetite continues to hold up as more corporate results filter through the market this week.