Australia & Pacifics

WELLINGTON, Mar 19 (NNN-AGENCIES) – New Zealand reported 18,514 new community cases of COVID-19 today, the Ministry of Health said in a statement.

Among the new community infections, 4,346 were in the largest city, Auckland.

In addition, 45 new cases were detected at the New Zealand border, said the ministry.

There were 939 COVID-19 patients in New Zealand hospitals, including 24 people in intensive care units or high dependency units.

SYDNEY, Mar 15 (NNN-AGENCIES) – A fire at a boarding house in Sydney, killed three people with one in a critical condition. The police have deemed the cause of the fire as “suspicious.”

Firefighters were called to a two-level boarding house in Newtown, a suburb in Sydney’s inner west, this morning. Firefighters said it took about two hours to get the blaze under control.

A body was recovered from the rubble in the morning with two more uncovered in the afternoon.

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — An appeals court on Tuesday overturned a groundbreaking ruling that Australia’s environment minister had a duty to protect younger people against climate change.

Three Federal Court judges ruled for a variety of reasons that the court should not impose on Environment Minister Sussan Ley a duty of care.

Eight Australian teenagers took Ley to court in 2020 in a bid to prevent her from approving the expansion of a coal mine.

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — The lingering injuries from being shot nine times did not stop Temel Atacocugu from completing a two-week walk and bike ride for peace on Tuesday, the third anniversary of a gunman’s slaughter of 51 Muslim worshippers.

Atacocugu set out to retrace the gunman’s 360-kilometer (224-mile) drive from Dunedin to the two Christchurch mosques where he carried out his attack.

“I wanted to fix this damage,” Atacocugu said. “Because three years ago, he started that journey with hate.”

SUVA, March 13 (Xinhua) -- Tonga's Prime Minister Siaosi Sovaleni has been in home isolation after testing positive for COVID-19 on Saturday.

Sovaleni, with mild symptoms, will be isolated at home for a period in line with the COVID-19 health protocols in the Pacific island country, Tonga's news website Matangi Tonga Online reported on Sunday, citing a statement issued by the Prime Minister's Office.

Sydney, Mar 7 (AP) Australia's prime minister has described Russia and China's closer relationship as opportunistic rather than strategic.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Monday labelled the alliance an Arc of Autocracy and said Russia and China would prefer a new world order to the one that has been in place since World War II.

Morrison has criticised Beijing's failure to condemn Russia's invasion of Ukraine and China's expansion of trade in Russian wheat while other countries are imposing sanctions.

SYDNEY, Mar 4 (NNN-AGENCIES) – While the shadow of the extreme weather system in Australia’s east coast hasn’t faded away, the damage to Australian animals’ habitats is expected to be considerable.

Dr. Margaret Cook of the University of Sunshine Coast (USC), who specialised in natural disasters, said, although it’s hard to quantify yet, the loss of mounts of animal habitats is considerable.

“We have lost considerable amounts of it. Natural disasters have a huge human cause, but it’s often the animals that bear the biggest impact,” Cook said.

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — Tens of thousands of people had been ordered to evacuate their homes by Tuesday and many more had been told to prepare to flee as parts of Australia’s southeast coast are inundated by the worst flooding in decades that has claimed at least nine lives.

Scores of residents, some with pets, spent hours trapped on their roofs in recent days by a fast-rising river in the town of Lismore in northern New South Wales state.

SYDNEY, Feb 22 (NNN-AGENCIES) – Australian homes, businesses and communities need billions of dollars more in government funding, to cope with worsening extreme weather conditions, according to the nation’s insurance industry.

A report released today by the Insurance Council of Australia (ICA) said, the federal government’s natural disaster funding should be doubled to 200 million Australian dollars (about 143.8 million U.S. dollars) per year, and that the figure should be matched by the nation’s six state and two territory governments, for the next five years.

CANBERRA, Feb. 22 (Xinhua) -- Researchers from Australia's national science agency have developed a technology that could eliminate the need to refrigerate vaccines.

In a study published on Tuesday, the team from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) found that encapsulating live virus vaccines in metal organic frameworks (MOFs) protects their integrity for up to 12 weeks at temperatures as high as 37 degrees Celsius.

Without refrigeration or the MOFs, the vaccines would last only a few days.