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WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AFP) — New Zealand will mostly lift its Covid-19 lockdown this week, with only the country’s infection epicentre Auckland to remain under strict stay-at-home orders, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said Monday. About three million New Zealanders will no longer be under stay-at-home orders as of Tuesday overnight, and schools will reopen on Thursday for the first time in three weeks, Ardern said. But she added that Auckland, where the country’s Delta-variant outbreak […]
SYDNEY, Australia (AFP) — A man has died following a shark attack in Australia despite the efforts of “incredibly brave” surfers and bystanders who came to his aid, authorities said Sunday. The man, believed to be in his 20s, was mauled by the shark at Emerald Beach near Coffs Harbour, about six hours north of Sydney, according to paramedics. Emergency crews, including a helicopter medical team, rushed to the scene just before 11:00am local […]
WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AFP) — An ISIS-inspired terrorist stabbed six people at an Auckland supermarket on Friday before police who had him under surveillance shot him dead, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said. “What happened today was despicable, it was hateful, it was wrong,” she said, describing the attacker as a Sri Lankan national who arrived in New Zealand in 2011. © Agence France-Presse
WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AFP) — New Zealand police shot dead a man who wounded six people in an attack at an Auckland supermarket on Friday as terrified crowds fled for the exits. Police said the attack occurred when the man entered the Countdown supermarket in the city’s New Lynn suburb as people were doing afternoon shopping. Authorities described that attack as “random” and not terror-related. “Police have located the man and he has been shot. […]
SYDNEY, Australia (AFP) — Britain will send four million Covid-19 vaccine doses to Australia, Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced Friday, as his country raced to halt a deadly virus outbreak. The Australian leader said the planes delivering Pfizer vaccine doses were “on the tarmac” in the UK and would deliver “four million doses of hope” within weeks. Several of Australia’s largest cities are in lockdown and case numbers and deaths are steadily rising, as the […]
HAGATNA, United States (AFP) — The US Pacific territory of Guam has suspended a program allowing international visitors to receive a Covid-19 vaccination while enjoying a tropical holiday due to a surge in virus cases. The Guam Visitors Bureau this week halted the “Air V&V” — vacation and vaccination — scheme, launched in July in a bid to restart the island’s pandemic-devastated tourism industry. Infection numbers that once made Guam an attractive destination have exploded […]
Climate change and increasingly extreme weather events, have caused a surge in natural disasters over the past 50 years disproportionately impacting poorer countries, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) said on Wednesday. According to the agencies’ Atlas of Mortality and Economic Losses from Weather, Climate and Water Extremes, from 1970 to 2019, these natural hazards accounted for 50 per cent of all disasters, 45 per cent of […]
MELBOURNE, Australia (AFP) — A lockdown of Australia’s second-biggest city Melbourne will be extended, authorities announced Sunday as they struggle to quash a stubborn coronavirus Delta variant outbreak. Almost seven million people in Melbourne and surrounding Victoria state were scheduled to exit a four-week lockdown on Thursday, but state premier Dan Andrews said it would no longer be possible with case numbers rising by 92 overnight. It is the city’s sixth lockdown of the pandemic, […]
SYDNEY, Australia (AFP) — Australia on Thursday reported more than 1,000 new local coronavirus cases for the first time during the pandemic, as a Delta variant outbreak surged in Sydney. New South Wales state, which includes the country’s most populous city Sydney, announced a record 1,029 cases of Covid-19 for the previous 24 hours. An outbreak that began in the city in mid-June has reached over 15,000 cases and spread to smaller towns and cities, […]
WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AFP) — New Zealand extended a national Covid-19 lockdown Monday, with Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern saying a Delta variant outbreak has yet to peak. Ardern said the rapid spread of the highly transmissible variant meant it was too early to lift restrictions imposed last week after a virus cluster emerged in Auckland, ending a six-month run of no local cases. “Delta had a head start on us and we’ve needed to catch […]
New Zealand conceded its ambitious “Covid zero” elimination strategy may no longer be viable Sunday, as an outbreak of the virulent Delta variant continued to spread. Covid-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins reported a further 21 cases in a virus cluster that emerged in Auckland last week, ending a six-month run of no local cases and sparking a national lockdown. Hipkins said Delta’s highly transmissible nature was making this outbreak more difficult to contain than others, […]
The United States on Saturday urged its citizens in Afghanistan to avoid traveling to the Kabul airport, citing “potential security threats” near its gates. The warning from the US embassy in Kabul provided no detail on the danger, but a White House official later confirmed that aides had briefed President Joe Biden on “counterterrorism operations” in Afghanistan, including against the Islamic State group. Conditions outside Hamid Karzai International Airport have been chaotic amid the crush […]
