South China Morning Post - Australasia

Australian police said on Wednesday they were on the hunt for thieves who made off with hundreds of thousands of oysters. The molluscs have an estimated total value of A$350,000 (US$250,000) and were lifted from an oyster farm near the town of Taree, north of Sydney, New South Wales police said. Over 300 bags, containing 400,000 oysters, were stolen. Police are urging the public...

Ooshies were not just fun to collect – the tiny plastic Disney figurines were powerful enough to move sales between Australia’s supermarket giants. Woolworths Group said on Wednesday that Australian food sales jumped 7.6 per cent in the first eight weeks of the 2027 financial year, with its Ooshies promotion contributing an estimated 1.5 to 2 percentage points of growth. That ac...

A coalition may call itself a commitment. It still has to say what that commitment is. The Trump administration is reportedly preparing to send a letter to dozens of countries, pressing them to choose sides in the US-China artificial intelligence race. Those that join Beijing’s proposed AI cooperation framework would be excluded from the US-led AI coalition. “To be part of every...

Music made by artificial intelligence will be banned from Australia’s top charts under new guidelines aimed at protecting “the human nature of artistry”, an industry body said on Tuesday. Under new rules in force from Friday, music must be “substantially human made” to be eligible for the charts, the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) said. “Wholly AI-generated tra...

New ⁠Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said on Monday his party would introduce a bill in parliament that seeks to ban children under 16 from using social media, proposing fines of up to 10 per cent of a ‌platform’s global revenue for non-compliance. The bill would require social media platforms to take reasonable steps to verify users’ ages, including by using existing a...