Australia experienced its third-warmest year on record in 2017, according to the nation's Bureau of Meteorology. The national mean temperature of 22.75C was almost 1C higher than a 1961-1990 baseline, its annual report revealed. Only 2005 and 2013 were warmer, based on records kept for about a century.
Australia has criticized UK's post-Brexit trade plans to split quotas of food imports from around the world. EU rules allow for a certain amount of goods to be brought in from countries outside of the Union without charging full tariffs, but after Brexit, the UK and EU want to split these quotas, based on where the goods are mostly consumed.
Britain is “a bit gloomy” about Brexit and can achieve success outside the European Union, Australia’s high commissioner to the UK has said. Alexander Downer said the UK could be “cautiously optimistic” about achieving a new free trade deal with the EU, and could forge a new and successful economic policy if it pursued the right path domestically.
Tobacco giant Philip Morris has been ordered to pay the Australian government millions of dollars after unsuccessfully suing the nation over its world-first plain-packaging laws.
More than 200 weather records were broken during Australia's most recent summer, a climate group has warned. The Climate Council report, titled Angry Summer, said the season was defined by intense heat-waves and bushfires in eastern Australia but heavy rain and flooding in the west.
Australia's economy has jumped sharply in the last quarter of 2016, allowing the resource-rich economy to extend its 25-year streak without recession. It brings the country close to breaking the Netherlands' record of modern-era uninterrupted economic growth.
LATAM Airlines Group today announced it will operate a new, non-stop service between Santiago and Melbourne, Australia, from 5 October 2017. The westbound Santiago-Melbourne leg – measuring more than 11,000 km in distance with a flight time of approximately 15 hours – will become the longest non-stop flight in LATAM´s history.
Three Falkland Islands farmers and the general manager of Falklands Landholdings Corporation recently travelled to Australia as part of the ongoing search for improvements to lamb survival rates in the Falklands. Touring farms in both Queensland and New South Wales, the group spent three weeks inspecting Australian studs in search of better fat and muscle values in young rams.
Australia’s Environment Protection Authority (EPA) has fined Carnival PLC US$15,000 after one of its P&O Cruises ships, the Pacific Jewel, breached new low sulfur fuel regulations in Sydney Harbor. A fuel sample taken by the ship’s crew and provided to EPA officers while the ship was berthed at the White Bay Cruise Terminal on February 26, 2016 had a sulfur level of 0.293%, nearly three times the 0.1% sulfur limit.
France has beaten Japan and Germany to win a US$ 43 billion deal to build a fleet of 12 submarines for Australia, one of the world's most lucrative defense contracts, Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull announced on Tuesday.