Sydney - Up to 40 people may have been injured when a Qantas jet flying from Singapore to Perth experienced mid-air turbulence, West Australian police said Tuesday.

The Airbus A320 carrying more than 300 people made an emergency landing at Learmonth Airport near Exmouth on Australia's west coast.

Sergeant Greg Lambert told Australia's AAP news agency that the plane landed safely after making a mayday call.

"It's understood up to 40 people were injured during a mid-air incident," Lambert said.

Sydney - Australian stocks traded in a wide range Tuesday with the announcement mid-session of a 1-per-cent interest rate cut powering the market off morning lows.

The AXS 200 put on 78 points, or 1.7 per cent, to close the day at 4,618.

Sellers swamped the market at the opening bell with the index losing more than 3 per cent in the first minutes of trading.

But the afternoon statement from the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) of a bigger-than-expected cut in the rate at which it lends to banks reversed the direction and took stocks out of the red.

Sydney - You have to be over 16 in Australia to have lived at a time when the economy was not bounding along on the back of the China-led resources boom.

A whole generation for whom recession was something that happened abroad is about to feel the chill of falling asset prices, fewer jobs and the quandaries that come with falling incomes. Some Australians are bumping up very heavily against the boom-to-bust reality.

Sydney - The Reserve Bank of Australia on Tuesday cut interest rates by 1 per cent to 6 per cent in response to a slew of figures showing the former speedy economy being sucked into the global slow down.

It was the RBA's second monthly cut in the rate it charges banks for borrowing, a reversal of a trend that had seen 12 consecutive rate rises since May 2002.

The further easing of monetary policy came despite inflation being above the RBA's 3-per-cent target. The central bank now sees a recession as more of a threat than inflation.

Sydney - Sellers swamped the Australian stock market at the opening bell Tuesday as investors took their turn to join in the global sell-off.

The ASX 200 lost 142 points, or 3.1 per cent, to take the index to 4,398.

It was the same story in New Zealand, where the index gave up 79 points, or 2.6 per cent, to 2,969 at the opening.

The drop in share values was mirrored in the Australian dollar's performance on the cross rates. It gave up 5 US cents in overnight trading to reach a two-year low of 72 US cents.

Sydney  - Australian marine biologist Scoresby Shepherd thinks an increase in attacks could signify that sharks are starting to see humans as food because tuna are getting scarce.

"It's a well known biological phenomenon, which is called prey switching," Shepherd said.

The numbers of attacks are rising and during the past 34 years sharks have killed 32 people in Australia.