VOI - Voice of Indonesia | RRI - Radio Republik Indonesia

People cross a street in the city centre following further easing of COVID-19 restrictions in Sydney, Australia on Dec 10, 2020. (File photo: Reuters/Loren Elliott) - 

SYDNEY: Australia on Monday (Dec 11) said it would tighten visa rules for international students and low-skilled workers that could halve its migrant intake over the next two years as the government looks to overhaul what it said was a "broken" migration system.

The decision comes after net immigration was expected to have peaked at a record 510,000 in 2022 to 2023. Official data showed it was forecast to fall to about a quarter of a million in 2024 to 2025 and 2025 to 2026, roughly in line with pre-COVID levels.

"We've worked around the clock to strike the best balance in Australia's migration system," Home Affairs Minister Clare O'Neil said in a statement ahead of the formal release of the government's new migration strategy later on Monday.

"The government's targeted reforms are already putting downward pressure on net overseas migration, and will further contribute to this expected decline," O'Neil said.

O'Neil said the increase in net overseas migration from 2022 to 2023 was mostly driven by international students.

Australia boosted its annual migration numbers last year to help key businesses recruit staff to fill shortages after the COVID-19 pandemic brought tighter border controls, and kept foreign students and workers out of the country for nearly two years.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese over the weekend said Australia's migration numbers needed to be wound back to a "sustainable level", adding that "the system is broken".

Long reliant on immigration to supply what is now one of the tightest labour markets in the world, Australia's Labor government has pushed to speed up the entry of highly skilled workers and smooth their path to permanent residency.

Under the new policies, international students would need higher ratings on English tests. It will also end settings that allow students to prolong their stay in Australia.

A new specialist visa for highly skilled workers will be set up with the processing time cut to one week, helping businesses recruit top migrants amid tough competition with other developed economies//CNA-VOI

Chinese President Xi Jinping (L) and Vietnamese Communist Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong (R) pose at the Central Office of the Communist Party of Vietnam in Hanoi on Dec 12, 2023. (Photo: AFP/MINH HOANG) - 

HANOI: China and Vietnam, at odds over claims in the South China Sea, agreed on Tuesday (Dec 12) to boost ties and build a community with a "shared future", three months after Hanoi upgraded its formal relations with the United States.

On Chinese President Xi Jinping's first visit to Hanoi in six years, the two countries announced 37 deals, including on diplomatic ties, railways and telecommunications.

As China and the United States vie for influence in the strategic nation, the agreements mark an achievement of Vietnam's "Bamboo diplomacy", although analysts and diplomats said the improvement in relations could be more symbolic than real.

Vietnam agreed to "support the initiative of building a community of shared future for humankind", according to a joint statement shown to reporters on Tuesday, after sources said China had been pushing for it. The joint statement is expected to be formally signed on Wednesday.

The countries' diplomats had debated the "shared future" phrase for months, following Hanoi's initial reluctance to use it, say officials and diplomats.

The Chinese term literally means "common destiny", but its translation in English and Vietnamese is "common future", which may be seen as less demanding.

"One declaration, many translations," said a diplomat based in the Vietnamese capital, commenting on the interpretation of the term.

In diplomatic ties, the upgrade is symbolic, Le Hong Hiep, a specialist in Vietnamese strategic and political issues at Singapore's Iseas–Yusof Ishak Institute, said.

"Vietnam's mistrust of China runs deep, and from the Vietnamese people's viewpoint, there is little to no 'shared destiny' between the two countries, as long as China continues to claim most of the South China Sea," he said.

Despite close economic ties, the neighbours have been at odds over boundaries in the South China Sea and have a millennia-long history of conflict.

In a sign of possible de-escalation, however, they signed two cooperation agreements for joint patrols in the Tonkin Gulf in the South China Sea and to establish a hotline to handle fisheries incidents, according to one of the agreements.

Apart from taking ties to a level Beijing may consider above those with the United States, the upgraded status came with the announcement of 36 cooperation deals, according to a list of documents seen by Reuters, and the joint statement on diplomatic ties.

That was short of the 45 initially proposed, according to one Vietnamese official, and missed agreements on critical minerals and rare earths on which Xi had urged more cooperation in an opinion piece published on Tuesday in a Vietnamese state newspaper//CNA-VOI

FILE PHOTO: A view through a fence shows the Russian Olympic Committee headquarters in Moscow, Russia, October 13, 2023. The Russian Olympic Committee (ROC) was banned by the International Olympic Committee for recognizing regional organizations from four territories annexed from Ukraine, according to the IOC. REUTERS/Evgenia Novozhenina/File Photo - 

The Paris 2024 Olympics will welcome neutral Russian and Belarusian athletes at the event next year following the decision by the International Olympic Committee (IOC), the chief of the organising committee told Reuters on Tuesday.

Russians and Belarusians who qualify in their sport for the Paris Games can take part as individual neutral athletes at the July 26-Aug. 11 event without flags, emblems or anthems, the IOC said on Friday.

"As the organising committee, we welcome and respect this decision," the head of Paris 2024 Tony Estanguet said.

"We will welcome these athletes ... to participate within the rules that have been indicated, meaning no flags, no hymns, no officials, no team sports. So these delegations will be very small but will be welcomed by Paris 2024."

The neutral athletes will compete only in individual sports, while no Russian or Belarusian government or state official would be invited to or accredited for Paris 2024, the IOC said.

Russians and Belarusians had initially been banned from competing internationally following Russia's invasion of Ukraine last year, for which Belarus has been used as a staging ground.

In March, however, the IOC issued a first set of recommendations for international sports federations to allow Russian and Belarusian competitors to return and they have since done so in most events.

Athletes who actively support the war in Ukraine are not eligible, nor are those contracted to the Russian or Belarusian military//CNA-VOI

A Blue Origin New Shepard rocket lifts off with a crew of six, including Laura Shepard Churchley, the daughter of the first American in space Alan Shepard, for whom the spacecraft is named, from Launch Site One in west Texas, U.S. Dec 11, 2021 (Photo: Reuters/Joe Skipper) - 

Jeff Bezos' space venture Blue Origin is planning to return its suborbital New Shepard rocket to flight as soon as Dec 18, the company said on Tuesday (Dec 12) as it looks to resume its space tourism business.

"We're targeting a launch window that opens on Dec. 18 for our next New Shepard payload mission," Blue Origin wrote on social network X, formerly known as Twitter. No humans, but 33 science and research payloads will be on board, the company added, referring to cargo that will support experiments in space.

New Shepard, which flies cargo and humans on short trips to the edge of space, has been grounded since a September 2022 uncrewed mission failed roughly a minute after liftoff from Texas, forcing the rocket's capsule full of NASA experiments to safely eject mid-flight.

The company in March determined that a "structural failure" in the rocket's engine nozzle caused last year's failure. No humans were aboard, though New Shepard has previously flown several missions carrying tourists, as well as Bezos, who founded Blue Origin in 2000, on the rocket's maiden flight in 2021.

The US Federal Aviation Administration closed its review of Blue Origin's New Shepard investigation in September, agreeing with the company's findings. It required Blue Origin to make 21 corrective actions, including an engine redesign and "organizational changes."

New Shepard returns to flight as Blue Origin races to get its much bigger rocket, New Glenn, off the ground for the first time, which it plans for late 2024.

While New Shepard only reaches the brim of space, New Glenn is designed to deploy heavier payloads into orbit as the centrepiece of Blue Origin's goal to rival Elon Musk's dominant SpaceX.

Bezos has shaken up the company's leadership and corporate structure in recent months, Reuters reported. Longtime Amazon executive Dave Limp started as Blue Origin's new CEO earlier this month//CNA-VOI