Oceania

By Kirsty Needham and Praveen Menon Tongans queued for limited money services that were restored in the Pacific island’s capital on Saturday, as the clean-up continued a week after ...

Scientists have discovered a pristine, 3-km (1.8-mile) long reef of giant rose-shaped corals off the coast of Tahiti, in waters thought to be deep enough to protect it from the ...

An Australian court said on Thursday it dismissed tennis superstar Novak Djokovic’s challenge to his visa cancellation as the minister who revoked it reasonably believed Djokovic, who is not ...

Telephone links between Tonga and the wider world began to be reconnected on Wednesday, though restoring full internet connectivity is likely to take a month or more according to the ...

Two New Zealand navy vessels will arrive in Tonga on Friday carrying critical water supplies for the Pacific island nation reeling from a volcanic eruption and tsunami and largely cut ...

Australian COVID-19 cases soared to a pandemic record on Tuesday as the Omicron variant ripped through most of the country, driving up hospitalisation rates as the once-formidable testing regime buckled ...

Australia on Thursday narrowed its definition of close contacts of coronavirus cases and relaxed requirements for COVID-19 tests, as daily cases topped 20,000 for the first time in the pandemic, in ...

Australia will seek to make urgent changes to COVID-19 testing rules to ease pressure on test sites as infections surged and the country’s most populous state reported a near ...

Australia reported its first confirmed death from the new Omicron variant of COVID-19 on Monday amid another surge in daily infections, but the authorities refrained from imposing new restrictions saying ...

Australia on Friday narrowed the wait time for people to receive Covid-19 booster shots as another record jump in daily infections resulted in cancelled flights and sent Christmas travel plans ...

New Zealand authorities on Monday said they had linked a 26-year-old man’s death to Pfizer Inc’s COVID-19 vaccine after the person suffered myocarditis, a rare inflammation of the ...

By Sonali Paul An 11-year-old boy died on Sunday from a jumping castle accident four days ago in Australia’s island state Tasmania, taking the death toll from the tragedy ...

A fire swept through a psychiatry clinic in the Japanese city of Osaka on Friday, with 27 people feared dead and police reported to be investigating possible arson. The blaze broke ...

Four children were killed and several more badly injured in Australia after strong winds lifted an inflated jumping castle into the air during end-of-year school celebrations, causing them to fall 10 ...

New Zealand plans to ban young people from ever buying cigarettes in their lifetime in one of the world’s toughest crackdowns on the tobacco industry, arguing that other efforts ...

Japan, the world’s third-biggest economy, will close its borders to all foreigners, while Australia’s plans to re-open to skilled migrants were also in doubt as nations scrambled on ...

The Omicron coronavirus variant kept spreading around the world on Sunday, with 13 cases found in the Netherlands and two each in Denmark and Australia even as more countries imposed travel ...

A night curfew will be re-imposed in the Solomon Islands capital Honiara after witnesses said Australian police began taking control of hotspots following three days of violent protests in the ...

Unvaccinated people are 16 times more likely to end up in intensive care units or die from Covid -19, Australia‘s New South Wales state said in a report, with officials ...

New Zealand beefed up security measures at its parliament on Tuesday as thousands of people gathered to protest against COVID-19 vaccine mandates and government lockdowns aimed at controlling the pandemic. ...

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 ...

New Zealand’s 206 new daily community infections on Saturday carried it past the double-hundred mark for the first time during the coronavirus pandemic, as the nation scrambles to vaccinate its ...

Australian police charged a 36-year-old man on Thursday with abducting a four-year-old girl from an outback campsite 18 days before she was found safe in a locked house. The man was ...

A 4-year-old girl who went missing from an Australian outback campsite more than two weeks ago has been returned safely to her parents after she was rescued by police from ...