TRANSCRIPT
Welcome to SBS News in Easy English. I'm Greg Dyett.
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has been released from prison in London and has flown out of the United Kingdom.
The 52-year-old has agreed to plead guilty to one count of spying over the release of confidential military files.
Assange had spent many years in custody while fighting against attempts by the United States to have him face the courts in that country.
In a pre-recorded message, his wife, Stella Assange, has thanked her husband's supporters.
"Throughout the years of Julian's imprisonment and persecution, an incredible movement has been formed, a movement of people from all walks of life, from around the world who support not just Julian, and not just us in our family, but what Julian stands for, truth and justice."
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Four people have died of suspected drug overdoses at a home in Melbourne's north.
Police found the bodies of two men, a woman and a teenage boy at a property at Broadmeadows.
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A United Nations body has told Australia to improve its climate change targets and become serious about land clearing if it wants to save the Great Barrier Reef.
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation has recommended the World Heritage-listed reef be left off the in-danger list for now.
But it's warned Australia must pursue urgent, sustained action on key threats, including more ambitious action on climate change after the reef's fifth mass coral bleaching event in eight years.
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The federal government is considering proposals to legally force Facebook's parent company Meta to carry Australian news on its platform or face new taxes to support local journalism.
The ideas were raised during an inquiry in Canberra.
The inquiry comes after Meta announced its decision not to enter into any further deals with Australian media outlets which is understood to have cost the industry $70 million.
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Pill testing will become permanent in Victoria following a trial across two summer music festival seasons and a fixed site.
Mobile teams will be sent to up to10 festivals this summer and a fixed site will be set up next year in inner Melbourne.
In 2022, there were 46 overdose deaths involving synthetic drugs and Premier Jacinta Allan says Victoria has recorded a rise in drug-related emergency department admissions.
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The youngest members of the New South Wales Labor Party will argue to legalise cannabis for personal recreational use across the state at a parliamentary inquiry into the drug's regulation.
New South Wales Young Labor has recommended the state legalise the consumption of cannabis and to legalise the possession of cannabis for personal use for those aged 18 at over.
It's called for New South Wales to follow the model of the ACT in allowing adults to possess and grow two cannabis plants, with a maximum of four per household.
I'm Greg Dyett and that's SBS News in Easy English.
