Australia & Pacifics

Nov 7 (Reuters) - Australia's largest city of Sydney will further ease social distancing curbs on Monday, a month after emerging from a coronavirus lockdown that lasted nearly 100 days, as close to 90% of people have got both doses of vaccine, officials said.

Although limited to people who are fully inoculated, the relaxation in the state of New South Wales, home to Sydney, lifts limits on house guests or outdoor gatherings, among other measures.

Nov 6 (Reuters) - New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern welcomed signs from the United States of a bigger engagement in the Indo-Pacific region, saying in an interview that her government has "mature" ties with China that allow for disagreement.

Ardern will host an online summit next week of leaders from the Asia-Pacific, including the United States, China and Japan, to discuss how the region can recover from the COVID-19 pandemic and the ensuing economic crisis.

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — While people are now able to travel freely in Australia’s more populated east, COVID-19-free Western Australia will maintain its tight restrictions into next year, state leaders said Friday.

Western Australia is the largest state, covering a third of Australia’s land area. It also has the nation’s lowest vaccination rates, in part because the state has had few infections and life has been relatively normal throughout the pandemic.

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.

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — New Zealand officials said Thursday they will gradually loosen their border quarantine requirements, which have been among the toughest in the world throughout the pandemic.

But while the changes will make it easier for New Zealanders stranded abroad to return home, officials gave no date for when tourists might be welcomed back. That change is likely still months away.