Australia

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.

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.

19 June 2023; MEMO: The Australian Labor Party passed a resolution yesterday, during the final day of the Victorian party conference, calling for the federal Australian government to recognise the state of Palestine.

"In re-affirming the resolution carried at the 2018 and 2021 national conferences, the Albanese government will join with 138 countries and the Vatican, which have already done so," the motion read.

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.

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.

06 June 2023; MEMO: A group of Australian women and children trapped in detention camps in northeast Syria are taking the Australian government to court to try and secure repatriation.

The women argue that their detention is arbitrary, that Canberra has the power to free them and that they have a legal right to return to Australia.

Roughly 38,000 foreign nationals are held in two camps in northeast Syria – Roj and Al-Hawl.

SYDNEY, June 6 (Reuters) - China leads research in 19 of 23 technologies set as priorities by the AUKUS defence partnership of Australia, Britain and the U.S., including hypersonics, electronic warfare and undersea drones, highlighting the need for Western allies to pool research results, an Australian security think-tank says.

The Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) said on Tuesday its survey of the world's top science papers showed China led research in most of the technologies likely to come under the defence partnership's so-called Pillar Two.

SYDNEY, May 31 (NNN-AAP) – Scientists announced today that, an examination of 107-million-year-old fossils revealed, giant flying reptiles once soared Australia’s skies.

Two tiny fossils were found in the Australian state of Victoria in the 1980s, but researchers have only just confirmed its origin.

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — Papua New Guinean Prime Minister James Marape said a proposed security treaty with Australia has been delayed over “certain wordings and provisions,” a week after the strategically important South Pacific Island nation signed a new security pact with the United States that sparked protests.

Marape informed Australian Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles of the delay on Monday on the sidelines of an international forum in South Korea, the Papua New Guinean leader’s office said in a statement Tuesday.