TRANSCRIPT
Welcome to SBS News in Easy English. I'm Biwa Kwan.
Industry Minister Tim Ayres has paid tribute to the two workers killed in the mine explosion in Cobar.
Safework New South Wales is leading the investigation into the incident.
One man died in the blast that happened just before 4 this morning at an underground mine 40 kilometres north of Cobar.
A woman died shortly after being brought to the surface.
Minister Ayres says his thoughts are with the affected families.
"Very distressing news for their families, their co-workers and what is a tightknit small community in Cobar, New South Wales' northwest end. Everybody - all of us - think of Jamie Chaffey, the new member for Parkes are thinking about those families in what is an unfolding situation in a very old mining facility there in Cobar."
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Western Australia is to officially apologise for the Pinjarra massacre, 191 years after the state's governor took part in the killings.
The attack led by Governor James Stirling with a group of European settlers, police officers and soldiers took place in a Bindjareb Noongar community at Pinjarra on October 28, 1834.
It remains unknown exactly how many First Nations men, women and children were killed, but estimates have placed the number of deaths between 15 to 80.
Pinjarra was situated around 80 kilometres south of the Swan River settlement that would later become known as Perth.
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Timor Leste has been admitted as the 11th member state of ASEAN - the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.
The country's formal admission to the bloc is its first expansion since the 1990s.
In a statement, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio congratulated Timor Leste on its membership of the bloc, saying it marks an important step in the country's ongoing pursuit of regional integration and cooperation.
At a formal ceremony at the ASEAN leaders conference in Kuala Lumpur, Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao has vowed the nation would be a productive member of the group.
"Our ascension is a testament to the spirit of our people, a young democracy, born from struggle, now embracing a new era of collaboration and growth within one of the world’s most dynamic regions."
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Social media companies have told a parliamentary inquiry they will comply with the under-16s social media ban when it comes into effect in December.
An estimated 1.5 million accounts on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, Threads and X will be deactivated in less than two months when the ban on children younger than 16 comes into effect.
Google has previously told the inquiry the ban would be extremely difficult to enforce, and that a lack of detail about how platforms plan to implement age verification systems have clouded the ban since its announcement.
Meta Director of Policy Mia Garlick has today told the inquiry the minimum age requirement will be challenging to implement.
"We adopt a sort of a waterfall approach where we are trying to have the least privacy intrusive ways to confirm people's established age. So we have gotten good at building out predictive technology around the 18 age boundary - but as was noted in the age assurance trial report. There are more challenges with applying it at the 16 age marker. So that is still the area that we are working through as we approach the compliance deadline."
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And in football,
Sam Kerr looks set to regain the Matildas captaincy.
Steph Catley, who has been leading Australia during Kerr's two-year absence with an ACL injury, said she's thrilled her team-mate's long recuperation has finally paid off.
Kerr was injured during a training camp with her club Chelsea in January 2024.
She returned to club football last month, but with her minutes managed carefully had not started a match for Australia until lining up against Wales on Sunday.
Thanks for listening. This is SBS News in Easy English.
