Two men from GD Pork pleaded guilty in WA to breaching biosecurity laws to gain ‘unfair’ breeding advantage
Two pig farmers in Western Australia will be jailed after being convicted of illegally importing Danish pig semen concealed in shampoo bottles.
Torben Soerensen has been sentenced to three years in prison, while Henning Laue faces a two-year sentence after pleading guilty to breaching quarantine and biosecurity laws.
Continue reading... Police say 21-year-old suspect from western Sydney was carrying information on extremist ideologies when arrested
A man who allegedly stabbed a woman to death in Sydney’s central business district before attacking others on a busy city street with a butcher’s knife was arrested carrying information about terrorist attacks and extremist ideologies on a USB drive.
But police say the man did not have any known links to terror groups, and that he acted alone. The attacks are not being treated as a terrorist attack, the New South Wales police commissioner, Mick Fuller, said on Tuesday night.
Continue reading...The trade minister, Simon Birmingham, has released a list of food products the EU wants protected as ‘geographical indicators’
Australia is gearing up for a fight with the European Union over the naming of hundreds of products including feta, gruyere and scotch beef as negotiations continue over an “ambitious” free trade agreement.
The trade minister, Simon Birmingham, has released a list of names the EU wants protected as part of the new trade deal – known as “geographical indications” or GIs – which are aimed at protecting European products.
Continue reading...Panellists debate whether Australia ‘turning a blind eye’ to China’s rising power
As demonstrators shut down Hong Kong’s airport on Monday in protest against police brutality, Chinese official said “terrorism” was emerging in the city.
Meanwhile, on the ABC’s Q&A program, the “people’s panellist” guest suggested he shared China’s view, prompting one of the more cautious political discussions ever held on the show.
Continue reading...Kam McLeod and Bryer Schmegelsky were wanted over the killing of three people and the subject of a weeks-long manhunt across Canada
Canadian police say they believe two fugitives suspected of killing an American woman and her Australian boyfriend as well as another man died in what appears to be suicides.
The Manitoba Medical Examiner completed the autopsies and confirmed on Monday that the bodies found last week were indeed 19-year-old Kam McLeod and 18-year-old Bryer Schmegelsky. Both were found in dense bush in northern Manitoba.
Continue reading...Couch surfing 50-year-old says welfare agency told her she wasn’t in financial hardship
A Melbourne woman battling homelessness says her entire $3,500 tax return was swiped by Centrelink last month, despite the fact she disputes the alleged robodebt.
But when Sue Prgic, 50, complained to the agency that the money had been taken without her knowledge, she said staff had asked to know what she would do with the cash if it were returned.
Continue reading...Frank Bainimarama appeals to larger neighbour to ‘more fully appreciate’ climate risks and reduce carbon emissions
The prime minister of Fiji has warned Australia to reduce its coal emissions and do more to combat climate change as regional leaders prepare to gather in Tuvalu ahead of the Pacific Islands Forum this week.
Speaking in Tuvalu at a climate change conference ahead of the forum on Monday, Frank Bainimarama appealed directly to Australia to transition away from coal-powered energy and asked its government “to more fully appreciate” the “existential threat” facing Pacific nations.
Continue reading...Judges call Kurdish Iranian writer and refugee’s memoir an ‘astonishing act of witness’
The Kurdish Iranian writer Behrouz Boochani has continued his sweep of the Australian literary prize landscape, winning the $25,000 National Biography award on Monday – yet another award the refugee was unable to accept in person, as he enters his sixth year of detention on Manus Island.
Boochani’s autobiography No Friend but the Mountains tells of his journey from Indonesia to Australia by boat, and his subsequent imprisonment on Manus Island by the Australian government, which continues to refuse him entry.
Continue reading...Climate crisis is more than a meeting agenda item in a host country that could be left uninhabitable by rising sea levels
As the leaders of Pacific countries step off their planes at Funafuti airport this week for the Pacific Islands Forum, they are being met by the children of Tuvalu, who sit submerged in water, in a moat built around the model of an island, singing: “Save Tuvalu, save the world.”
The welcome sets the tone for a Pacific Islands Forum meeting that will not only have climate change at the top of the agenda – as it has been for many years – but is being hosted by a country that the UN says is one of the most vulnerable to rising sea levels, which could render it uninhabitable in the coming century.
Continue reading...NSW government wants to be ready to increase water supply if the drought worsens
The New South Wales government has begun preliminary planning to boost output at Sydney’s desalination plant, in a bid to secure the city’s water supply as dam levels continue to drop.
The Kurnell plant, which can currently supply drinking water for up to 1.5 million people in Sydney, returned to operation in January for the second time since 2012.
Continue reading...Plea agreement means Negar Ghodskani, whom Iran offered to swap for Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, faces five years’ jail and $369,000 fine
An Iranian mother at the centre of a legal and political tussle between Australia, Britain, the US and Iran has pleaded guilty in a Minneapolis court to being part of a conspiracy to evade US sanctions and “illegally export controlled technology”.
Negar Ghodskani, 40, was pregnant when arrested on a US warrant in Australia in 2017.
Continue reading...Strong and gusty winds to bite parts of New South Wales as frosty temperatures sweep Victoria
Wild weather conditions are predicted to lash parts of New South Wales on Sunday afternoon, with conditions in Victoria expected to remain icy as the state is swept by another cold front.
The Bureau of Meteorology forecast weather conditions in NSW would ease on Sunday morning before picking up again with strong and gusty winds in many areas of the state for the rest of the day.
Continue reading...The defining battle of the Vietnam war is now the subject of the film Danger Close. Harry Smith recalls the afternoon that changed his life
If he dwells on it, Lt Col Harry Smith can still see, vividly, the blood on the trees on the enemy’s escape path. There was so much blood. In the days after the three savage hours that was the battle of Long Tan, his soldiers were finding body parts, carnage and corpses spread across the battlefield. But it was that blood, “the blood of all the others that were dragged away, wounded, suffering”, that affects him the most. “That worries me more than a dead body.” In the eerie silence, in the pervasive gloom, among the smell of the dead in the Long Tan rubber plantation, latex ran down trees punctured by bullets and mingled with the blood.
Long Tan had been a battle fought against almost impossible odds. A ferocious battle, a defining action of the Vietnam war. On the afternoon of 18 August 1966, a single infantry company of 108 mostly inexperienced Australian and New Zealand soldiers engaged with a regiment of 2,500 battle-hardened Viet Cong and North Vietnam army troops. Almost surrounded, outnumbered 10 to one, they withstood Viet Cong attacks in cyclonic rain.
Continue reading...Victorian justice department says prisoners are not allowed to post on social media or ask others to post on their behalf
Authorities are investigating whether a letter circulating online, apparently written by disgraced Cardinal George Pell to supporters breaks prison rules.
The letter, dated 1 August, was posted on Twitter by an account called “Cardinal George Pell Supporters” on Friday night.
Continue reading...Delays at Melbourne and Sydney airports, Frankston pier ripped from its moorings and snow at the AFL as polar blast strikes
Icy winds up to 120km/h, snow, wild surf and rain continued to lash South Australia, Victoria and parts of New South Waleson Friday, and snow fell at the AFL in Canberra.
The “strongest weather system this winter” to hit south-east Australia has continued its path of carnage across the country, grounding flights in Sydney and Melbourne, and leading to hundreds of calls to the State Emergency Service across all three states.
Continue reading...Bill passes lower house of New South Wales parliament after lengthy debate
An NSW bill to decriminalise abortion has passed its first hurdle after a lengthy and passionate debate in the lower house.
However, proponents of the Reproductive Health Care Reform Bill 2019 face further hurdles as it now goes to the upper house for consideration.
Continue reading...Melbourne gangland widow freed on bail after being charged with kidnapping and death threat
Gangland widow Roberta Williams has been given bail by a Melbourne court after allegedly kidnapping and threatening to kill a television producer making a show about her life.
The 50-year-old widow of convicted killer Carl Williams, who was killed in prison in 2010, is one of four people charged with assaulting and threatening to kill producer Ryan Naumenko at Collingwood on 9 July.
Continue reading...Convicted drugs supplier David James Jackson left Queensland armed with crossbow
A British fugitive who made it across the Torres Strait on a jetski trying to flee a drugs supply charge in Australia has been sentenced for the audacious escape attempt.
Armed with a crossbow and supplies for the 90-mile journey, David James Jackson, 57, took off from the tip of Queensland and made it to Papua New Guinean waters.
Continue reading...The find in northern Manitoba during search for Kam McLeod and Bryer Schmeglsky follows discovery of a rowing boat
Canadian police have found “several items directly linked” to two teenage boys suspected in the killings of an Australian man, his American girlfriend and a Canadian university lecturer.
The pair, Kam McLeod, 19, and Bryer Schmegelsky, 18, both from Port Alberni, British Columbia, have been on the run for nearly three weeks with no confirmed sightings since 22 July.
Continue reading...Minister says archipelago in grave situation through no fault of its own as he unveils plan for net zero emissions and village relocation
Fiji will introduce one of the world’s most ambitious legislative programs to tackle the climate crisis, and has labelled the global community’s decision to set aside the call for global heating to be capped at 1.5C “grossly irresponsible and selfish”.
In a speech to the Fijian parliament on Wednesday morning announcing the upcoming climate change act, Fiji’s attorney general and minister for economy and climate change, Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum, called global heating “a fight for our lives and our livelihoods”.
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