Australia says it is planning to impose tougher sanctions on Russia after Moscow announced food bans that will affect Australian food makers. “We are working towards stronger sanctions” against Russia, Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said on Friday. Abbott also warned Russia’s President Vladimir Putin to pull back Russian troops from the country’s border with Ukraine. “I say... 

The Australian government is pushing to implement a ”surveillance tax” on the people of the country in order to pay for a mandate that would see communications companies retaining data on customers for two years. In a disturbing development that should serve as a warning to Americans, the Australian Attorney-General admitted that the surveillance system is ”under active consideration by the... 

Speaking at a gathering in Sydney to celebrate the 50th anniversary of “The Australian”, a newspaper that Rupert Murdoch owns, he told Australians they must welcome immigrants. “We must be open to immigrants, to their desire to improve themselves and to the resulting improvement in our country,” Murdoch told the crowd, of which Australia Prime Minister, Tony Abbott was a guest. “It is in... 

New figures show that Australia’s unemployment rate relapsed to a decade-high of six percent in June. Data released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) on Thursday showed a 0.1-percentage-point increase in the unemployment rate in June, matching the highest since July 2003. This is while economists had expected the jobless rate to stay at the revised rate of 5.9 percent in May, up from... 

A bright object that dazzled in the sky over Australia left people confused. Social media was abuzz with the pictures of the mystery fireball, with users claiming it was either a plane crashing into the ocean or a ‘meteor.’ A round object with a burning tail was spotted in the sky over Victoria, NSW, Tasmania and South Australia at about 9:45pm local time on Thursday night. Airservices Australia... 

A Filipino mother-of-two was killed while talking on a phone that was plugged into a faulty charger. The incident has been called a “wake-up call” by authorities who warned against the use of knock-offs as they pose a serious risk of electrocution. Sheryl Aldeguer, 28, who had come to North Gosford, Australia to work as a nurse, was found dead in her apartment on April 23. Authorities have now... 

Australian Immigration Minister Scott Morrison Australia says it is set to introduce tougher reforms in the case of the country’s asylum-seeker policy, placing more pressure on refugees to prove their claims. According to Migration Amendment (Protection and Other Measures) Bill 2014, introduced by Australian Immigration Minister Scott Morrison, visas may be denied to those who fail to present... 

The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is hoping to recruit Muslims from across the globe with the aid of YouTube appeals from English-speaking jihadists. UK, Australian nationals are among the ISIS militants calling to support the insurgency in Iraq. Titled “There Is No Life Without Jihad,” the new propaganda clip uploaded to YouTube by ISIS’s AlHayat Media Center allegedly shows a line-up... 

Do you have a bank account that you don’t actively use or a safe deposit box that you have not checked on for a while? If so, you might want to see if the government has grabbed your money. This sounds absolutely crazy, but it is true. All over the world, governments are shortening the time periods required before they can seize “dormant bank accounts” and “unclaimed property”. For example,... 

The search for alien life may have received an important boost from scientists who have designed a new tool that can more effectively detect methane on other planets. Since living things produce the vast majority of the methane found on Earth, detecting the chemical compound on other planets would be the clearest, possibly easiest way to pinpoint worlds hospitable to extraterrestrial life. With the... 

Australia’s University of Western Sydney and Beijing University of Chinese Medicine recently conducted a large retrospective review of thousands of studies and “hundreds of thousands of cancer patients” which proved that Chinese herbal medicine is indeed a viable treatment for almost all cancers. The researchers intensely scrutinized lung, liver, stomach, breast, esophageal, colorectal and nasopharyngeal... 

Australia’s biggest defense expenditure ever of USD 15 billion to be used for purchasing 72 US F-35 fighter jets has triggered a debate, with some saying that the planes are not worth the high costs, local press reports say. Australia has committed to purchasing the F-35 combat aircraft from the US, which itself is spending 1 trillion dollars on the biggest defense program in its history. However,... 

Flights across Australia have been affected by a vast ash cloud from a volcanic eruption in neighboring Indonesia. According to reports, the majority of flights in and out of the city of Darwin in northern Australia were cancelled on Saturday due to the volcanic eruption. Hundreds of passengers have been stranded at Darwin International Airport and it is not clear when the flights will resume. Australian... 

A solar eclipse that occurs on average only once every 73 years may be perfectly witnessed only by penguins in Antarctica, while watchers in Australia had a shot at seeing the sun as a “super-fat banana”. The crescent sun, an annular eclipse meaning that the moon is too far away to completely block out the sun, instead creating a perfect ‘ring of fire’ could be witnessed in Perth, Australia,... 

More than five weeks after the disappearance of a Malaysian airliner the Kuala Lumpur government says it is going to launch an international expert panel to probe the plane’s mystery. Malaysian Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said on Thursday that the Malaysian cabinet would discuss forming the panel to look into the incident. “We are forming a panel of inquiry consisting of experts from...