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Xinhua Asia Pacific news summary at 0600GMT, April 10

Xinhua, April 10, 2017 Adjust font size:

The Australian housing market is set for a cooldown and prices will continue to rise without fear of a bubble, said a report released Monday.

One of the authors of the report Emily Dabbs, an economist at Moody's Analytics, spoke to Xinhua Monday, saying that the cooldown is already underway, particularly in the smaller market cities, but a pricing crash is not on the cards.

"The housing market will cool, probably in 2018 when the Reserve Bank we feel will start to raise interest rates. However, we are still expecting a slowdown in growth this year as well," Dabbs said. (Australia-House Market-Cooldown)

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SYDNEY -- An eight-week-old dolphin calf has sadly been put down on Sunday after being separated from its mother and stranded in ankle deep water at an estuary south of Perth.

The dolphin was found by a member of the public on Saturday morning and reported to the Department of Parks and Wildlife who attempted to move the bottle-nosed species to deeper water in the hope it could hear its mother calling.

The effort was not successful however and after being placed in a protective sea pod overnight, the animal became distressed. (Autralia-Dopphin Calf-Death)

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SYDNEY -- With a combined age of 360 years, an Australian men's swim team have broken the national age record for the 4x50 meter relay at the New South Wales State Masters Swimming Championships on Sunday.

The four men aged 87, 90, 91 and 92 decided to challenge for the record a second time, after a former member John-William Steen, died a day before their first attempt in 2016. (Australia-Men Swimming Team)

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CANBERRA -- The Australian government is considering introducing new measures to encourage migrants to resettle in regional cities and rural towns, in an effort to ease the housing affordability crisis in major cities such as Melbourne and Sydney.

In comments published in Monday's newspapers, Immigration Minister Peter Dutton described solving the housing affordability as a "whole of government effort", and said Australia's generous migration intake, which is up to 190,000 people every year, needed to remain in the national interest. (Australia-Migrants-Settlement)

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CANBERRA -- The Australian state of South Australia has reached its renewable energy target (RET) of 50 percent almost eight years ahead of schedule, with the state government reporting that 53 percent of its energy came from wind and sun-based sources last year.

Despite taking criticism from the federal government in recent months for blackouts which affected the state - including one which left 100,000 homes without power, South Australia's Energy Minister Tom Koutsantonis described the announcement as a "good thing", describing renewable energy as "the future". (Australia-Renewable Energy Target) Endit