State Highway 2 in Lower Hutt has now been cleared after a three-vehicle crash was blocking the southbound lane.Emergency services responded to the crash, which was near the Kennedy Good Bridge.Police said there were no reports…

A year since it was first raised by Nelson City Council, the proposal for a pride crossing has been revoked due to accessibility concerns, instead, city centre bike sheds will be decorated in support of the region’s LGBTQIA+ community.The…

Stealthy predators of the Antarctic, stoic foxes of the Artic and peaceful frogs, are just some of the stunning scenes included in the annual photography competition this year.

Australia is facing a major defence shake-up if China manages to base warships in the Solomon Islands.

Security experts and Australian Defence Force senior commanders flagged an overhaul in military operations after the Solomon Islands initialled a security agreement with China.

The deal opens the way for the superpower to base military forces on the Pacific nation less than 2000 kilometres from Australia's coastline.

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Defence analyst Malcolm Davis said if Chinese naval forces are based in the Solomon Islands, Australia will have to respond with a "fundamental change" in its military operations.

It would involve switching the focus from the traditional "sea-air gap" to the north and north-west of Australia, Dr Davis, of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, said.

"We now have to think more about defending the east coast … there will likely be more focus on better surveillance by naval, space and air assets to monitor Chinese activities," he said.

From an advance military base in the Solomon Islands capital Honiara, China would be better able to exert influence on other Pacific island states.

Dr Davis said after the May federal election, the incoming government should review military capabilities on the eastern seaboard to keep pace with the changing security environment.

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And a top ADF commander said an increased Chinese presence in the Pacific would mean an overhaul of day-to-day operations.

Lieutenant-General Greg Bilton, ADF Chief of Joint Operations, was speaking during a visit to the Australian Signals Directorate in Canberra yesterday.

"It does change the calculus if Chinese navy vessels are operating from the Solomon Islands," General Bilton said.

He said if Chinese forces are based there, ADF operations would have to adapt to new security challenges.

"They're in much closer proximity to the Australian mainland, obviously, and that would change the way that we would undertake day-to-day operations particularly in the air and at sea.

"We would change our patrolling patterns and our maritime awareness activities."

READ MORE: Chinese military base in Solomon Islands 'a red line for Australia'

Diplomatic snub for Australia

After details of the deal were finalised by officials yesterday, Solomon Islands Foreign Minister Jeremiah Manele and his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi will now formally sign the agreement.

Signing the deal will be a rejection of pressure by the Australian and New Zealand governments who opposed it.

The Solomon Islands government said in a statement that officials have "initialled elements of a bilateral security cooperation framework" with Beijing.

It added the Pacific nation would continue to work with all partners including Australia "in providing a safe and secure nation where all people are able to co-exist peacefully".

Under the draft agreement, leaked last week on social media, Chinese naval ships and other military forces will be permitted to be based in the Solomon Islands to protect Chinese projects and citizens there.

The Pacific nation's closer relations with China come after rioting erupted in the capital Honiara last November.

Australia and other neighbouring countries sent police and military personnel there to restore order.

When hairdresser Brittnee Watson first noticed a black "blob" across her vision, she thought it was stray mascara which had dropped into her eye.

"I scrubbed my face for half an hour and I couldn't get rid of it," the 28-year-old said.

Ms Watson, from Melbourne, rushed to an optician.

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However, the medic wasn't welcoming.

Ms Watson has type one diabetes – which can lead to vision loss.

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, one in 20 Australians had diabetes in data recorded between 2020 and 2021.

Type two was the most common, representing 85.5 per cent of all cases, followed by Type one with 11 per cent.

Ms Watson admitted she hadn't been taking care of her health as she should have.

The doctor sent her away.

"He said, 'I'm not going to waste my time until you start looking after your diabetes,'" she said.

She went to hospital where doctors and nurses were kinder.

They told her she had macular degeneration – which usually affects older people – and diabetic retinopathy.

"Macular degeneration is the deterioration of the central vision, so this is very prominent in anybody over the age of 80," she said.

"Diabetic retinopathy is when the blood vessels that form behind your eye because there's not enough blood flow burst."

And while Ms Watson was given treatment, her sight couldn't be saved.

Just a few months later, on Australia Day 2017, she woke up with no sight at all.

She was just 22.

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"It was a lot faster than what they thought," she said.

The rapid deterioration meant she he had to stop driving, move home, and give up her job in a salon.

She admits she "locked herself in the house" for a week.

However, while that was tough, Ms Watson told 9news.com.au her life is now entirely positive.

She said losing her vision made her learn to look after her health and give up her previously wild lifestyle.

Thanks to Vision Australian, she's learned to use the array of equipment now available to help people with vision loss.

She has seeing eye dog, Kuma, a job working for an allied health service and has bought an apartment with her partner, Paul.

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She does most of the things other people her age do, such as catching up with friends and visiting cafes – with the help of Kuma and Google Maps on her phone.

She also hopes to start playing blind Australian Rules football too.

"For me, it's so easy to look at the downsides, but if you push through and look at the positives, vision loss isn't a barrier, it's a speed hump," she said.

Now, Vision Australia has launched a campaign to show people living with blindness or low vision doesn't have to be a barrier to full and active life.

The organisation says studies have shown the number of Aussies with no or low vision will reach more than 500,000 by 2030.

Currently 131,000 Aussies are partially or fully blind, according to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare.

Karen Knight, general manager of client services for Vision Australia, helps people cope with losing their sight.

"We connect them with other people going through similar experiences to hep them recognise there is plenty more fulfilling life ahead," Ms Knight said.

"The biggest far is of their isolation, that they won't be able to do the things that they could before.

"People really do fear loneliness and can be lonely, until they learn the skills from our mobility instructors."

Contact journalist Sarah Swain: ss****@******om.au

Russian troops handed control of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant back to the Ukrainians and began leaving the heavily contaminated site more than a month after taking it over, authorities said, as fighting raged on the outskirts of Kyiv and other fronts.

Ukraine's state power company, Energoatom, said the pullout at Chernobyl came after soldiers received “significant doses" of radiation from digging trenches in the forest in the exclusion zone around the closed plant. But there was no independent confirmation of that.

The withdrawal took place amid growing indications the Kremlin is using talk of de-escalation in Ukraine as cover while regrouping, resupplying its forces and redeploying them for a stepped-up offensive in the eastern part of the country.

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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Ukraine is seeing “a build-up of Russian forces for new strikes on the Donbas, and we are preparing for that.”

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Meanwhile, a convoy of buses headed to Mariupol in another bid to evacuate people from the besieged port city after the Russian military agreed to a limited cease-fire in the area. And a new round of talks was scheduled for Friday, five weeks into the war that has left thousands dead and driven four million Ukrainians from the country.

The International Atomic Energy Agency said it had been informed by Ukraine that the Russian forces at the site of the world's worst nuclear disaster had transferred control of it in writing to the Ukrainians.

Ukraine reported that three convoys of Russian forces had left toward Belarus, while the remaining troops were apparently planning to leave too, the agency said.

Energoatom gave no details on the condition of the soldiers it said were exposed to radiation and did not say how many were affected. There was no immediate comment from the Kremlin, and the IAEA said it had not been able to confirm the reports of Russian troops receiving high doses. It said it was seeking more information.

Russian forces seized the Chernobyl site in the opening stages of the February 24 invasion, raising fears that they would cause damage or disruption that could spread radiation. The workforce at the site oversees the safe storage of spent fuel rods and the concrete-entombed ruins of the reactor that exploded in 1986.

Edwin Lyman, a nuclear expert with the U.S.-based Union of Concerned Scientists, said it “seems unlikely" a large number of troops would develop severe radiation illness, but it was impossible to know for sure without more details.

He said contaminated material was probably buried or covered with new topsoil during the cleanup of Chernobyl, and some soldiers may have been exposed to a “hot spot” of radiation while digging. Others may have assumed they were at risk too, he said.

Early this week, the Russians said they would significantly scale back military operations in areas around Kyiv and the northern city of Chernihiv to increase trust between the two sides and help negotiations along.

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Kennedy MP Bob Katter has stuck by his call for young Australians to be armed and trained to fight under a new national defence initiative.

Speaking on Today, Mr Katter said without mass training of citizens, Ukraine would be "subjugated and under the control of Russia".

Ukraine re-introduced conscription in 2014 following Russia's initial invasion, but prior to the 2022 invasion, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had announced a plan to end it by 2024.

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"Why haven't the Russians been able to conquer them?" Mr Katter said.

"Because in all of those northern, European countries, there is a proliferation of firearms, and many of those countries have compulsory military training."

He listed Israel as another example, citing its military victories against larger neighbours.

"When you take on that little country, you're taking on a standing army of five million people," he said.

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Mr Katter also said that national service would be good for people.

"It gives you self respect, it gives you confidence, it fills you with a sense of responsibility," he said.

He said young Australians would feel better knowing they could help defend the country.

"A missile fortress wall, my friend, and behind that, a guerrilla army of five million people," he said.

However, Labor president and former federal treasurer Wayne Swan argued against the notion.

"We've got world-leading gun control measures in this country," he said.

"If he wants to mount an argument about defending out country, it's not about arming our kids.

"It's about making ourselves stronger across the board, including investing in defence."

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Families have been reunited after the first direct flight from Australia to Wellington touched down in New Zealand from Brisbane this morning.

It's the latest direct international flight to take off from Brisbane Airport following the mass culling of routes during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Maatakiri Rapira hadn't seen her parents in New Zealand for almost four years.

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"I just want to go home and hug my parents, that's all I want to do and they don't know I'm coming," she said before her flight.

Mags and Miles Thompson, also travelling to Wellington, were excited by the new route, which marks a return to more accessible international travel.

"Oh it's the best thing ever. I actually cried when I passed my COVID test this morning," Ms Thompson said.

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Daily flights from Brisbane to Dubai resumed this month.

From tomorrow, direct flights from Brisbane to Los Angeles and Kuala Lumpur will resume.

From July 1, Air Canada will resume flights to Vancouver four times a week, with Philippine Airways flights to Manila returning from April 3.

Jetstar flights from Brisbane to Bali return in May.

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Rachel Bronish from the Brisbane Airport Corporation said the flight routes marked a new chapter for the airline and travel industry.

"We truly think this is the beginning," she said.

Ms Bronish added with ever-changing COVID-19 restrictions and rules varying according to country, supporting a travel agent for international trips was the best way forward.

"Getting a travel agent is always a good option, because there are different rules for different countries so it always pays to do your research in the first instance," she said.

Renowned Māori leader Tā Tipene O’Regan, of Ngāi Tahu, has won the 2022 Kiwibank New Zealander of the Year award. Tā Tipene successfully led the negotiations of one of the country’s first iwi settlements – he…

Five people have been killed after a helicopter crashed into rugged terrain in regional Victoria this morning.

Police said a pilot and four passengers were on board the helicopter, all of whom died at the crash scene near Mt Disappointment, an hour north of Melbourne's CBD.

Police announced the tragic update just after 7.30pm.

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They said the crash victims were:

– A 32-year-old man from Cheltenham, Victoria
– A 50-year-old woman from Inverloch, Victoria
– A 73-year-old man from Albert Park, Victoria
– A 59-year-old man from New South Wales
– A 70-year-old man from New South Wales

"It's believed the chartered helicopter had taken off from Moorabbin Airport before picking up passengers in Batman Park, Melbourne about 7am," Victoria Police said.

"The flight was destined for Ulupna, located in northern Victoria.

"Police Air Wing located the wreckage in the vicinity of Blair's Hut about 11.45am on 31 March."

Police said the cause of the crash was still unknown.

The area where the helicopter crashed is covered by such dense bush that police had been unable to access it by ground or land a helicopter nearby.

Bulldozers and an excavator were required to clear a path to the crash site during the search and rescue operation.

Rescuers had to be winched from a police helicopter down to the crash site, near Blair's Hut.

State Emergency Service volunteers, paramedics, police and Fire Forest Management workers set up a staging point more than 8km from the wreckage.

The helicopter was one of two travelling north in convoy from Melbourne's CBD over when it disappeared just after 9.30am, according to Victoria Police.

It was believed to be carrying a group of cattle farmers headed to Yarrawonga.

The second helicopter landed without incident at Moorabbin Airport in Melbourne's south-east.

Both Microflite Helicopter Services aircraft took off from the banks of the Yarra River in Melbourne CBD near Crown just before 8am.

Microflite Helicopter Services' executive general manager Rodney Higgins said the private charter flight that crashed was being flown by a highly respected pilot.

He said the charter lost communication with the other helicopter just after 8am, with the incident then immediately reported to the Australian Maritime Safety Authority in accordance with standard protocols.

Mr Higgins said the company would cooperate with extensive investigations into what had occurred.

"I extend my deepest condolences to all affected by this incident," he said.

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) is sending a team from Canberra and Melbourne to investigate the incident.

"Once on site, they will examine the wreckage and site surrounds, and will retrieve any relevant components for further examination in the ATSB's technical facilities in Canberra," ATSB Chief Commissioner Angus Mitchell said.

"The ATSB will also analyse any recorded data and conduct interviews with those who have knowledge of the flight."

Mr Mitchell said the ATSB expected to publish a preliminary report about the crash in six to eight weeks' time.

"However, at any stage should we identify critical safety issues we will immediately notify relevant parties so appropriate safety action can be taken," he said.

The area where the crash has occurred was covered with low cloud and smoke from recent bushfire burn-offs.

The Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) said heavy fog and cloud hampered the aerial search for the crash this morning.