Natarsha Belling

The Fair Work Commission today decided nearly 3 million employees whose pay is linked to an award rate will see an increase of 4.75%.

For around 80,000 Australians on the very lowest rate, the national minimum wage, they'll be getting a pay increase of almost 6%.

In its decision, the Commission noted that changes were based on a prediction from the Reserve Bank that inflation would be 4.8% in the year to June.

The ACTU's Sally McManus says they're happy with today's decision.

But Innes Willocks from the Australian Industry Group says the wage rise will be tough on many businesses who are already struggling.

The wage increases will take effect from the 1st of July.

Meantime, talking about Australians and numbers, our official population clock ticked over today to 28 million Australians.

Australia has declared new sanctions against Israeli settlers in the West Bank, a Palestinian territory in Israel.

Since the October 7 attack against Israel, more hardline Israelis have moved into settlements in the West Bank, which has led to increased violence against the Palestinians already living there.

Today, Foreign Minister Penny Wong said in a statement that three individual Israelis and four entities would be subject to targeted financial sanctions and travel bans.

The statement reading, quote,

Meantime, the United Nations Security Council has called on Israel to remove its troops from Lebanon.

We heard this morning that Donald Trump announced that both Israel and Hezbollah had agreed to stop fighting, but Israeli troops are still positioned in the territory of Lebanon, which is what the UN takes issue with.

The AI firm Anthropic has filed to go public.

It joins Elon Musk's SpaceX rocket company and also OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, in racing towards the public market in a move that could create enormous wealth for the people who own these companies.

Last week, Anthropic raised another $65 billion in fundraising, which put the company's current value at around $900 billion.

The company was started just five years ago in 2021 by two siblings and owes its success to an AI product that can automatically write computer code.

Tennis legend Serena Williams has announced that she is making a career comeback.

Williams retired almost four years ago with 23 Grand Slam singles titles to her name, but now she is back.

At the age of 44, Williams has accepted an invitation to play doubles at the Queen's Club in London, which is a grass tournament that is often used as a warm-up game for Wimbledon.