Sorted by date Results 26 - 34 of 34
CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — The Australian government on Wednesday launched an urgent investigation into the loss of thousands of classified documents that were sold with two second-hand filing cabinets. The cabinets were sold by a Canberra furniture shop at a discount price because they were locked and no one could find keys, Australian Broadcasting Corp. reported. The ABC has not identified the buyer who removed the locks with a drill and found thousands of Cabinet documents spanning more than a decade and four prime ministers, the most r...
CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — A 14-year-old girl who was the angelic face of an iconic Australian bushmen's hat brand was remembered by hundreds of mourners Friday after her suicide focused attention on the dangers of cyberbullying. The memorial service for Amy "Dolly" Everett was held in the tiny Northern Territory town of Katherine near her family's cattle ranch. Most mourners dressed in her favorite color, blue, and many had driven hundreds of kilometers (miles) from distant ranches. A photograph of a young Dolly, her smiling face framed by s...
CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — Australia's prime minister rushed gay marriage into law on Friday by gaining a final signature on a bill hours after it was overwhelming endorsed by Parliament and as the nation started planning weddings that can take place in a month. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull traveled to Government House where Governor-General Peter Cosgrove signed the bill into law on behalf of Queen Elizabeth II, Australia's constitutional head of state. Cosgrove's signature makes gay marriage legal in Australia from Saturday, when s...
CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — Nearly two-thirds of Australians supported gay marriage in a postal survey that ensures Parliament will consider legalizing same-sex weddings this year, although the form any law would take and its allowances for religious objections sparked immediate debate. The Australian Bureau of Statistics said Wednesday that 62 percent of registered voters who responded in the unprecedented mail survey favored reform. The conservative government promised to allow a bill creating marriage equality to be considered in P...
CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — Australia's prime minister on Friday dismissed an extraordinary letter from North Korea to the Australian Parliament and other countries as a "rant" against President Donald Trump and a sign that Pyongyang was "starting to feel the squeeze" of escalated sanctions. The letter from the North Korean Foreign Affairs Committee, titled "Open Letter to Parliaments of Different Countries," attacked Trump over his speech to the United Nations General Assembly last month in which he threatened to "totally destroy North K...
CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — An Australian state took a step toward allowing voluntary euthanasia on Friday, 20 years after the country repealed the world's first mercy killing law. The Victorian Legislation Assembly passed a euthanasia bill by 47 votes to 37 after a passionate debate lasting almost 26 hours. Voluntary euthanasia will become legal in Australia's second most populous state if the bill is passed by the Parliament's upper chamber on Oct. 31. Australia's sparsely populated Northern Territory in 1995 became the first jurisdiction i...
CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — Australia's government will restrict gas exports from next year in an effort to contain soaring energy prices in the domestic market, the prime minister said Tuesday. Australia is about to overtake Qatar as the world's largest exporter of liquefied natural gas. But most Australians face escalating power bills because state governments have restricted further gas exploration and no new coal-fired power stations are being built to replace aging generators that will soon be decommissioned. Prime Minister Malcolm T...
CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — A 73-year-old Australian fisherman said Monday that he caught a far bigger fish than he hoped for when a 2.7-meter (9-foot) great white shark leapt into his boat, knocking him off his feet. Terry Selwood was left with a badly bruised and bleeding right arm where the airborne shark struck him with a pectoral fin as it landed on him on the deck of the 4.5-meter (15-foot) power boat Saturday off Evans Head, 725 kilometers (450 miles) north of Sydney. Selwood sprung up on the gunnel at the bow of the boat to avoid the t...
CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — A man who squashed a lemon meringue pie into Qantas Airways chief executive Alan Joyce's face during a public address in Australia said Wednesday he was protesting Joyce's advocacy for same-sex marriage. Joyce, a gay, Irish-born 50-year-old, was giving a speech to 500 people in a Perth hotel on Tuesday when Tony Overheu approached from behind, pressed the pie in his face then fled. Overheu, a 67-year-old Christian and former sheep farmer, released a statement accusing Qantas and other companies that support m...
