Briefly

AUSTRALIA

Inflation hits 21-year high as prices bite

Australia has recorded its highest rate of inflation in more than 20 years, with consumers paying more for everything. According to data released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics on Wednesday, the Consumer Price Index rose by 1.8 percent in the June quarter and 6.1 percent over the last 12 months. It is the highest figure since 2001 and the second-highest quarterly increase since the goods and services tax was introduced in 2000.Automotive fuel prices rose by 32.1 percent in the 12 months to June and the price of new houses by 20.3 percent. The ABS said supply chain disruptions due to flooding, labor shortages and rising freight costs contributed to higher prices.

AFGHANISTAN

7 dead in cholera outbreak in Kandahar

At least seven children have lost their lives due to a cholera outbreak and 667 others infected with the disease in less than a week in Afghanistan's southern Kandahar province, a doctor in the province, Mohammad Daud Ayubi, said on Wednesday. "A total of 9,500 patients affected with diarrhea have been taken to the healthcare center, where 667 of them were diagnosed with cholera disease," Ayubi said. The cholera outbreak has earlier claimed the lives of 20 children in neighboring Helmand Province, while hundreds of cases have been reported in Kandahar, Helmand and neighboring Zabul, and thousands of cases in northern Jawzjan and Kunduz provinces.

JAPAN

Monkey killed after attacks on people

Local authorities hunting for a gang of monkeys that attacked and wounded nearly 50 people in western Japan have caught and killed one of the marauding primates, an official said on Wednesday. The male simian was seized while roaming the grounds of a high school in Yamaguchi city. On Tuesday evening, specially commissioned hunters shot the monkey with a tranquilizer gun and eventually caught it near a lake on the school premises, an official at the local agricultural department told Agence France-Presse. After identifying it as the same animal responsible for one of the attacks, the monkey was put down.

Agencies - Xinhua