Tag: Australia

Australia to manufacture ‘promising’ virus vaccine and give free to citizens

SYDNEY, Australia (AFP) — Australia has secured access to a “promising” potential coronavirus vaccine, the prime minister announced Tuesday, saying the country would manufacture it and offer free doses to the entire population. Prime Minister Scott Morrison said Australia had reached a deal with Swedish-British pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca to receive the COVID-19 vaccine it is developing with Oxford University. “The Oxford vaccine is one of the most advanced and promising in the world, and under […]

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Australia’s worst-hit state ‘flattening’ virus curve

MELBOURNE, Australia (AFP) — Australia’s worst-hit state of Victoria appears to be curbing a virus outbreak after a week of tougher restrictions, authorities said Wednesday, with new cases falling in recent days even as fatalities topped records. Victoria state Premier Daniel Andrews announced 410 new cases and 21 fatalities — marking Australia’s deadliest day so far — but said the state “certainly” seemed to be flattening the curve. “If you look at the average over […]

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Stage 4 restrictions in Melbourne, regional Victoria enters stage 3

  Daryl Castillejos Eagle News Service MELBOURNE, Australia (Eagle News) — Victoria has now entered a State of Disaster, with Metropolitan Melbourne moving to stage 4 restrictions while regional Victoria entered Stage 3. On Sunday August 2, new restrictions were introduced for Melbourne and the regional Victoria by the Victorian Government. Daniel Andrews, Victorian Premier, announced that Melbourne (except Mitchell Shire) will be moving to stage 4 restrictions from 2nd of August and will continue […]

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Melbourne enters Australia’s toughest virus lockdown

MELBOURNE, Australia (AFP) — Australia’s second-largest city entered the country’s toughest lockdown yet on Thursday, sparking a fresh wave of anxiety and confusion over ever-tougher regulations. Melbourne’s streets were visibly quieter as non-essential businesses were forced to shutter under new coronavirus rules expected to be in place for six weeks. A second lockdown for the state capital of Victoria began in early July but additional regulations came into force overnight, requiring hundreds of thousands more […]

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Australia records deadliest day of pandemic so far

MELBOURNE, Australia (AFP) — Australia’s worst-hit state of Victoria reported 15 coronavirus deaths on Wednesday, including a man in his 30s, making it the country’s deadliest day of the pandemic to date. An outbreak in Melbourne, Australia’s second-biggest city and the capital of Victoria, has seen hundreds of new cases recorded daily in recent weeks, including 725 on Wednesday. The epidemic surge continued even though Melbourne has been under a stay-at-home lockdown for nearly a […]

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Australian PM: no evidence of TikTok misusing data

WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said Tuesday there was no evidence that Chinese-owned TikTok had abused the data of its hundreds of millions of users. “We have had a good look at this, and there is no evidence for us to suggest… that there is any misuse of any people’s data,” he told the Aspen Security Forum meeting in Aspen, Colorado. “There are plenty of things that are on TikTok […]

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Australian killed in Beirut explosions: PM

SYDNEY, Australia (AFP) — An Australian was among the dead after massive explosions devastated Beirut’s port on Tuesday and killed dozens, Australia’s prime minister said. “It’s my deep regret to inform you that one Australian has been killed in this horrific blast,” Prime Minister Scott Morrison told The Today Show without providing further details. Two enormous explosions killed at least 73 people and injured thousands, shaking distant buildings and spreading panic and chaos in the […]

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Australian city begins curfew as global virus cases top 18 million

  by Carly Waters, with AFP Bureaus Agence France Presse MELBOURNE, Australia (AFP) — Australia’s second-largest city started a six-week curfew and the Philippine capital was ordered back into lockdown, as the number of global coronavirus cases on Monday topped 18 million. The spread of the virus is gathering pace with worldwide deaths nearing 700,000, and a White House adviser warning that it was “extraordinarily widespread” in the United States — the worst-hit nation. There […]

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Global virus cases top 18 million as Australian city imposes curfew

by AFP Bureaus MELBOURNE, Australia (AFP) — The number of coronavirus cases recorded worldwide topped 18 million on Monday with the illness continuing its march, after Australia’s second-largest city imposed a curfew to halt the spread. Six months after the World Health Organization declared a global emergency, the virus has killed more than 687,000 people since it first emerged in China late last year, according to an AFP tally compiled from official sources. Fresh clusters […]

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Australia rejects Beijing’s South China Sea claims, backing US

SYDNEY Australia (AFP) — Australia has rejected Beijing’s territorial and maritime claims in the South China Sea in a formal declaration to the United Nations, aligning itself more closely with Washington in the escalating row. In a statement filed on Thursday, Australia said there was “no legal basis” to several disputed Chinese claims in the sea including those related to the construction of artificial islands on small shoals and reefs. “Australia rejects China’s claim to […]

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Melbourne orders compulsory masks as Australia battles coronavirus

  by Tania Lee Agence France Presse MELBOURNE, Australia (AFP) — Anyone venturing out in Australia’s second-biggest city was ordered Thursday to wear a mask as authorities struggle to contain multiple coronavirus clusters in the country’s southeast. Most people seen by AFP on the quiet streets of Melbourne’s city centre wore masks in the second week of a six-week local lockdown. Victoria state, of which Melbourne is the capital, recorded 422 coronavirus cases on Thursday […]

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Plan to cull nearly 2,000 kangaroos in Australia pushes through amid COVID pandemic, says ACT gov’t

By Rohnczel Castro EBC Canberra Bureau (Eagle News) — This year, the government of the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) aims to remove a total of 1,958 Eastern Gray Kangaroo from nine priority reserves in Canberra amid the COVID-19 pandemic. This was earlier announced by the ACT Open Government which said that the culling, which it does yearly to control the kangaroo population in Canberra, had started in June. Canberra, the bush capital of Australia, is […]

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