The federal government appears poised to lift the India travel ban next weekend and restart repatriation flights soon after.
Foreign Minister Marise Payne said leaders fully expect the ban to end on May 15 and the federal cabinet s national security committee spent Thursday afternoon discussing a plan to restart repatriation flights from that date.
Anyone who has been in India in the past 14 days is currently banned from entering Australia and breaches are punishable under the Biosecurity Act by fines of up to $66,000 or five years jail.
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Foreign Minister Marise Payne at a G7 gathering of foreign ministers in London.(High Commissioner for Australia to the UK)
Quest for Covid Vaccine: Dhaka seeks 4m doses from US
Photo courtesy: UNB Staff Correspondent Staff Correspondent
The government has sought immediate delivery of 4 million vaccine doses from the US, Foreign Minister AK Abdul Momen said yesterday. We ve sought immediate release of 4 million doses of vaccine, he told reporters after his meeting with US Ambassador to Bangladesh Earl Miller at his foreign ministry office, reports UNB.
This was the latest government effort to collect vaccines from alternative sources as the stock of Oxford-AstraZeneca jabs is running out fast, making the ongoing countrywide vaccine inoculation uncertain.
Already, the government suspended administration of the first dose on April 26, immediately after the Indian government barred export of Covishield the AstraZeneca vaccine manufactured by Serum Institute of India.
United States’ Secretary of State Antony Blinken, center top, participates in a trilateral meeting with the foreign ministers of Japan Toshimitsu Motegi, third from left at tabel, and South Korea’s foreign minister Chung Eui-yong, second from right at table, on the sidelines of a G7 foreign ministers meeting in London on May 5. (AP Photo)
LONDON Foreign ministers from the Group of Seven wealthy industrialized nations on Wednesday accused China of human rights abuses and economic mischief, but offered little concrete action to deal with an increasingly forceful Beijing.
The top G-7 diplomats meeting in London said they were “deeply concerned” by China’s treatment of the Uyghur Muslim population and other minorities, which includes mass internment in “re-education” camps, forced labor and forced sterilization.
Riyaz Wani
Imran Khan and Narendra Modi
On April 23, Pakistan Army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa met around top 20 journalists in Pakistan for an
Iftaar dinner and discussed the on-going thaw with India in what was said to be in strict confidence. Only that the meeting and much of what was discussed there soon became the talk of the town. There are many things attributed to Bajwa, the drift of which is that trade and economics will guide the future relations with India, not Kashmir and terrorism. At the same time, however, the fresh engagement with India is not unconditional: Bajwa like the civilian government in Pakistan wants India to create “an enabling environment” before talks begin.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, left, attends a news conference with India s Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar following a bilateral meeting in London on May 3. (Pool Photo via AP)
LONDON India’s foreign minister pulled out of in-person meetings at a Group of Seven gathering in London on Wednesday because of possible exposure to the coronavirus.
Diplomats from the G-7 group of wealthy nations are holding their first face-to-face gathering in two years, with social distancing and other measures in place to curb the spread of the virus.
Indian External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar tweeted that he was “made aware yesterday evening of exposure to possible Covid positive cases. As a measure of abundant caution and also out of consideration for others, I decided to conduct my engagements in the virtual mode.”