Australia & Pacifics

29 Mar 2019; AFP: A Maori lament echoed across Christchurch Friday as a survivor of the New Zealand mosque attacks told a national remembrance service he had forgiven the gunman responsible for the racist massacre that took his wife, and shocked the world.

"I am choosing peace and I have forgiven," wheelchair-bound Farid Ahmed told tens of thousands gathered in the grieving southern city, drawing sustained applause as he implored New Zealanders of all faiths to also reject hate.

New Delhi, Mar 28 (PTI) The next census of India will be carried out in 2021 with March 1 of that year as the reference date, the Home Ministry announced Thursday.

In a notification, the ministry said the decision has been taken by the central government under the powers conferred by section 3 of the Census Act, 1948 (37 of 1948).

27 Mar 2019; AFP: Christchurch police launched an urgent investigation Wednesday to find out whether a man who died after an early morning stand-off with armed officers had links to mosque attacks which killed 50 people.

Police raided the 54-year-old man's home on Tuesday night and found a cache of firearms after receiving a tip-off from the public about "suspicious behaviour".

28 Mar 2019; AFP: Australian police on Wednesday said they had apprehended a British suspected drug offender, who tried to flee to Papua New Guinea on a jet ski.

Border police said they received a tip-off that "a man, possibly armed with a crossbow and carrying additional fuel and supplies, had been seen launching the jet ski" from a peninsula in the far northeast of the country.

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — Australia’s prime minister on Tuesday accused an influential minor political party of trying to “sell Australia’s gun laws to the highest bidders” by asking the U.S. gun lobby for donations.

Wellington, Mar 25 (AFP) New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced Monday that a long-awaited trip to China will take place next week, but had been shortened in the wake of the Christchurch mosque killings.

Ardern said she would travel to Beijing on Sunday then hold a full day of meetings Monday with the leaders of New Zealand's largest trading partner, including President Xi Jinping, before returning home the next day.

25 Mar 2019; AFP: New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern on Monday ordered an independent judicial inquiry into whether police and intelligence services could have prevented the Christchurch mosque attacks on March 15.

Ardern said a royal commission -- the most powerful judicial probe available under New Zealand law -- was needed to find out how a single gunman was able to kill 50 people in an attack that shocked the world.

Sunday Night True story interviewed Brenton Tarrant's mother. Interviewer showed her the video clip of her son shooting worshippers and asked, “What did you hope what happen to him?”

“I know what he deserves… he deserves a death penalty” said the mother. “It hurts me to say that because he is a family… but for someone who has taken so many lives of other people, its only fair that he deserves the same thing” she added.

Christchurch (New Zealand), Mar 24 (AFP) New Zealand will hold a national remembrance service on March 29 for the victims of the Christchurch mosque massacre and their families, the prime minister's office announced on Sunday.

The interfaith service will take place in Christchurch two weeks after an Australian white supremacist shot and killed 50 Muslims who had arrived for Friday prayers at two mosques in the city on March 15.

A "very destructive" category 4 cyclone slammed into Australia's remote northern coast on Saturday, while a second, equally powerful storm bore down on the country's west.

Cyclone Trevor, pushing a big storm tide and packing winds of up to 250 kilometres per hour (150 mph), made landfall on the sparsely populated Northern Territory coast near the Gulf of Carpentaria town of Port McArthur, the Bureau of Meteorology reported.