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Australia has today dismantled a major barrier to international tourists visiting down under.

More than two years after the coronavirus pandemic began, overseas travellers no longer need to provide a negative pre-departure COVID-19 test before flying.

This means travellers can avoid RATs and expensive PCR tests which had to be taken within 72 hours of boarding a flight, with a dreaded positive result causing untold chaos to a passenger's itinerary.

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International travellers must still provide proof of double vaccination and masks remain mandated on international flights.

Unvaccinated travellers may be required to quarantine on arrival in Australia at their own expense, while some countries and airlines require outbound passengers from Australia to take a pre-departure test before they can travel.

The ending of the government's long-running Biosecurity Emergency Determination heralds the return of cruise ships to Australian ports.

Travellers arriving on cruise ships must complete a Maritime Travel Declaration, documenting health and other information, before they disembark.

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It is now up to individuals states to decide if cruise ships can enter.

NSW, Victoria and Queensland will welcome vessels, with the P&O's 266-metre long Pacific Explorer set to dock in Sydney this morning.

Cruise liners were banned by the Federal Government since March 15, 2020, days after the infamous docking of the Ruby Princess where hundreds of sick passengers went onshore.

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Before Russia's war on Ukraine began, Kira Obedinsky was a joyful, loved 12-year-old girl. Now orphaned, injured and alone in a Russian-controlled hospital in eastern Ukraine, she has become an unwitting pawn in Moscow's information war.

Obedinsky's mother died when she was a baby. Her father Yevhen Obedinsky, a former captain of Ukraine's national water polo team, was shot and killed as Russian forces fought their way into the southeastern city of Mariupol on March 17.

Days later, Kira and her father's girlfriend tried to flee the city on foot alongside neighbours. But after she was injured in the blast from a landmine, Kira was taken to a hospital in the Donetsk region, which is controlled by Moscow-backed separatists.

READ MORE: Ukrainians defy deadline to surrender in Mariupol or die

Now Kira's grandfather, Oleksander, fears he will never see her again. He said an official from the breakaway government in Donetsk phoned and invited him to travel there to claim her, which is impossible because of the war.

He says he spoke to the hospital and was told Kira will eventually be sent to an orphanage in Russia.

The Russian government has said it has helped move at least 60,000 Ukrainian people to safety across the Russian border.

The Ukrainian government has said around 40,000 have been relocated against their will describing it as abduction and forced deportation.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees has said that over 433,000 Ukrainian refugees have arrived in Russia since Feb. 24, when Russian forces invaded Ukraine.

Ukrainian officials have said that thousands have been forcibly deported to Russian territory after Russian troops blocked safe passage to Ukrainian-held territory and moved evacuees against their will into far flung parts of Russia.

Speaking to CNN, Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky accused Russia of forcing people fleeing Mariupol into Russia.

"Several thousand, tens of thousands, were forced to evacuate in the direction of the Russia Federation and we don't know where they are, they've left no document trail," the president told CNN."

And among them are several thousand children, we want to know what happened to them.

Whether they are in good health. Unfortunately, there just isn't any information on this."Moscow has denounced claims of forced deportations as lies, alleging that Ukraine has hindered its efforts to "evacuate" people to Russia.

But CNN has spoken to a number of Ukrainians who said they were given only two options: Go to Russia or die. In interviews with 10 people, including local Mariupol residents and their loved ones, many describe Russian and DPR soldiers descending on bomb shelters and ordering those inside to leave immediately.

None knew where they were being taken. Five were ultimately sent to Russia; three have since made it out.

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Ukrainian and US officials and independent human-rights monitors also alleged that Russian and separatist troops are processing tens of thousands of Ukrainian civilians through so-called "filtration camps" where they are biometrically screened and their phones and documents are confiscated before they are being sent to Russia.

Oleksander said the Russians have also taken away Kira's documents and said she would be provided with new ones in Russia.

Russian media, which has repeatedly downplayed the brutality of the conflict in Ukraine, has shown video of Kira talking happily about how she's sometimes allowed to call her grandfather.

This is "proof" that she wasn't abducted, according to one Russian TV presenter, who dubbed the claim another "Ukrainian fake."

Meanwhile, Oleksander has received an audio message from Kira telling him not to cry.

But the young girl who has lost her family, her freedom and her home in Russia's war, cannot stop her own tears.

"I haven't seen you for so long", she says. "I want to cry."

By Phil Pennington of RNZ Recommendations to make skydiving near water safer have yet to pass their first hurdle, four years after a jumper drowned in Lake Wakatipu in Queenstown prompting the process of making changes.The skydiving…

On a quiet street lined with walnut trees was a cemetery with four bodies that hadn't yet found a home.

All were victims of Russian soldiers in this village outside Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv.

Their temporary caskets were together in a grave.

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Volunteers dug them up one by one on Sunday — two weeks after the soldiers disappeared.

This spring is a grim season of planting and replanting in towns and villages around Kyiv.

Bodies given hurried graves amid the Russian occupation are now being retrieved for investigations into possible war crimes.

More than 900 civilian victims have been found so far.

All four bodies here were killed on the same street, on the same day.

That’s according to the local man who provided their caskets.

He bent and kissed the cemetery’s wrought-iron crosses as he walked to the makeshift grave.

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The volunteers tried digging with shovels, then gave up and called an excavator.

As they waited, they recounted their work secretly burying bodies during the monthlong Russian occupation, then retrieving them.

One young man recalled being discovered by soldiers who pointed guns at him and told him “Don’t look up” as he dug a grave.

The excavator arrived, rumbling past the cemetery’s wooden outhouse.

Soon there was the smell of fresh earth, and the murmur, “There they are.”

A woman appeared, crying.

Ira Slepchenko was the wife of one man buried here.

No one told her he was being dug up now.

The wife of another victim arrived.

Valya Naumenko peered into the grave, then hugged Ira.

“Don’t collapse,” she said. “I need you to be OK.”

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The two couples lived next to each other.

On the final day before the Russians left the village, soldiers knocked at one home.

Valya’s husband, Pavlo Ivanyuk, opened the door.

The soldiers took him to the garage and shot him in the head, apparently without any explanation.

Then the soldiers shouted, “Is anyone else here?”

Ira’s husband, Sasha Nedolezhko, heard the gunshot.

But he thought the soldiers would search the homes if no one answered.

He opened the door and the soldiers shot him too.

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The men’s caskets were lifted out with the others, then pried open.

The four bodies, wrapped in blankets, were placed in body bags.

The lace-edged white lining of each casket was stained red where the head had been.

Ira watched from afar, smoking, but stood by the empty caskets as the others left.

“All this land is in blood, and it will take years to recover,” she said.

She had known her husband was here.

Nine days after his temporary burial, she came to the cemetery scattered with picnic tables, following the local custom of spending time with the dead.

She brought coffee and cookies.

“I want this war to end as soon as possible,” she said.

The other bodies were a teacher and a local man who lived alone.

No one came for them on Sunday.

In the house next to the cemetery, 66-year-old Valya Voronets cooked homegrown potatoes in a wood-warmed room, still getting by without water, electricity or gas.

A small radio played, but not for long because the news gets too depressing.

A plate of freshly cut radishes rested near the window.

A Russian soldier once came running and pointed his gun at her husband after spotting him climbing onto the roof to get a cellphone signal.

“Are you going to kill an old man?” 65-year-old Myhailo Scherbakov replied.

Not all the Russians were like that.

Ms Voronets said she cried together with another soldier, barely 21.

“You’re too young,” she told him.

Another soldier told her they didn’t want to fight.

Still, she feared them all. But she offered them milk from her only cow.

“I felt sorry for them in these conditions,” she said.

“And if you’re nice to them, maybe they won’t kill you.”

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