Western Australia

Workers at two of Chevron's major natural gas plants in Australia are set to go on strike next week, the U.S. energy giant said yesterday, threatening up to five percent of global LNG supplies.

The last of nearly 100 whales that beached on the southwestern Australian coast were euthanized on July 26 after a second day of frantic, but unsuccessful efforts to rescue them, authorities said.

The pod of long-finned pilot whales stranded themselves on July 25 on Cheynes Beach east of the former whaling station of Albany in Western Australia state, south of the capital Perth.

A mining corporation on Sunday apologized for losing a highly radioactive capsule over a 1,400-kilometer stretch of Western Australia, as authorities combed parts of the road looking for the tiny but dangerous substance.

The capsule was part of a device believed to have fallen off a truck while being transported between a desert mine site and the city of Perth on Jan. 10.

Researchers are scouring Australia's desert outback to document ancient Aboriginal carvings on massive baobab trees, warning Wednesday that the recently discovered artwork could soon be lost forever.

Scientists have discovered the world's largest plant off the Australia coast _ a seagrass meadow that has grown by repeatedly cloning itself.

Genetic analysis has revealed that the underwater fields of waving green seagrass are a single organism covering 180 square kilometers through making copies of itself over 4,500 years.

At the same time, the most populous New South Wales today records the highest number of deaths since the outburst of the pandemic.
In New South Wales, 49 people died in the last 24 hours, including one child, while in Victoria, 20 patients died from the effects of COVID-19, Reuters reports.

Australian doctors on Sept. 2 warned the country's hospitals are not ready to cope with the government's reopening plans, even with higher vaccination rates, as some states prepare to move from a virus suppression strategy to living with COVID-19.   

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Australian authorities have been forced to introduce a lockdown in Sydney due to the new epidemic wave and reintroduce restrictive measures in other parts of the country.
Reuters report states that 18 out of a total of 25 million Australians, or 70 percent of the population, are under some form of anti-epidemic restrictions in almost all parts of Australia.

New Zealand suspended quarantine-free travel with Australia's Victoria state over a new coronavirus cluster on May 25, the fourth time the trans-Tasman travel bubble has been disrupted since it opened last month.

Tens of thousands of homes and businesses lost power, buildings were battered and trees were uprooted as a vast stretch of the west Australian coast was whipped by a severe storm on May 25 for the second straight day.