A seriously injured 33-year-old man has been airlifted off a vessel off the coast of Christchurch.A safety locator beacon was activated off Banks Peninsula just before 2pm today, 22 to 24 nautical miles from Lyttelton Harbour….

A US man required medical treatment at a hospital after he was gored by a bull bison at Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming, officials said.

The 34-year-old man from Colorado was walking with his family on a boardwalk near the Giant Geyser at Old Faithful on Monday when the bull bison charged at the group, according to a news release from the park.

When family members did not leave their area, the bull bison "continued to charge and gored" the man, causing injury to his arm, park officials said.

READ MORE: Australia's east coast to be hit with eight-day rain event

The man was taken to a hospital, and the incident is under investigation.

This was the second reported incident this year of a visitor getting too close to a bison and the animal responding to the perceived threat by goring the person, according to the release.

READ MORE: R. Kelly sentenced to 30 years in sex trafficking case

In late May, a bison gored a 25-year-old Ohio woman who was three-metres within the animal, park officials said at the time.

She suffered a puncture wound and other injuries after the animal also tossed her 10 feet into the air during the attack.

READ MORE: It felt like 'gas pains' but Heathyr's uterus was filling with blood

Park officials are urging visitors to keep their distance when they encounter an animal as well as stay informed on park safety regulations.

"Stay more than 25 yards (23 metres) away from all large animals – bison, elk, bighorn sheep, deer, moose, and coyotes – and at least 100 yards (91 metres) away from bears and wolves," officials warned.

"If need be, turn around and go the other way to avoid interacting with a wild animal in proximity."

The brother of Tahnee Shanks, an Australia mother who vanished in Mexico, believes her two-year-old daughter witnessed what happened the night her parents went missing.

Speaking to Today, from Moranbah in Queensland, Tahnee's brother Daniel Shanks said the family are focused on supporting Adelynn as it's likely she holds clues to Tahnee's whereabouts.

"We believe she has been witness to it all," he said.

READ MORE: It felt like 'gas pains' but Heathyr's uterus was filling with blood

"Trying to get that information out of a 2.5-year-old that speaks half English, half Spanish, and a lot of gibberish is very hard at this stage.

"We have taken her to specialists to try and get information out of her other ways through drawing and other techniques."

It's been nearly two months after Adelynn was found alone and barefoot outside a church in Cancun, Mexico.

The sudden disappearance of the Queensland mum, and her partner Jorge Aguirre Astudillo, sparked a high-level police investigation.

READ MORE: Australia about to be hit with eight-day rain event

Daniel says Adelynn is settling in "really well" to her new life in Queensland, but is missing her mum.

"She has been with my sisters for the last month in Brisbane.

"She's safe. We are doing the best we can to provide for her…I'm heading out to see her this afternoon."

READ MORE: 'A bombshell': Trump aides left speechless by Hutchinson testimony

Daniel said they are not giving up hope of finding Tahnee, and will be employing a private investigator to keep the investigation moving forward.

"It is terrible not knowing…It is hard to sleep at night," he said.

"That is why we are pushing as hard as we can with the embassy and the Mexican authorities and engaging our own private investigator to keep things happening.

"We have just been given no information, that is the problem…We are not going away until we get answers.

"We're not just going to walk away from this."

READ MORE: R. Kelly sentenced in sex trafficking case

Daniel said they are hopeful they will have more answers within the next couple of weeks.

"From the information that's come through, yeah, it's looking reasonably positive that we've got some really good leads to follow now," he said.

Tahnee had been living in Mexico with Estudillo and was holidaying in the country's south when she disappeared.

The Shanks family confirmed the relationship had begun to deteriorate and the mother was considering a return to Australia.

Witnesses say they believe it was Estudillo who left the young child at the church, but police quickly dismissed the claims.

He is wanted for questioning but has not been located by authorities.

The financial year will come to a close at midnight tonight, sparking a raft of changes that will impact the wallets of millions of Australians.

From July 1, new legislation will take effect that will see the minimum wage increased, as well as superannuation payments, Centrelink benefits and energy costs.

Here's what you need to know as we enter FY22-23.

READ MORE: Legal loophole in sign commonly seen at checkouts

Energy bills to go up

If inflation wasn't putting enough pressure on your expenses, your next energy bill may: from July 1 the cost of power bills will rise after the Australian Energy Regulator (AER) today said it was raising default market offer (DMO) price caps, which is essentially the maximum retailers can charge households and businesses on default offers.

As a result, default offers will increase by more than $220 per year in New South Wales, more than $160 in Queensland and more than $120 in South Australia.

Households on the DMO only comprise about 10 per cent of the total market (around 550,000 customers), but the rise is anticipated to be passed on by retailers in time.

READ MORE: Aussie power bills to soar from July 1 as regulator lifts prices

The minimum wage will increase

From tomorrow, Australia's minimum wage will officially be $21.38 an hour, or $812.60 a week, following a decision by the Fair Work Commission to raise wages by 5.2 per cent.

The decision equates to a $40 weekly pay rise for millions of workers.

Since 2021, Australia's minimum wage had been $20.33 an hour or $772.60 a week, but advocate groups have called for it to raise to meet the demands of soaring inflation.

READ MORE: Australia's minimum wage rises by $40 a week

Your super will increase

From tomorrow, employers will be required to make superannuation guarantee contributions to their eligible employee's super fund regardless of how much the employee is paid. 

Previously no super was required for employees earning less than $450 a month. This threshold has been scrapped.

The super guarantee (SG) rate will also increase from 10 per cent to 10.5 per cent for all employees eligible to receive superannuation.

READ MORE: PM says Aussies have 'earned' right to spend super to pay for first home

Centrelink family payments to increase

From July 1, more than 1.4 million Australian families will see an increase to family payments, while around one million pensioners will also benefit from increases in means test free areas, limits and deeming thresholds.

The Family Tax Benefit Part A will increase by up to $204.40 per year for families with a child under 13 years, and $255.50 per year for those with a child 13 years and over. 

Similarly, Family Tax Benefit Part B will increase by up to $164.25 per year for families who have a youngest child under five and $116.80 per year for those whose youngest child is aged five to 18. 

The amount of income or assets an Age Pension, Disability Support Pension or Carer Payment recipient can have before their payment is affected will also increase.

READ MORE: Federal government announces changes to pandemic disaster payment

Cost of living tax offset payments to land

From tomorrow, over 10 million Aussies will become eligible for a one-off $420 cost of living tax offset.

When combined with the low and middle income tax offset (LMITO), eligible low- and middle-income earners will receive up to $1500 for a single income household, or up to $3000 for a dual income household.

The payments will land in people's bank accounts when their tax returns are paid to them.

In the chaotic minutes after dozens of migrants were found dead inside a tractor-trailer sweltering under the Texas sun, the driver tried to slip away by pretending to be one of the survivors, a Mexican immigration official has said.

The driver, along with two other men from Mexico, remained in custody as the investigation continued into the tragedy that killed 53 people — the nation's deadliest smuggling episode on the US-Mexico border.

Two more people died Wednesday as the death toll slowly climbed since the discovery of 46 bodies Monday at the scene near auto salvage yards on the edge of San Antonio.

READ MORE: It felt like 'gas pains' but Heathyr's uterus was filling with blood

The truck had been packed with 67 people, and the dead included 27 from Mexico, 14 from Honduras, seven from Guatemala and two from El Salvador, said Francisco Garduño, chief of Mexico's National Immigration Institute.

Officials had potential identifications on 37 of the victims as of Wednesday, pending verification with authorities in other countries, according to the Bexar County Medical Examiner's Office. Forty of the victims were male, it said.

Identifying the dead has been challenging because some were found without identification documents and in one case a stolen ID. Remote villages where some of the migrants came from in Mexico and Central America have no phone service to reach family members and fingerprint data has to be shared and matched by the governments involved.

READ MORE: R. Kelly sentenced in sex trafficking case

The tragedy occurred at a time when huge numbers of migrants have been coming to the US, many of them taking perilous risks to cross swift rivers and canals and scorching desert landscapes. Migrants were stopped nearly 240,000 times in May, up by one-third from a year ago.

While it's not clear when or where the migrants boarded the truck bound for San Antonio, Homeland Security investigators believe it was on US soil, near or in Laredo, Texas, US Representative Henry Cuellar told The Associated Press.

The truck went through a Border Patrol checkpoint northeast of Laredo on Interstate 35 on Monday, Cuellar and Mexican officials confirmed. It was registered in Alamo, Texas, but had fake plates and logos, Garduño said.

Officials in Mexico also released a surveillance photo showing the driver smiling at the checkpoint during the more than two-hour trip to San Antonio.

Republican Texas Governor Greg Abbott said Wednesday that state troopers would set up additional truck checkpoints on highways, but he did not say how many. In April, Abbott gridlocked the 1200-mile (1931km) Texas border for a week by requiring every truck entering the state to underdo additional inspections as part of his ongoing fight with the Biden administration over immigration policy.

READ MORE: The clickbait that works on Facebook isn't what you think

Authorities were looking into whether the truck had mechanical problems when it was left next to a railroad track. The driver was apprehended after trying to disguise himself as one of the migrants, Garduño said.

Some of the more than a dozen people transported to hospitals were found suffering from brain damage and internal bleeding, according to Rubén Minutti, the Mexico consul general in San Antonio.

Migrants typically pay US$8000-$10,000 ($11,622-$14,527) to be taken across the border, loaded into a tractor-trailer and driven to San Antonio, where they transfer to smaller vehicles for their final destinations across the US, said Craig Larrabee, acting special agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations in San Antonio.

The death count from Monday's tragedy in San Antonio was the highest ever from a smuggling attempt in the US, he said. Four years ago, 10 died in 2017 after being trapped inside a truck parked at a San Antonio Walmart. In 2003, the bodies of 19 migrants were found in a sweltering truck southeast of the city.

Temperatures in San Antonio on Monday approached 38C, and those taken to the hospital were hot to the touch and dehydrated, authorities said.

It wouldn't have taken long for the temperature inside the truck to become deadly, said Jennifer Vanos, an assistant professor at Arizona State University who has researched child deaths in hot vehicles.

The tractor-trailer likely would have been hot even before the migrants got inside and because of the high humidity, lack of air flow and so many people, their bodies could not have cooled through evaporation and they would have dehydrated quickly, she said.

With little information about the victims, desperate families from Mexico and Central America frantically sought word of their loved ones.

Felicitos Garcia, who owns a grocery store in the remote community of San Miguel Huautla in Mexico's southern state of Oaxaca, said the mother of Jose Luis Vasquez Guzman, who was hospitalized in Texas, had gone to the state capital to learn more about her son's condition and the whereabouts of his cousin, who is believed to be missing.

"Life is tough here," Garcia said.

READ MORE: Domenic Perre found guilty of murder over 1994 National Crime Authority bombing

"People survive by growing their own crops like corn, beans and wheat. Sometimes the land gives and sometimes it doesn't when the rains arrive late. There is nothing in place for people to have other resources. People live one day to the next."

Mexico's foreign affairs secretary identified two people Tuesday who were hospitalised in San Antonio. But it turned out one of the identification cards he shared on Twitter had been stolen last year in the southern state of Chiapas.

Haneydi Antonio Guzman, 23, was safe in a mountain community more than 1300 miles (2092km) away from San Antonio when she began receiving messages from family and friends anxious over her fate.

"That's me on the ID, but I am not the person that was in the trailer and they say is hospitalized," Antonio Guzman said.

"My relatives were contacting me worried, asking where I was."

In some regions of Mexico, attempting to cross into the United States is a tradition that most youths in heavily migrant towns at least consider.

"All of the young people start to think about going (to the US) as soon as they turn 18," said migrant activist Carmelo Castañeda, who works with the nonprofit Casa del Migrante.

"If there aren't more visas, our people are going to keep dying."

Heathyr Stanics believes she would have died if she hadn't sought a medical abortion.

In 2019, the then-35-year old, an insurance agent from the US state of Georgia, developed an ectopic pregnancy.

Her embryo started growing in her left fallopian tube, a life-threatening complication that renders the pregnancy non-viable.

READ MORE: How is abortion handled in Australia?

Removing the embryo is the only course of treatment.

Stanics was given four doses of methotrexate – a drug used to treat ectopic pregnancies and induce a medical abortion.

Three weeks after her final dose, her fallopian tube burst.

She was getting ready for work when the "excruciating" pains started.

READ MORE: Instagram and Facebook remove posts offering abortion pills

"It honestly started out feeling like the worst gas pains I ever had in my life," she told 9news.com.au.

"A point came where I was doubled over in pain.

"I went and laid down on my bed but the pain wasn't subsiding.

"I started crying because the pain started to become unbearable.

"At this point my boyfriend heard me crying and was about to dial 911, but knowing how much an ambulance ride was, I insisted on calling my doctor directly instead.

"We were told to come in immediately for an ultrasound, where we discovered my uterus was filled with blood, after that I was rushed into emergency surgery."

READ MORE: Roe v Wade has just turned the next US election on its head

During surgery, doctors took 768 millilitres of blood from Stanics' uterus, along with the embryo and her left fallopian tube.

Stanics said without the quick care of medical professionals she would have died, adding the drug was meant to stop embryonic cells from growing.

"If I was not given these doses, the embryo would have grown inside my fallopian tube and would have burst much sooner," she said.

"I would have died."

Post-Roe 'the beginning of a very scary time in America'

Ectopic pregnancies occur in one-in-50 pregnancies, according to the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAF).

Stanics said she now fears for other women following the Supreme Court's decision to overturn the landmark Roe v. Wade ruling.

This ended 50 years of constitutional federal protection for abortion, and post-Roe, doctors in some states have been left in a legal grey area.

"The overturn of Roe v. Wade feels like the beginning of a very scary time here in America," she said.

"Before sharing my story, I didn't realise how many of my own friends experienced something similar."

READ MORE: How personal data could be used to enforce anti-abortion laws

Twenty-six states are now likely to ban abortion to the "fullest extent possible," the Guttmacher Institute predicts.

Of these, 13 have enacted trigger laws that would automatically ban medically unnecessary abortion in the first and second trimesters.

These states are: Arkansas, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah and Wyoming.

While most of these states will make exceptions should a pregnancy be deemed life-threatening to a mother, it will fall to doctors to prove whether a patient qualifies.

And in emergency situations, where time is of the essence, doctors have to grapple between whether preserving the life of a mother – over a fetus – is legally sound.

This week, several nurses shared an anonymous case where a doctor had to phone lawyers when an ectopic pregnancy ruptured to ensure everything had been documented correctly.

The nurses claimed it took nearly 12 hours to get the patient to theatre.

They kept the US state it occurred in anonymous to protect the facility's identity.

It comes after a June article in The American Journal of Bioethics found people with pregnancy complications or adverse outcomes, such as miscarriages or stillbirths, might become vulnerable to legal surveillance and even criminal prosecution.

This is not the America Stanics knows.

"I'm truly in fear of where we're headed as a country," she said.

"The last few days have been extremely emotional for so many women in this country; we're disposable now."

When you're scrolling through your Facebook feed, you'll often see news stories which are trying hard to get you to click.

And then there's the stories that you can't help but click on, just because their headline has intrigued you.

Maybe this story is one of them.

READ MORE: Four of the top five 2016 election stories were fictional

But "clickbait" on social media is not as simple and obvious as you might think. 

A study from Germany researchers has analysed 4000 Facebook posts from news organisations to find what sort of headlines draw in readers and which ones don't.

The study from the University of Duisberg-Essen found that common clickbait phrases like "this will blow your mind" not only didn't draw in readers, but had the opposite effect.

Those stories actually had fewer reactions, shares and comments compared to those without those phrases.

Asking questions in headlines also didn't engage readers.

READ MORE: R. Kelly sentenced to 30 years in sex trafficking case

The researchers gathered a week's worth of posts from ten US and UK news outlets' Facebook pages, including sources they considered to be tabloid and those viewed as reputable.

The study gave the New York Times as a reputable example, and the Daily Mail as a tabloid source.

Curiously, headlines with unusual punctuation had up to 2.5 times more reactions, shares and comments. 

Headlines which featured longer words drew in less interaction.

There was also an odd divergence in headlines and post text.

Positive phrasing in headlines drew in more comments, but the same was true for negative phrasing in post text.

END OF FINANCIAL YEAR: All the changes happening on July 1

Australia's east coast is about to be hit with a multi-day rain event with forecasters warning flooding is "likely" as powerful winds and surf batter the coast.

The wet weather event is being caused by a deepening low pressure system, and could last for as long as eight-days, Weathezone said.

A 2800 km stretch of the country – from Bateman's Bay in southern NSW, to Cooktown in Far North Queensland – is on alert.

The weather service says "accumulated rainfall totals of 100 to 200mm are likely in some parts of this region, with isolated falls above 300mm possible."

READ MORE: Rare sentence for lone surviving Paris terrorist

Modelling suggests up to 100ml could fall in 24 hours in some parts of coastal NSW.

Three flood warnings are already in effect for the state, with Queensland also bracing for "unseasonable" rainfall.

The heavy rain will start on Friday before intensifying on Saturday, Weatherzone said.

READ MORE: Albanese takes aim at Russia and China

"On Saturday, a low pressure trough will deepen near Australia's east coast, causing rain to increase over parts of eastern NSW and QLD."

"Rain should continue over eastern QLD and large areas of eastern and central NSW on Sunday.

"Heavy rain is expected to fall over the southern or central coastal districts in NSW as a low pressure system deepens in the Tasman Sea, possibly delivering more than 100mm of rain to a similar region to Saturday."

The location and strength of the Tasman low becomes "uncertain from Monday".

"The focus of heavy rain could be anywhere between the southern and northern coasts in NSW, with some showers also likely to extend west of the ranges."

READ MORE: Russians fight to encircle Ukraine's last eastern stronghold

The low pressure system will also generate strong winds, potentially damaging winds" along the NSW coast and ranges from the weekend.

"These winds may prompt warnings on land and over water, and will also generate big waves in the coastal zone," Weatherzone said.

Let's look at what is happening around the country today.

Brisbane

A "shower of two" is forecast for Queensland's capital as temperatures range between 12C to 21C.

Sydney

It will be mostly cloudy in the Harbour City with a low of 9C and a maximum of 19C forecast.

Canberra

Another chilly start for the nation's capital today, a low of 1C is forecast. The mercury will reach a top temperature of 13C.

It will be a cloudy day.

Melbourne

A partly cloudy day is ahead for Melbourne. A low of 5C and a high of 13C is forecast.

Hobart

A possible early shower will fall over Hobart this morning. A low of 6C and a high of 11C is forecast.

Adelaide

Back across the Tasman, showers are easing in Adelaide.

A 9C morning will give way to a 15C day.

Darwin

Morning and afternoon showers are likely in Darwin today as temperatures range between 19C to 25C.

Perth

And it will be sunny in Perth. A low of 6C and a high of 19C is forecast.

Russian forces battled on Wednesday to surround the Ukrainian military's last stronghold in a long-contested eastern province, as shock reverberated from a Russian airstrike on a shopping mall that killed at least 18 in the centre of the country two days earlier.

Moscow's battle to wrest the entire Donbas region from Ukraine saw Russian forces pushing toward two Luhansk province villages south of the city of Lysychansk while Ukrainian troops fought to prevent their encirclement.

Britain's defence ministry said Russian forces were making "incremental advances" in their offensive to capture the city. Lysychansk is the last major area of the province under Ukrainian control following the retreat of Ukraine's forces from the neighbouring city of Sievierodonetsk.

READ MORE: NATO calls Russia its 'most significant and direct threat'

Russian troops and their separatist allies control 95 per cent of Luhansk and about half of the Donetsk region, the other province that makes up the mostly Russian-speaking Donbas.

The latest assessment by the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, said the Ukrainians were likely in a fighting withdrawal to seek more defensible positions while draining the Russian military forces of manpower and resources.

Meanwhile, crews continued to search through the rubble of the shopping mall in Kremenchuk where Ukrainian authorities say 20 people remain missing. Authorities in the city declared three days of mourning.

Ukrainian State Emergency Services press officer Svitlana Rybalko told The Associated Press that along with the 18 people killed, investigators found fragments of eight more bodies. It was not immediately clear whether that meant there were more victims. A number of survivors suffered severed limbs.

"The police cannot say for sure how many (victims) there are. So we are finding not the bodies but the fragments of bodies," Rybalko said. "Now we are clearing at the very epicentre of the blast. Here, we practically cannot find bodies as such."

READ MORE: Albanese warns Ukraine invasion has 'consequences in our own region'

Several families stood by what was left of the Amstor shopping centre Wednesday morning in hope of finding missing loved ones.

"This is pure genocide," local resident Tatiana Chernyshova said while going to lay flowers at the site. "Such things cannot happen in the 21st century."

"We need to engage everyone to help stop the war, help us fight these scum — these Russian aggressors," Chernyshova said.

Psychologists working at the site with families said they were trying to help people come to terms with their loss.

"We are trying to help them release their emotions now, as later it becomes harder and much more painful," said one psychologist, who did not give his name as he was not authorised to speak to the press.

After the attack on the mall, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Russia of becoming "a terrorist" state. On Wednesday, he reproached NATO for not embracing or equipping his embattled country more fully.

READ MORE: The secret tax 'wash' the ATO is cracking down on

"The open-door policy of NATO shouldn't resemble old turnstiles on Kyiv's subway, which stay open but close when you approach them until you pay," Zelenskyy told NATO leaders meeting in Madrid, speaking by video link. "Hasn't Ukraine paid enough? Hasn't our contribution to defending Europe and the entire civilization been sufficient?"

He asked for more modern artillery systems and other weapons and warned the NATO leaders they either had to provide Ukraine with the help it needed to defeat Russia or "face a delayed war between Russia and yourself."

Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova on Wednesday dismissed what she claimed was the Ukrainian government's "blatant provocation" in trying to blame the mall missile strike on Russia's military.

Britain's defence ministry said there was a "realistic possibility" that the mall strike "was intended to hit a nearby infrastructure target."

"Russian planners highly likely remain willing to accept a high level of collateral damage when they perceive military necessity in striking a target," the ministry said. "It is almost certain that Russia will continue to conduct strikes in an effort to interdict the resupplying of Ukrainian front-line forces."

Russia's military also is experiencing a shortage of more modern precision strike weapons that is compounding civilian casualties, the British ministry said.

READ MORE: Trump aides left speechless by 'bombshell' testimony

In southern Ukraine, a Russian missile strike on a multi-story apartment building Wednesday in the city of Mykolaiv killed at least four people and injured five, regional governor Vitaliy Kim said. Mykolaiv is a major port and seizing it — as well as Odesa further west — would be key to Russia's objective of cutting off Ukraine from its Black Sea coast.

Russia's defense ministry said in a statement that the missile strike on Mykolaiv targeted a base for training "foreign mercenaries," as well as ammunition depots.

Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko on Tuesday urged NATO leaders in Madrid to do whatever it took to stop the war, saying that if Ukraine is defeated, "you're going to be next."

In other developments:

— A senior Russian lawmaker has warned that Lithuania's refusal to allow some goods targeted by European Union sanctions through to Russia's Baltic exclave of Kaliningrad could trigger a military confrontation.

Wednesday's statement by Vladimir Dzhabarov, a deputy head of the foreign affairs committee in the lower house of Russia's parliament, followed the Kremlin's warning that it will retaliate against restrictions of transit to Kaliningrad. The region borders EU and NATO members Poland and Lithuania.

— Russia's foreign ministry summoned Norway's charge d'affaires to protest Oslo's blocking of a shipment of supplies to a Russian coal-mining town in the Svalbard islands.

Although the Svalbards are Norwegian territory, a 1920 treaty allows all signatory countries the right to exploit its natural resources. Russia operates a coal mine in Barentsburg, a settlement of about 450 people, which relies on shipments from the mainland of food, machinery and other supplies. Norway imposed sanctions on shipments from Russia in April.

— Ukrainian military intelligence says that in the largest prisoner swap since the start of the war 144 Ukrainian troops were released from Russian captivity. Of those released, 95 were involved in defending the Azovstal steel plant in Ukraine's devastated southern city of Mariupol that Russian forces captured weeks ago. Denis Pushilin, the leader of the separatist Donetsk People's Republic, said that the exchange saw an equal number of soldiers released by either side.

— European Union leaders approved Wednesday a €600 million ($910 million) package to address food security issues brought on by the Ukraine war in African, Caribbean and Pacific countries.

— Britain is imposing sanctions on Russia's second-richest man and on a cousin of President Vladimir Putin. Vladimir Potanin, owner of the Interross conglomerate, has continued to amass wealth while backing Putin, acquiring Rosbank and shares in Tinkoff Bankonith in the period following the invasion of Ukraine, a UK government statement said Wednesday.

The statement said Putin's cousin, Anna Tsivileva, and her husband, Sergey Tsivilev, have "significantly benefited" from their relationship with Putin. Tsivileva is president of the JSC Kolmar Group coal mining company, and Tsivilev is governor of the coal-rich Kemerovo region.

An Australian company is working towards making medicinal cannabis sleep capsules more accessible to patients. 

Cann Group Limited has opened a state-of-the-art glass house in regional NSW to help meet future demand for medicinal cannabis. 

Inside the facility, there's the capacity to grow 250,000 cannabis plants. 

READ MORE: The secret tax 'wash' the ATO is cracking down on

"It's a controlled environment glasshouse, very technologically advanced and going to be very important for the supply of product to Australian patients," CEO of Cann Group Peter Crock said.

The manufacturing hub is based in Mildura and produces cannabidiol (CBD) capsules for Australian patients and for export.

A trial is now underway in hopes of making low-dose medicinal cannabis capsules more accessible for Australians, and the large manufacturing hub has been built to keep up with demand if this happens.

"The idea of making cannabinoids and CBD in particular available through pharmacy is a really important step," Crock said.

READ MORE: Trump aides left speechless by 'bombshell' testimony

Tammy Webber has volunteered to be part of a clinical trial of these CBD capsules to help relieve her insomnia.

"I can get to sleep okay but once I wake up about one, sometimes midnight, I just can't get back to sleep at all," Webber said.

The 53-year-old from Sydney's south-west is desperate for a solution, as other treatments haven't worked.

READ MORE: Kyrgios fumes at 'snitch' in drama-filled Wimbledon match

"It would be much better for my job, which involves a lot of driving around the daytime, just makes it hard if you're tired," she said.

The trial aims to produce enough evidence to have the capsules listed on the Australian Register of Therapeutic Goods and be available over the counter in pharmacies.

"If there are clear results, clear evidence in regards to this medicine helping patients with sleep-related issues, then yes it should be adequate to get the medicine over the counter," authorised medicinal cannabis prescriber and GP Dr James Connell said.

READ MORE: NSW Government agrees to transport union demands to end train strike

Most medicinal cannabis products are currently not approved by Australia's medical regulator, the Therapeutic Goods Administration, but are available through a special access scheme.

More information about the trial can be found here.