Australia & Pacifics

PORT MORESBY (Papua New Guinea), April 29 (NNN-AGENCIES) — US President Joe Biden will meet 18 leaders from across the South Pacific when he visits Papua New Guinea in May, the country’s foreign minister said Saturday, signalling a renewed US drive to cultivate regional allies.

The United States and China are vying for influence in what was once a diplomatic backwater, but is increasingly seen as a vital space for commercial, political and military influence.

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said Wednesday he will host President Joe Biden and the leaders of India and Japan for a security summit next month.

The meeting at the Sydney Opera House on May 24 will be Australia’s first time hosting the Quad Leaders’ Summit. It will also include Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida.

Albanese attended a summit in Tokyo hours after he was sworn in as prime minister following elections last year.

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — Britain’s Foreign Secretary James Cleverly cut short a Pacific tour Friday to return to Britain and deal with the deteriorating situation in Sudan.

Sudan’s military ruled out negotiations with a rival paramilitary force Thursday, saying it would only accept its surrender as the two sides continued to battle in central Khartoum and other parts of the country.

The British High Commission said Cleverly had been dealing with the Sudan situation from its offices in Wellington by making a series of calls to key partners overnight.

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — Eight Indonesian fishermen are feared drowned and another 11 have been rescued after spending six days without food or water on a barren island off the northwest Australian coast after a powerful tropical cyclone, authorities said Wednesday.

Two primitive wooden Indonesian fishing boats were caught in the path of Cyclone Ilsa, which made landfall Friday as Australia’s most powerful storm in eight years, with winds gusting at an apparent record of 289 kilometers (180 miles) per hour.

15 Apr 2023; TRT: 55-year-old man who had lived in Shanghai allegedly compiled a number of reports and received payment from two individuals who work for a foreign intelligence service and are undertaking intelligence collection activities.

The second person ever charged with violating Australia's foreign interference laws has appeared in a Sydney court following his arrest a day earlier.

SYDNEY/BEIJING, April 11 (Reuters) - Australia has reached an agreement with China to resolve their dispute over barley imports, Foreign Minister Penny Wong said on Tuesday, in the latest sign of improving ties between the trade partners.

Relations between the two had been strained for years, and worsened after Australia called for an inquiry into the origins of COVID, triggering trade reprisals by Beijing including anti-dumping duties on Australian wine and barley.

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — A senior lawmaker split from Australia’s opposition party leadership Tuesday by supporting the government’s proposal to create a so-called Indigenous Voice to Parliament.

Australians are expected to vote sometime between October and December on whether to create the Voice, an elected group that would be charged with advocating Indigenous interests to Parliament but would not have a vote on laws.

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — Australia suspended a complaint to the World Trade Organization in a bid to reopen the Chinese market to Australian barley for the first time in three years in the new government’s latest step toward repairing relations with Beijing.

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — Australia’s main opposition party on Wednesday decided to oppose the government’s model for constitutional recognition of Indigenous people in a development that appears to doom the prospects of a successful referendum this year.

A referendum has not succeeded in changing Australia’s Constitution since 1977, and bipartisan support of the major political parties is widely regarded as a prerequisite for success.

SYDNEY, Apr 4 (NNN-AAP) – An eighth man has been found guilty, in connection to a smuggling case in 2017, involving methamphetamine worth 1.12 billion Australian dollars (about 0.81 billion U.S. dollars), the then biggest ever methamphetamine seizure in Australia.

The verdict was issued by the Western Australia (WA) Supreme Court yesterday, against a 53-year-old man, who was accused of coordinating the collection of 1.2 tonnes of illicit drugs from a “mothership” in international waters.