Australia

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — Police expected to charge a local man Thursday with abducting a 4-year-old girl from her family’s camping tent 18 days before police smashed into a locked house and rescued her in an outcome celebrated around Australia.

The 36-year-old man was arrested early Wednesday around the time that police found Cleo Smith alone in the house in the town of Carnarvon. “My name is Cleo,” the smiling girl told the police officers who rescued her and asked her name as confirmation that they had found the right child.

CANBERRA/SYDNEY, Nov 3 (Reuters) - France's ambassador to Australia, Jean-Pierre Thebault, said on Wednesday that Australia acted with deceit when it abruptly cancelled a multi-billion dollar deal with Paris to build a fleet of submarines.

"The deceit was intentional," Thebault told media in Canberra on Wednesday.

"And because there was far more at stake than providing submarines, because it was a common agreement on sovereignty, sealed with the transmission of highly classified data, the way it was handled was a stab in the back."

SYDNEY, Nov 2 (Reuters) - Australia's adoption of foreign interference laws in 2018 helped to curb Beijing's overtures to the Chinese community there but led to tension that alienated many Chinese-Australians, the Lowy Institute foreign policy think tank said in a report on Tuesday.

The law, criticised by Beijing, brought a deterioration in ties that worsened after Australia banned telecoms giant Huawei from its 5G network and urged an international inquiry into the origins of the coronavirus, with China imposing trade reprisals.

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison attacked the credibility of French President Emmanuel Macron as a newspaper quoted a text message that suggested France anticipated “bad news” about a now-scuttled submarine deal.

An Australia newspaper cast doubt on President Joe Biden’s explanation to Macron last week that the U.S. leader thought the French had been informed long before the September announcement that their 90 billion Australian dollar ($66 billion) submarine deal with Australia would be scrapped.

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — Sydney’s international airport came alive with tears, embraces and laughter on Monday as Australia’s border opened for the first time in 20 months, with some arriving travelers tearing away mandatory masks to see faces of loved ones they’ve been separated from for so long.

“Just being able to come home without having to go to quarantine is huge,” arriving passenger Carly Boyd told reporters at Sydney’s Kingsford-Smith Airport, where Peter Allen’s unofficial national anthem “I Still Call Australia Home” was playing.

SYDNEY (AP) — The U.S. State Department expressed outrage and demanded an investigation on Friday after The Associated Press reported that Myanmar’s military has been torturing detainees in a systemic way across the country.

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — Australia on Thursday ruled out promising to cut methane emissions by 30% by the end of the decade in a stance that will add to criticism that the country is a laggard in addressing climate change.

Minister for Industry, Energy and Emissions Reduction Angus Taylor announced his government’s decision before he was to fly with Prime Minister Scott Morrison to a U.N. climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland.

The United States and the European Union pledged in September to the 30% methane reduction target.

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — Australia’s opposition party said on Wednesday a looming election will be fought on greenhouse gas reduction targets as Prime Minister Scott Morrison comes under criticism from scientists over the modest goals he will take to a U.N. climate summit.

Morrison has been left no room to move on Australia’s 2030 reduction target under a deal struck this week with his conservative government’s rural-based junior coalition partner, the Nationals party.

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — Qantas Airways on Friday brought forward its plans to restart international travel from Sydney as Prime Minister Scott Morrison predicted tourists would be welcomed back to Australia this year.

Vaccinated Australian permanent residents and citizens will be free to travel through Sydney from Nov. 1 without the need for hotel quarantine on their return.

Two weeks ago, Morrison said Australians, skilled migrants and students would be given priority over foreign travelers in coming to Sydney. He predicted tourists would return in 2022 or later.

SYDNEY, Oct 19 (NNN-AGENCIES) – Plastic waste makes up more than 80 percent of all rubbish found across Australian beaches, according to a study, based on one of the largest marine debris databases in the southern hemisphere.

More than 2,000 organisations and 150,000 volunteer rubbish beachcombers, helped compile the Australian Marine Debris Initiative (AMDI), based on collecting and sifting through almost 20 million pieces of discarded plastic, glass, rubber, metal, and paper.