OCEANIA

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For nearly a decade, Australia’s notorious hardline asylum regime has forcibly separated refugee families. But a group of refugees are now challenging the practice of family separation through the United Nations.

Maya*, who is 35 years old, and her mother and siblings fled Iran in 2012, arriving in Australia a year later after an arduous journey through Malaysia and Indonesia.

Maya said she was forced to flee her homeland because she had been stalked and threatened with an acid attack by a government sympathiser.

Photo Credit:AP

A bus driver was driving too fast when the vehicle rolled on its side and hit a guard rail in heavy fog in an Australian wine region, killing 10 wedding guests and injuring 25 others, police alleged Tuesday.

Brett Andrew Button, 58, was driving 35 passengers on a 20-minute journey from a wedding reception at the Wandin Estate Winery to the town of Singleton, both in the Hunter Valley wine region of New South Wales state, when the 2009 Volvo bus rolled at a roundabout late Sunday.

Photo Credit: The Associated Press

A bus carrying wedding guests rolled over on a foggy night in Australia's wine country, killing 10 people and injuring 25, police said Monday.

The 58-year-old driver was arrested and being held at a Cessnock police station and will be charged, Police Assistant Commissioner Tracy Chapman said. She would not detail the allegations, including whether speed was a factor, but told reporters “there is sufficient information ... for us to establish that there will be charges.”

Photo Credit: Rick Rycroft

Former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern on Monday received one of New Zealand’s highest honors for her service leading the country through a mass shooting and pandemic.

Ardern was made a Dame Grand Companion, the second-highest honor in New Zealand, as part of King Charles III’s Birthday Honors. It means people will now call her Dame Jacinda. Royal honorees are typically chosen twice a year in New Zealand by the prime minister and signed off by Charles, the British king who is also recognized as New Zealand’s king.

Ardern was just 37 when she became prime minister in 2017, and was seen as a global icon of the left.

She shocked New Zealanders in January when she said she was stepping down as leader after more than five years because she no longer had “enough in the tank” to do it justice.

Photo Credit:Reuters

Australia's centre-left Labor government said on Monday it would include A$14.6 billion ($9.84 billion) over four years in the federal budget for cost of living relief for families and businesses, which it promised would not stoke inflation.

The plan is designed to directly ease price pressures and inflation, the federal government said, which has eased in the first quarter but still sits near 30-year highs of 7.0%.