Australia banned flights from nine southern African countries on Saturday, tightening its borders to prevent the entry of the new Covid-19 Omicron variant. Non-Australians who visited South Africa, Zimbabwe and several other nations in the past fortnight will also be barred from Australia, Heath Minister Greg Hunt said. Citizens and[…]
Australian authorities were preparing to evacuate thousands of more people on Monday from flood-affected suburbs on the western fringes of Sydney, the country’s biggest city, with another day of heavy rain triggering the worst floods in 60 years. Rivers across the state of New South Wales (NSW) have burst their[…]
Eco-activist group Extinction Rebellion (XR) are holding a global day of “civil disobedience” with disruptive actions underway and causing chaos and outrage in major cities around the world. Protesters in Berlin gathered at the Victory Column near the Brandenburg Gate Monday morning. In a tweet, XR said “1000 rebels are[…]
Three people have been shot and hostages may have been taken at a factory on the outskirts of Sydney, Australian police said on Monday, although it was not immediately clear what had sparked the incident. A spokeswoman for the New South Wales state police said authorities believed three people had[…]
Tens of thousands of Fijians remain homeless and living in evacuation shelters in the aftermath of a devastating cyclone at the weekend, officials said on Thursday, as aid began trickling in to the outer reaches of the South Pacific archipelago. The death toll from Cyclone Winston, the worst storm ever[…]
Two men were arrested as part of an ongoing counterterrorism investigation into a group that officials have accused of plotting to kill a random member of the public in Sydney, police said Wednesday, one day after the nation’s prime minister warned of heightened terrorist chatter in the aftermath of a[…]
As the body of Sydney gunman remains in the morgue awaiting autopsy, leaders of the Australian Muslim community have abstained from claiming the dead body to offer it a funeral, with the city’s officials said that a “destitute funeral” will be the only solution left. “We don’t care about him,[…]
Australia’s prime minister acknowledged Wednesday that the nation’s security system failed to keep track of a gunman responsible for a deadly siege at a Sydney cafe, and promised a transparent investigation into why the man was not on any terror watch list despite having a long criminal history. Man Haron[…]
The deadly siege began in the most incongruous of ways, on a sunny Monday morning inside a cheerful cafe in the heart of Australia’s largest city. An Iranian-born gunman burst in, took 17 people hostage, and forced some to hold a flag with an Islamic declaration of faith above the[…]
A gunman holding about 15 hostages in a Sydney cafe is a fringe radical with a criminal record, news reports say. The 49-year-old named Man Haron Monis came to Australia as a refugee from Iran in 1996, The Australian newspaper reports. The man reportedly came to police attention after he[…]
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