TRANSCRIPT
- The Prime Minister says he will speak to Chinese President Xi Jinping about aircraft near miss.
- The High Court rules commonwealth can be held liable for damage to Indigenous sites...
- The United Nations passes a resolution to make May 25 "World Football Day".
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese says he will speak to Chinese President Xi Jinping after a near miss between Chinese and Australian aircraft over international waters.
Defence Minister Richard Marles has confirmed an Australian Navy Seahawk helicopter was forced to take evasive action to prevent being hit by flares launched by a Chinese Air Force plane on Saturday evening.
China's foreign ministry spokesman Lin Jian has said its military had taken the necessary steps to warn Australia after the aircraft flew near China's airspace.
The prime minister says China's explanations for the incident so far have not been satisfactory.
"Look this is unacceptable, and it was unprofessional. I have said that we will cooperate with China where we can, we'll disagree where we must, and we'll engage in our national interest. This is an area of disagreement, we've called it out."
But Opposition Leader Peter Dutton says the prime minister is "weak" towards China.
"We shouldn't put the lives of our Australian Defence Force members at risk, and that's what's happening at the moment when the prime minister continues his silence. China doesn't know red lines if the prime minister doesn't point out very clearly where they are."
The driver responsible for the deadly New South Wales Hunter Valley bus crash is behind bars after pleading guilty to multiple dangerous driving charges today.
59-year-old Brett Andrew Button had all 10 of his manslaughter charges withdrawn as he admitted lesser charges over the June 2023 crash that killed 10 people and injured dozens more.
In a deal struck with prosecutors, he pleaded guilty to 10 counts of dangerous driving causing death, nine counts of dangerous driving causing grievous bodily harm and 16 counts of furious driving causing bodily harm.
Mr Button was arrested after losing control of a bus carrying wedding guests from the Wandin Valley Estate to Singleton in June, where a bus rolled onto its side after hitting a guard rail.
Prosecutors applied to detain Mr Button in custody, which his defence lawyers did not oppose.
The High Court has ruled that the Commonwealth can be held criminally liable for damages to Indigenous sacred sites.
The High Court overturned a decision from the Northern Territory Supreme Court after Parks Australia caused damage to an Indigenous sacred site in Kakadu National Park in 2019.
The case had centred on damage to Gunlom Falls within the national park, after the construction of a walkway too close to a sacred site for Indigenous men.
Chair of the Aboriginal Areas Protection Authority, Bobby Nunggumajbarr says its an important day for those who have been fighting the case.
"It it is an important day for the custodians, the traditional owners, that have been battling really hard for four years, and I hope everything will go further on from here to able to make it a better workable for the Sacred site act further."
The world has just experienced its hottest April on record, extending an 11-month streak in which every month set a temperature record.
The European Union's climate change monitoring service says including April, the world's average temperature was the highest on record for a 12-month period, around 1.6C above the pre-industrial average.
The Copernicus Climate Change Service says some of the extremes, including months of record breaking sea surface temperatures, have led scientists to investigate whether human activity has now triggered a tipping point in the climate system.
Senior climate scientist Julien Nicolas says global sea surface temperatures should have been lower because of El-Nino weather patterns this year.
"Given all these records that we've seen tumbling in the past few months, I think many scientists have asked the question whether there could be a shift in the climate system. I think that's, that's one of the questions that is keeping scientists, climate scientists busy at the moment."
In football,
Fans of the beautiful game around the globe now have a day to celebrate the world's most popular sport every year.
The United Nations General Assembly has adopted a resolution proclaiming May the 25th as World Football Day.
The day marks the 100th anniversary of the first international soccer tournament in history with the representation of all regions that took place on May the 25th, 1924, during the summer Olympic Games in Paris.
Libya's UN Ambassador Taher El-Sonni, who introduced the resolution, said football serves as a "universal language" spoken across the world, cutting across national, cultural and socio-economic barriers.
