The Prime Minister has cut short her overseas trip after the deaths of five Australians in Afghanistan. Julia Gillard will be briefed today on the hunt for the rogue Afghan who shot dead three soldiers and injured two others. In a separate incident,...
Indonesian authorities have abandoned a search for a boatload of asylum seekers. After rescue helicopters failed to find any sign of them. Australian authorities received a distress call early this morning, saying the boat was sinking in Indonesia's...
Another region of the Spain is asking the government for a bailout. Catalonia says it needs a loan of more than 6 billion dollars. It's the third region to ask for financial help. Spain's regional governments are struggling to fund basic services as...
A woman has died in a house fire in Geelong, west of Melbourne. Another woman has severe burns, and is fighting for her life in hospital. Firefighters were called to the house around 9:30 last night after neighbors reported smelling smoke. The body o...
Syrian activists are accusing the government of yet another massacre. They say more than 200 bodies have been found in a town near the capital Damascus. Activists say they've been executed. Syrian state TV is reporting the town has been cleansed of t...
Some analysts believe Fairfax Media is now at risk of a private equity bid after its shares plunged to a new low. The share price tumble comes after an unsuccessful bid by the company's biggest shareholder Gina Rinehart to offload more of her stake....
A low and / cold front are creating strong winds. Showers and Alpine snow over Victoria and Tasmania. There are isolated showers over coastal Queensland because of the trough. A large belt of high pressure is keeping the rest of the country cool and...
A huge police search continues for a young woman abducted at gunpoint from a refuge in Darwin. Monique Edmundson was taken on Wednesday after two men forced their way in and fired several shots. Now, police believe one of them is her former partner J...
A political stoush has erupted over BHP Billiton's decision to delay the expansion of the Olympic Dam mine. The company has shelved the 30 billion dollar project because of weak commodity prices and high capital costs. But the Opposition leader Tony...
And the ratings agency StandardPoor's is warning the odds of the United States slipping back into recession are on the rise. It says there is a 25 per cent chance of another recession in the United States. In February, it said the odds of a double-di...
Federal Labour has made up more ground in the latest Newspoll. Its primary vote is up 2 per cent to 35 per cent. Now that's on top of a 5 per cent jump in the previous poll, but Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott remain equally unpopular with voters. The...
Julian Assange is calling on the United States to end its witch hunt against Wikileaks. The Wikileaks founder has made his first public statement since taking refuge in Ecuador's embassy in London two months ago. He's also called for the release of B...
Facebook shares have fallen to 19 US dollars a share overnight. It follows the expiry of a ban that has prevented some investors from dumping millions of shares in the social networking leader. The fall marks another low point in the continuing run o...
A deep Tasman low is sending strong cold winds through Victoria and New South Wales, causing showers and Alpine snow. A frontier is drawing a coolest southwest change into southern Queensland. Around the states. In Queensland, isolated showers over p...
Britain remains in a diplomatic row with Ecuador over the fate of the Wikileaks' founder Julia Assange. Ecuador has granted him political asylum, but Britain says it's obliged to hand him over to Sweden. The British Foreign Office insists it does hav...