A daily 5 minute news wrap for English learners.
This is SBS News in Easy English... I'm Claire Slattery.
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Prime Minister Scott Morrison says Australia will send Bushmaster vehicles to Ukraine to help the country fight back against Russian invasion.
It comes after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy used a video address to the Federal Parliament yesterday to ask for more military aid in the form of the Australian-made armoured vehicles.
Mr Morrison says Australia will meet Mr Zelenskyy's request.
"We're not just sending our prayers, we're sending our guns, we're our munitions, we're sending our humanitarian aid, we're sending all of this, our body armour, all of these things, and we're going to be sending our armoured vehicles, our Bushmasters, as well."
The Australian Defence Force is now working out how many Bushmasters it will give to Ukraine and when.
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The chairman of a Victorian abattoir has been identified as one of the five people killed in a helicopter crash north of Melbourne.
Paul Troja was a passenger on board the helicopter that crashed at Mount Disappointment on Thursday morning [[March 31]].
The 73-year-old Albert Park man headed the board of Radford Meats.
He is being remembered as a passionate and accomplished leader who will be dearly missed.
The four other people on the helicopter include a 32-year-old Cheltenham man, a 50-year-old Inverloch woman, and two New South Wales men aged 59 and 70.
Experts are sorting through the helicopter wreckage to find out what caused Victoria's worst civil aviation accident in 30 years.
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Victims of severe flooding in New South Wales will be given emergency housing in Queensland.
The New South Wales Department of Communities and Justice is providing emergency accommodation in hotels, recreation parks and motor homes in Brisbane and on the Gold Coast for about 1500 people affected by the Northern Rivers floods.
Residents from Lismore to the Lower Macleay remain under evacuation orders, while the New South Wales State Emergency Service warns already drenched areas could see flash flooding, with wet soils increasing the risk of falling trees.
Meanwhile, state police believe they have found the body of aged care nurse Anita Brakel, who went missing in floodwaters south of Lismore almost three days ago.
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Labor leader Anthony Albanese is increasing the pressure on Prime Minister Scott Morrison to call the election.
Mr Morrison has said the election will be held in the middle of May, but is yet to announce a date.
The latest day the Prime Minister could ask the Governor-General to call the election is the 18th of April.
Mr Albanese says Mr Morrison is dragging out the election announcement for his party's own benefit.
"I say to the Prime Minister, enough of the pantomime. Call the election. Call the election; let the Australian people decide."
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Australia's largest Indigenous gathering, the Garma Festival. is back on in the Northern Territory after it was cancelled for two years in a row because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The event is a celebration of the cultural, artistic and ceremonial traditions of the Yolngu people and usually attracts about 2,500 visitors.
This year's festival will be held from July 29 to the 1st of August at Gulkula, on the Gove Peninsula in northeast Arnhem Land.
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I'm Claire Slattery. You've been listening to SBS News in Easy English.




