Prime Minister Albanese has announced that Australia will provide an additional $60 million in support for Ukraine following a high-level meeting with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York.

During the meeting, Albanese emotionally praised Zelenskyy’s leadership, referring to him as “my friend,” and signed a 10-year bilateral security agreement. The new support package allocates $45 million in ADF defense equipment, $10 million for Ukraine’s energy support fund, and $5 million in humanitarian aid. This brings Australia’s total commitments to Ukraine to $1.9 billion since the 2022 Russian invasion. The agreement also outlines long-term security cooperation, including enhanced military training and joint production initiatives for drones, missiles, and air defense systems.

Youth crime has dropped in Victoria as the state’s record crime rate continues to fall, new figures show.

The latest crime data, released today, reveals that in the past year to June, the state’s crime rate dropped by 3.8 per cent. Police say organised crime, repeat offenders, mental health and drugs are the main drivers of crime, with trafficking and dealing drugs such as cocaine, meth, ecstasy and prescription drugs spiking by 18.5 per cent.

While police say crime in Victoria remains “unacceptably high” at more than 13 per cent higher than three years ago, several major crimes decreased. Crime Statistics Agency Chief Statistician Fiona Dowsley told 774 ABC Melbourne that a 20 per cent drop in burglaries and break-ins was “really significant”, but that the cause of the fall was difficult to determine.

Regional Operations Deputy Commissioner Bob Hill said the drop in the state’s crime rate was promising, but more work still needed to be done to make Victorians feel safe.

Speaking in New York, Prime Minister Albanese said an OpenAI agent gained unauthorised access to the Medicare statistics reporting service portal administered by Services Australia on June 18.

The AI agent accessed both public and non-public files, but Albanese said it did not appear anyone’s personal Medicare details were accessed.

It is known that OpenAI accessed non-public aggregate health statistics and internal files from an old Australian government website that carried Medicare statistics.

It is also understood an AI crawler, which is an automated program that scans websites and collects information from them, was able to find a security workaround to access the data.

Albanese also said he had a “frank” discussion with OpenAI’s chief executive Sam Altman, saying the company took three months to notify the government of the breach and, when it did, the notification was in an email sent to the Services Australia public inbox.