TRANSCRIPT
- The Chinese Premier lands in Adelaide to begin his four-day diplomatic tour of Australia
- A magistrate in Kenya shot dead in a courtroom
- Concerns over water quality in the Seine in the lead up to the Paris Olympics
Chinese Premier Li Xiang has landed in Adelaide, beginning his four-day visit to Australia to discuss foreign relations with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.
His arrival has been met with protests, with a small group of Falun Gong practitioners staging a peaceful protest on the road into the airport, though they were outnumbered by Adelaide’s Chinese community.
The Adelaide leg of the trip is all about panda diplomacy and celebrating repaired relations with the wine sector.
The delegation will begin with a visit Adelaide Zoo today, when Australia will learn if it is to keep its loaned Chinese pandas or if the two - that haven’t managed to breed - will be replaced by a more fertile pair.
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Australia has become of 93 countries to sign a statement of support for the International Criminal Court, which has lately come under intense scrutiny for its decision to request arrest warrants for two senior Israeli officials as well as three Hamas leaders.
The statement was initiated by Belgium, Jordan, Chile, Senegal and Slovenia - but Canada, the UK, New Zealand, Japan, Germany and France have also committed to it.
Foreign Minister Penny Wong has confirmed Australia's participation in a social media post.
She has said that the court is an essential component of the "international peace and security architecture" and that it should be able to carry out its important mandate, in order to ensure "equal justice" for all victims of genocide and war crimes.
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A magistrate in Kenya has died after being shot during a court session in Nairobi.
Monica Kivuti had been fired on by a police officer after rejecting a bail request for the man's wife, who had pleaded guilty to obtaining $22,700 by false pretences.
Nairobi Police Chief Commander Adamson Bungei says the officer himself was in turn shot and killed by other officials in the room.
"Our officers who were within the court were able to act swiftly, and we managed to neutralise the situation."
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Members of the Illawarra community in New South Wales have reacted with fury to the government's announcement of a wind farm zone off the state's south coast.
Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen says the proposal has taken into account community concerns about the site's "visual amenity" as well as protection for the environment, and First Nation sacred sites.
But some locals like Grant Drinkwater say those environmental concerns have not been adequately accounted for.
"The whales are a big part of it, of course. And then there's the migratory species of birds. There's the turtles, sharks, there's a lot of environmental impacts, and they're actually not made up by us. It's in the documents from the Department of Climate Change and Energy."
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One of the world's most well-known but little listened to albums will be played at a free listening event at Tasmania's Museum of Old and New Art.
The seventh studio album by U-S hip-hop collective 'Wu-Tang Clan' can't be commercially exploited until 2103, and can only be played at free listening events.
MONA Director of Curatorial Affairs Jarred Rawlins has told SBS thousands have tried to secure tickets to the event.
But she says there will be around 500 people across the listening sessions.
"The ownership group are fairly unknown or anonymous people. It was a bit of work to get in contact with them and to convince them that I wasn't some psycho stalker trying to find the cd, that we were a legitimate museum, and fortunately we are. So they were very much on."
They lost ownership in 2018 when they were convicted of financial crimes, and the album's new owners Pleasr are now moving to make the album available to more people, selling partial ownership for one-dollar.
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The water quality of the Seine River in Paris has raised concerns, weeks out from the start of the Olympic Games.
Tests have revealed that contamination levels in the Seine in the first eight days of June, after persistent heavy rain in Paris, showed bacteria such as E. coli beyond limits judged safe for athletes.
The report has been published by monitoring group Eau de Paris.
But senior International Olympic Committee executive Christophe Dubi says there is no reason to doubt races will go ahead as scheduled in a stretch of the river near the Eiffel Tower.
"With the full infrastructure in place, especially the well (water tank) of Austerlitz, they will be able to cope with the request for swimming in the Seine so very reassuring... No reasons to doubt. We are very confident as well that we will swim in the Seine this summer."
