Australia & Pacifics

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — New Zealand, which has completely stamped out the coronavirus, plans to cautiously reopen its borders to international travelers early next year, the government said Thursday.

Officials also said they would delay second shots of the Pfizer vaccine in order to speed up first shots to protect more people as the threat of the delta variant grows.

New Zealand’s success in erasing the coronavirus has allowed life to return almost to normal. The South Pacific nation of 5 million people has reported just 26 deaths since the pandemic began.

WELLINGTON, Aug 11 (Reuters) - New Zealand progressed with its plans to make it easier to change a person's sex on their birth certificate on Wednesday as legislation moved through parliament with support from all political parties.

The self-identification bill was introduced to ensure New Zealand has the best process for transgender, non-binary and intersex people to formally acknowledge their gender, the government said in a statement, after the bill had its second reading in parliament on Wednesday.

SYDNEY, Aug 10 (Reuters) - On the sands of Bondi Beach, one of Sydney's wealthiest suburbs, surfers and seaside walkers jostle for space, while joggers clog the nearby promenade and fitness buffs huddle around public exercise equipment.

To the west, where COVID-19 infections are greatest, stores sit shuttered on empty streets as some of Australia's most migrant-heavy neighbourhoods endure heightened lockdowns, enforced by high-visibility policing backed up by the military.

SYDNEY, Aug 9 (NNN-AGENCIES) – As COVID-19 outbreak continued to spread to more areas in the Australian state of New South Wales (NSW), its neighbouring states to the north and south will tighten borders to quash budding cases.

NSW Authorities announced today that Tamworth, a city halfway between Sydney and the border with Queensland, will entre into lockdown for one week from 5:00 p.m. local time. The announcement came following a female visitor tested positive after visiting the area.

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — Australian special envoy and former Prime Minister Tony Abbott said a free trade agreement between his nation and India would signal the “democratic world’s tilt away from China.”

Abbott visited New Delhi last week as Australia’s special trade envoy for India as the Australian government gives priority to sealing a bilateral trade deal.

In an opinion piece likely to anger Beijing that that was published in The Australian newspaper on Monday, Abbott said the “answer to almost every question about China is India.”

MELBOURNE, Aug 7 (Reuters) - Australia saw a record daily number of new coronavirus cases this year on Saturday, with the country's most populous states of New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland recording a total of 361 cases of the highly infectious Delta variant.

With about 15 million people in the three states, or 60% of Australia's population, under a strict lockdown, the country also reported five coronavirus-related deaths, one of the highest this year.

CANBERRA, Aug. 6 (Xinhua) -- Scientists from Australian National University (ANU) have first captured the moments of the exploding death of a star.

In a study published on Thursday, the team from ANU collaborated with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and a host of international researchers to observe the earliest moments of a supernova in unprecedented detail.

The team discovered that the supernova was captured from beginning to end by NASA's now-defunct Kepler space telescope in 2017.

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — Google co-founder Larry Page has gained New Zealand residency, officials confirmed Friday, stoking debate over whether extremely wealthy people can essentially buy access to the South Pacific country.

Immigration New Zealand said Page first applied for residency in November under a special visa open to people with at least 10 million New Zealand dollars ($7 million) to invest.

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — Australia’s government on Thursday pledged 1.1 billion Australian dollars ($813 million) to address Indigenous disadvantage, including compensation to thousands of mixed-race children who were taken from their families over decades.

The AU$378.6 million ($279.7 million) to be used to compensate the so-called Stolen Generations by 2026 is the most expensive component of the package aimed at boosting Indigenous living standards in Australia.

MELBOURNE, Aug 1 (Reuters) - New Zealand's Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern issued a sombre state apology on Sunday to the Pacific community for racially targeted immigration raids in the 1970s that resulted in deportations and prosecutions.

The "Dawn Raids", which often occurred early in the morning, took place from 1974 to 1976 when New Zealand's economy was in a downturn and the government clamped down on immigrant workers from the Pacific who overstayed their work visas.