Australia

Sept 5 (Reuters) - Australia's government should increase its efforts to phase out coal or else climate change will dramatically damage the country's economy, Selwin Hart, the United Nations special adviser on climate change, said on Sunday.

Australia's reliance on coal-fired power makes it one of the world's largest carbon emitters per capita, but its conservative government has steadfastly backed fossil fuel industries, saying tougher action on emissions would cost jobs.

CANBERRA, Sept 4 (NNN-XINHUA) – Thousands of individuals have signed a petition asking the Australian government to introduce or import COVID-19 vaccines made in China.

The petition, launched last week on the website of the Parliament of Australia, garnered nearly 8,000 signatures, as of this morning.

The campaign was initiated due to “the serious COVID-19 pandemic situation in Australia,” as well as, the shortage of vaccines in the country, the petition read.

SYDNEY, Sept 3 (Reuters) - Australia will receive an additional 4 million doses of Pfizer's (PFE.N) COVID-19 vaccine this month after agreeing a swap deal with Britain, to help accelerate its vaccination programme amid a record surge in infections.

The deal, announced by Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Friday, will double the availability of Pfizer vaccines this month, with the first shipment of vaccines from Britain expected to arrive over the weekend.

SYDNEY, Sept 3 (Reuters) - The Federated States of Micronesia will tap a U.S. funding facility to construct a Pacific undersea communications cable, two sources told Reuters, after rejecting a Chinese company-led proposal that was deemed a security threat by U.S. officials.

The United States has taken great interest in several plans in recent years to lay optic fibre cables across the Pacific, projects that would bring vastly improved communications to island nations.

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — Australia’s Victoria state is drafting legislation that would make it the first in the country to ban the public display of Nazi symbols as local neo-Nazi activity increases.

The proposed ban on Nazi symbols such as the swastika, except for educational or historical purposes, will be presented to parliament early next year, and appears certain to become law with opposition lawmakers expressing support.

SYDNEY, Aug. 31 (Xinhua) -- New research on rising sea levels and global warming published in the Nature Climate Change predicted that extreme sea levels may become 100 times more frequent by the end of the century.

For Australia, a country where the majority of the population lives in close proximity to the coast, these effects could be particularly devastating.

SYDNEY, Aug 26 (Reuters) - Australia's new daily cases of COVID-19 topped 1,000 on Thursday for the first time since the global pandemic began, as two major hospitals in Sydney set up emergency outdoor tents to help deal with a rise in patients.

Sydney, the country's largest city and the epicentre of the current outbreak, is struggling to stamp out a surge in the fast-spreading Delta variant, with daily infections hitting record levels even after two months under lockdown.

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — Qantas Group posted a 2.35 billion Australia dollar ($1.7 billion) pandemic-related annual loss on Thursday and forecast Australia will reopen to international travel in December.

The Sydney-based airline company said it expected flights to countries with high vaccination rates including the United States, Britain, Japan and Singapore would resume in mid-December.

MELBOURNE, Aug 22 (Reuters) - Australia will stick to its lockdown strategy against the coronavirus until at least 70% of its population is fully vaccinated, but after that it will have to start living with the virus, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Sunday.

The country set a record with 914 infections, its highest daily figure, as the southern and eastern states of New South Wales, Victoria and the Australian Capital Territory remain under a strict lockdown.

SYDNEY (AP) — More than 250 people who were protesting coronavirus lockdowns in Australia were arrested Saturday and many faced fines for defying health orders, authorities said.

At least seven police officers were treated for injuries after skirmishes broke out at some of the protests, which took place in multiple cities nationwide. The largest and most violent protest was in Melbourne. Many were organized by people in encrypted online chat groups.