Australia to ease international border restrictions from November
Canberra/Sydney, AustraliaReuters Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Friday announced an 18-month ban on Australians travelling abroad will be lifted from next month, easing one of the toughest COVID-19 restrictions imposed globally. Reopening the international border for citizens and permanent residents will be linked to the establishment of home quarantine in Australia’s eight states and […]
Facing an uncertain future: Christian travel agents in “holding pattern” as COVID-19 keeps Australia isolated
With borders closed and people periodically entering lockdowns around the globe, PETA MCCARTNEY reports on how Australian Christian travel organisations have weathered the COVID-19 pandemic…
Britain faces isolation as world tightens borders to keep out new coronavirus strain
Dover, EnglandReuters Countries across the globe shut their borders to Britain on Monday due to fears about a highly infectious new coronavirus strain, causing travel chaos and raising the prospect of food shortages days before Britain is set to leave the European Union. India, Pakistan, Poland, Spain, Switzerland, Sweden, Russia, Jordan and Hong Kong suspended […]
Australia’s coronavirus death toll surges on aged care fatalities; NZ measures to continue
Melbourne/Sydney, AustraliaReuters An Australian state reported a record 59 deaths on Friday, the highest ever daily total for the country, including previously unrecorded fatalities in aged care homes over the past several weeks. The increase fatalities in Victoria state pushed the country’s death toll to 737 as the national cabinet – made up of Prime […]
Second COVID-19 wave forces new travel curbs around the globe; WHO says travel bans cannot be indefinite
Sydney, Australia/London, UKReuters Nations in Asia imposed new restrictions on Monday, while an abrupt British quarantine on travellers from Spain threw Europe’s summer reopening into disarray, as the world confronted the prospect of a second wave of COVID-19 infections. In the United States, still dealing with its first wave as infection rates have climbed since […]
Coronavirus pandemic is pushing up the price of illegal drugs, UN says
Vienna, AustriaReuters Coronavirus-related border controls, lockdowns and flight shortages are making illegal drugs more expensive and difficult to obtain around the world, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime said in a report published on Thursday. The pandemic is having a mixed effect on drug production in different regions and on smuggling by air, […]
Hungry, stranded and broke: Coronavirus travel bans hit migrant workers
Kathmandu, Nepal/Dhaka, BangladeshThomson Reuters Foundation Dinesh Bhandari spent two days travelling by bus from his village in rural Nepal to Kathmandu to get a permit to take up the factory job he had been promised in Malaysia. When he reached the Nepali capital, he found the door to the recruitment agency was locked. A note […]
Coronavirus causes historic market drop, global scramble to contain “invisible enemy”
Reuters Coronavirus fears led to a historic drop in US stocks, shut borders and disrupted daily life around the world, as governments took increasingly drastic measures to try to reduce the severity of the global outbreak. Financial markets had their worst day in 30 years despite emergency action by global central banks to try to […]