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MAGARET RIVER, Australia (AFP) — Australia battled twin natural disasters Friday, with bushfires cutting through a picturesque west coast region, while serious flooding and heavy rains lashed the country’s east. After weeks of high temperatures, fires flanked the western tourist hotspot of Margaret River — famed for its fine wine and big surf. No homes have been damaged or injuries reported, but flames have been seen over a wide area, sending smoke billowing high into […]
SYDNEY, Australia (AFP) — Australia will not send officials to the upcoming winter Olympics in Beijing, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said Wednesday, joining a US diplomatic boycott of the event. Canberra’s decision comes amid “disagreement” with China over a slew of issues, from Australia’s foreign interference laws to a recent decision to acquire nuclear-powered submarines, Morrison said. He also cited human rights abuses in the Xinjiang region and Beijing’s ongoing freeze on ministerial contact with […]
SYDNEY, Australia (AFP) — Australia on Sunday cleared the first Covid-19 vaccine for children aged five to 11, with the next stage of its vaccine rollout expected to start in early 2022. Health Minister Greg Hunt said medical regulators had granted provisional approval for the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine to be administered to younger children for the first time. It follows similar decisions in the European Union, the United States, Israel and Canada. Hunt said the vaccination […]
SYDNEY, Australia (AFP) — Australia on Friday reported a student with no history of foreign travel had tested positive for the Covid-19 Omicron variant, the country’s first detected case of community transmission. The case, detected in the country’s largest city Sydney, comes despite a ban on non-citizens entering the country and restrictions on flights from southern Africa, where the variant was first detected. New South Wales Health said “the case has no overseas travel history […]
by Andrew BEATTY Agence France Presse SYDNEY, Australia (AFP) — Pandemic-induced lockdowns caused Australia’s economy to shrink 1.9 percent in the third quarter, a downturn that bucked the trend of a steady recovery in other wealthy nations. The Australian Bureau of Statistics on Wednesday reported the country’s second quarterly contraction since the pandemic began — and one of the largest contractions on record — sparked by long-running containment measures in populous states. Sydney, Melbourne […]
SYDNEY, Australia (AFP) — Lockdowns and border controls shrank Australia’s economy by 1.9 percent in the third quarter, official statistics showed Wednesday, a decline more modest than expected but worse than in many other wealthy nations. The Australian Bureau of Statistics said the quarterly downturn — the first since it contracted at the start of the pandemic in the first half of 2020 — was due to “extended lockdowns” in the country’s most populous states. […]
SYDNEY, Australia (AFP) — Health officials said Sunday they had detected the Covid Omicron strain in Australia for the first time in two passengers who were tested after flying into Sydney from southern Africa. The eastern state of New South Wales’ health authority said it had conducted urgent genomic testing and confirmed the new strain was present in the two people who landed in Sydney on Saturday. Both passengers came from southern Africa and arrived […]
Australia banned flights from nine southern African countries on Saturday, tightening its borders to prevent the entry of the new Covid-19 Omicron variant. Non-Australians who visited South Africa, Zimbabwe and several other nations in the past fortnight will also be barred from Australia, Heath Minister Greg Hunt said. Citizens and residents travelling from the listed countries will have to quarantine for 14 days. “These are strong, swift, decisive and immediate actions,” Hunt told media in […]
by Danny Kemp and Julie Capelle, with AFP bureaus DEN HAAG, Netherlands (AFP) — Tens of thousands took to the streets in cities across Europe and Australia Saturday as anger mounted over fresh Covid restrictions imposed against a resurgent pandemic. And Dutch police faced a second night of rioting — this time in The Hague — after the previous night’s violence in the port city of Rotterdam. Clashes erupted after a day of mainly […]
by Andrew BEATTY Agence France Presse SYDNEY, Australia (AFP) — Australia on Wednesday announced measures to ring-fence dozens of sensitive technologies from foreign interference, stepping up efforts to safeguard against “national security risks” from China and others. Prime Minister Scott Morrison unveiled a list of 63 “critical technologies” to be promoted and protected at an online forum in Sydney — a step toward limiting what government, industry and universities can and cannot share with […]
by Andrew LEESON Agence France-Presse NEWCASTLE, Australia (AFP) – Australia’s conservative leaders have defied calls for urgent climate action, boasting they will sell coal for as long as anyone is buying. But in the country’s carbon heartland, locals are already preparing for life beyond fossil fuels. Two-hundred-and-thirty years ago, among the verdant outcrops that flank the southeastern coastal town of Newcastle, a band of escaped convicts made the first recorded discovery of coal on the […]
SYDNEY, Australia (AFP) – Australia said Monday it will sell coal for “decades into the future” after spurning a pact to phase out the polluting fossil fuel to halt catastrophic climate change. More than 40 countries pledged to eliminate coal use within decades during the COP26 UN climate summit in Glasgow, which aims to cap the warming of Earth since the Industrial Revolution to between 1.5 and 2.0 degrees Celsius. Australia, along with some other […]
