Australia & Pacifics

CANBERRA, Jul 4 (NNN-AAP) – Australia will ease visa rules for Indonesian travellers, in a bid to boost economic ties between the two countries. Australian Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, today met with Indonesian President, Joko Widodo in Sydney, for talks on visa requirements, trade and climate change.

During the Australia-Indonesia Annual Leaders’ Meeting, they discussed new initiatives to enable more Australian and Indonesian professionals to work in each other’s country.

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — Australia’s central bank left its benchmark interest rate at 4.1% at a policy meeting Tuesday after inflation fell to 5.6% in May from 6.5% a month earlier.

The Reserve Bank has lifted the cash rate 12 times since May last year to reduce inflation to a target range of 2% to 3%.

Higher interest rates raise the cost of borrowing for both businesses and consumers, slowing economic activity and helping to relieve price pressures that have flared after the slowdowns of the COVID-19 pandemic.

SYDNEY (AP) — Australia is now the first country to allow psychiatrists to prescribe certain psychedelic substances to patients with depression or post-traumatic stress disorder.

Beginning Saturday, Australian physicians can prescribe doses of MDMA, also known as ecstasy, for PTSD. Psilocybin, the psychoactive ingredient in psychedelic mushrooms, can be given to people who have hard-to-treat depression. The country put the two drugs on the list of approved medicines by the Therapeutic Goods Administration.

WELLINGTON, Jun 30 (NNN-XINHUA) – New Zealand’s major supermarkets have been preparing for the second phase of the national plastics ban, starting from tomorrow, which will see the phase-out of more single-use plastics.

The second round will ban plastic produce bags and stickers, plates, bowls, cutlery, and straws, according to the Ministry for Environment’s website, released today.

Those plastics will be taken off the shelves from tomorrow, with businesses to be possibly fined up to 100,000 NZ dollars (60,853 U.S. dollars) if they do not comply.

CANBERRA, Jun 24 (NNN-AAP) – Koalas become increasingly vigilant when drones are flying nearby, recent Australian research found.

In the first study of its kind, a team from Flinders University in the Australian state of South Australia (SA), fitted 16 of 34 koalas at the Cleland Wildlife Park with heart rate monitors, to measure the impact of drones on the iconic species.

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — A senator invited the International Criminal Court to investigate what Australian military commanders knew about war crime allegations in Afghanistan in a bid to pressure Australia into launching its own review.

Sen. Jacqui Lambie, an influential independent legislator, sent an Article 15 Communication to the Hague-based court Tuesday because she argues military commanders have not been held accountable for their soldiers’ alleged war crimes.

SUVA, June 13 (Xinhua) -- A scholar on Tuesday slammed Japan's planned discharge of radioactive wastewater from its crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant into the Pacific Ocean.

"The contamination will affect the South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone Treaty areas as well when it eventually flows there," said Kalinga Seneviratne, a visiting lecturer at the University of the South Pacific, in an interview with Xinhua in Suva, capital of Fiji.

"Also, since fish stocks are migratory, contaminated fish could be caught within the treaty area," Seneviratne added.

WELLINGTON, Jun 12 (NNN-XINHUA) – Marine heatwaves have become longer, stronger, and more frequent across coastal New Zealand since 1982, especially over the last 10 years, according to a research today.

Different regions experienced more marine heatwaves in different seasons, with the greatest increases observed in the Chatham islands in winter, central New Zealand in autumn, north-eastern New Zealand in summer and autumn, and Bounty and Antipodes Islands in spring, according to the research published on the New Zealand Journal of Marine and Freshwater Research.

SYDNEY, June 12 (Reuters) - A man was charged with dangerous driving on Monday after at least 10 wedding guests were killed when the bus they were travelling in crashed at a roundabout in Australia's worst bus accident in almost 30 years, police said.

Twenty-five people were injured in the accident around 11:30 p.m. (1330 GMT) on Sunday near the town of Greta, about 180 km (112 miles) northwest of Sydney, police said.