February

The focus of the Special Leaders Retreat will be the COVID-19 pandemic and the appointment of the next Secretary General of the Pacific Islands Forum.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison said regulators were now expected to approve the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine by the end of January.

He announced the plans on Thursday as the cities of Sydney and Melbourne battled to control new clusters.

By March, four million Australians could be vaccinated, he said.

"We are now in a position where believe we will be able to commence vaccinations in mid-to-late February," Mr Morrison said.

Following regulatory approval, the first of the country's order of 10 million Pfizer vaccine doses should be issued in a matter of weeks.

The Independent Consumer & Competition Commission (ICCC) announced the new prices which come into effect today.

Petrol now costs 323.49 (K3.24) toea per litre (tpl) after increasing by 7.08 toea from 316.41 tpl (K3.16).

Diesel is selling for 262 tpl (K2.62) after rising by 6.76 toea from 255.24 tpl (K2.55).

And Kerosene is going for 248.04 tpl (K2.48) following a 3.89 toea increase from 244.15 tpl (K2.44).

The purpose of the visits are to gather relevant information and provide appropriate advice to head teachers, principals and teachers in-charge of elementary, primary high and secondary schools, national high schools, FODE and vocational centres, teachers’ and technical colleges.

“Your presence in the schools, vocational and FODE Centres, technical and teachers colleges is vital because you will be required to collect essential information about individual schools, centres and colleges that you have been assigned to visit during the two weeks,” said Kombra.