Oceania News

A woman reads a newspaper containing an advertisement publicising the Australian government's new policy on asylum seekers arriving by boat, in Sydney, Australia, August 2, 2013.

The number of asylum-seekers registering in Indonesia has fallen from around 100 a day to 100 a week in recent months, the UN said Thursday, as Australia implemented hardline policies aimed at deterring boatpeople.

A recent spate of infections from a frequently deadly Middle East virus is raising new worries about efforts to contain the illness, with infectious disease experts urging greater vigilance in combatting its spread.

New Zealand's tax system heavily penalises KiwiSaver while offering massive tax breaks to property investors and needs to change, says savings lobbyist the Financial Services Council.

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and Prince George arrive at Sydney Kingsford Smith Airport on a Royal Australian Air Force aircraft during the tenth day of their official tour to New Zealand and Australia The stunning views from one of Australia's most visited beauty spots left the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge declaring they will return some ... (more)

In a Monday, April 14, 2014 photo provided by the U.S. Navy, operators aboard the Australian defense vessel Ocean Shield move the U.S. Navy's Bluefin-21 autonomous underwater vehicle into position for deployment to search for the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.

Mark Gable, front man for another veteran Australian hard rock group, The Choirboys, and close friend of the Aussie rock stars, told Australia's ABC radio that AC/DC's 61-year-old rhythm guitarist Malcolm Young is seriously ill - so much so that he will never perform live again.

NSW Premier Barry O'Farrell resigns over a bottle of wine. No surprises the internet reacts - and we've hand picked the funniest.

It's "The Lorde Revolution," reads the May cover story of Teen Vogue , squaring the 17-year-old in red plaid, doused in innocence and mystery.

Angus Houston, head of the Joint Agency Coordination Centre leading the search for missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.

Malcom Young is suspected of being in too poor health to continue with AC/DC .. Younger brother Angus Young, left, is also in the iconic rock group.

New Zealand's Prime Minister John Key said Wednesday that a New Zealand man and an Australian man with links to terrorism were killed in November during a drone strike in Yemen.

Stephen Parker, a spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, confirmed the man was a joint citizen of New Zealand and Australia.

New Zealand has a long and ignominious history of suspicion and hostility towards people of Asian descent which - as recent sneering comments about Chinese property investors reveal - has never quite disappeared.

A lock of Napoleon Bonaparte's hair and other "priceless" artefacts linked to the French emperor have been stolen from a museum in Australia, police said Tuesday.

When the Herald reported on the trip to Australia of Prince Charles, Lady Diana and Prince William in April 1983, it was with much the same sentiment that befits the son's visit, 31 years later: ''The main fear here is that the royal couple are going to get loved to death.'

Extra tour dates ... Keith Richards, Ronnie Wood, Mick Jagger and Charlie Watts of The Rolling Stones will perform two more Australian shows.

"It's too early to just make a blanket statement to say industry x needs this and industry y needs that," he told reporters in Cairns on Tuesday.

Public schools in American Samoa fully reopened Monday after some 3,000 students and teachers contracted pink eye, an outbreak that prompted tourism officials to warn cruise passengers heading to the group of islands in the South Pacific.

Prime Minister John Key yesterday accepted there may be merit in gathering more data on foreign ownership of New Zealand housing as Opposition parties continued to criticise his Government for failing to prevent overseas buyers bidding up property prices.