Posing Naked for Penthouse, Primary School Teacher Suspended

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Stay married and save the planet

Tue, Feb 24 CANBERRA (Reuters) - Staying married is better for the planet because divorce leads the newly single to live more wasteful lifestyles, an Australian lawmaker said Tuesday.

Senator Steve Fielding told a Senate hearing in the Australian capital Canberra that divorce only made climate change worse.

When couples separated, they needed more rooms, more electricity and more water. This increased their carbon footprint, Australian Associated Press (AAP) quoted Fielding as telling the hearing on environmental issues.

"We understand that there is a social problem (with divorce), but now we're seeing there is also environmental impact as well on the footprint," AAP quoted him as saying.

Such a "resource-inefficient lifestyle" meant it would be better for the planet if couples stayed married, he said.

During the hearing, the senator read out quotes from a U.S. report that advocated his stance.

Fielding, who leads the independent Family First party, grew up in a family of 16 children and has been married for 22 years, his website says.

(Reporting by James Grubel; Editing by David Fogarty and Paul Tait)

Two Burmese survive month at sea in an ice box

Jan 20, 2009 9:1PM UTC

By Rob Taylor

CANBERRA (Reuters) - Two Myanmar fishermen have survived for almost a month in shark-infested waters by floating in a large ice box after their boat sank, rescue officials said.

The men, both aged in their 20s, were on a 12-meter Thai fishing boat with 18 others when it sank in heavy seas off Australia's north coast on December 23, said Australian Maritime Safety Authority spokeswoman Tracy Jiggins.

"They had no safety equipment, no beacons, no means of communication and they'd been drifting for 25 days," Jiggins told Reuters Tuesday, describing the ice box as "desk sized."

"For them to have even been spotted in a huge body of water is amazing," she said.

The men were spotted by an Australian coastal patrol aircraft Saturday. The pair were winched onto a rescue helicopter and taken to hospital Thursday Island, off Australia's far north.

Hospital officials said the pair were hungry and dehydrated after drifting 25 days at sea during the monsoon season and recent cyclonic storms in the region, but they were recovering well and had already been released.

The pair would now be questioned by immigration officials and police, who had not yet determined how the pair survived and what they did for food and water.

Jiggins said the others on board the boat would certainly have perished and no search for other survivors was planned.

"The information they provided to us was that they witnessed other crew members in the water, none of whom had any flotation device, so we've done an assessment and we don't believe anybody would be able to survive 25 days actually in the water," she said.

It was also unclear where the Thai-based fishing boat, crewed by Thais and a handful of people from Myanmar, sank and how far the pair had drifted before they were picked up 60 nautical miles northwest of Horn Island.

"It would be difficult to determine where that search should be. That's a huge amount of water they could have covered, and we have notified search and rescue officials in Indonesia," Jiggins said.

Australia has one of the longest coastlines in the world and the country's search-and-rescue patrol zone covers a tenth of the world's surface, or 53 million square kilometres (20 million square miles) of the Indian, Pacific and Southern Oceans.

The Torres Strait, between Australia and Papua New Guinea, is infested by sharks and the area is regularly fished by both licensed and illegal fishing vessels, many from Asia.

(Editing by Mark Bendeich)

Policeman attacked using own patrol car

p>Policeman attacked using own patrol car

Wednesday, Jan 07, 2009 2:33PM UTC

CANBERRA (Reuters) - An Australian outback policeman was pelted with rocks and beer bottles and his stolen patrol car was used to try and run him down, police said Wednesday.

The officer was attacked by five people Tuesday night at an Aboriginal camp near the desert town of Alice Springs.

The attackers tried to run him down several times with the stolen car before they fled, dumping the vehicle 190 km (120 miles) away. Police condemned the assault as "drunken, cowardly and brutal."

"This incident is an outrage," Northern Territory Police Commander Bert Hofer said in a statement, adding the officer had shown remarkable restraint not to use his gun in response.

"Every day police officers do their best to protect the community and often it's a difficult and dangerous job. But to have this sort of cowardly assault on a lone police officer by a group of people is completely intolerable," Hofer said.

Alice Springs, a base for tourists visiting Australia's outback, has seen a surge in violence in recent months, much of it blamed on local indigenous youths.

The town's mayor last month demanded the riot squad be brought from Darwin, 1,500 km (930 miles) away, in a bid to end lawlessness blamed on chronic joblessness, boredom and easy access to alcohol.

Police said one of the attackers, a woman, was arrested after she was found in the police vehicle. Two men and two other women were arrested Wednesday and were to be charged with assault.

(Reporting by Rob Taylor; Editing by Paul Tait)

Police seek blow-up doll sex bandit

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Police seek blow-up doll sex bandit

Wednesday, Jan 07, 2009 5:23PM UTC

SYDNEY (Reuters) - An Australian man broke into three adult shops, had sex with blow up dolls named "Jungle Jane" and then dumped his plastic conquests in a nearby alley, local media reported Wednesday.

"It's totally bizarre. It's a real concern that someone like that is out on the street," said one of the owners of the adult sex shops in Cairns in northern Queensland state.

"He has been taking the dolls out the back and blowing them up and using the dolls and leaving them in the alley," the owner, who gave the name of Vogue, told the Cairns Post newspaper.

Police told the Cairns Post that scientific officers had taken DNA samples, fingerprints and pictures of the crime scene.

(Reporting by Pauline Askin, Editing by Dean Yates)

Australian republic and Aborigines summit

This articles from reuters.com

Australian republic and Aborigines top mind summit

Sunday, Apr 20, 2008 By Rob Taylor and James Grubel

CANBERRA (Reuters) - A "Healing Fund" and constitutional recognition of Aborigines, and a push for Australia to sever ties with Britain's monarchy, led ideas on Sunday from a summit of the country's top 1,000 minds.

Sustained applause met calls for a vote on making Australia a republic before 2020, while economic heavyweights, including BHP-Billiton mining chief Marius Kloppers, demanded Australians be fifth on the list of the world's richest citizens in a decade.

"This has been a very Australian gathering," said Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to a standing ovation at the close of a two-day brainstorming meeting charged with finding "big ideas" to improve the country's future by 2020.

"It's been characterised by a whole lot of good humour, a whole lot of mutual respect, and a whole lot of very classical, undeniable Australian directness," Rudd said.

Hollywood actors including Oscar-winner Cate Blanchett, who brought her week-old newborn son, and Hugh Jackman joined scientists, artists, central bankers, industrialists and environmentalists for the power summit at parliament.

Priority ideas, which Rudd's centre-left government will take up or reject by the end of the year, included speeding infrastructure construction to support the country's China-led resource boom and keep economic growth humming at 3.9 percent.

Other ideas included levies on junk food to make the country healthier, designing a bionic eye, and having corporate-backed schools with mandatory arts and creativity classes.

"By 2020, we want to be celebrating the fact that creativity is central to sustaining and defining the nation," said a black-clad Blanchett, handing Rudd a folder of "homework" ideas.

Following a recent Rudd apology for decades of past injustices, Aboriginal leaders called for a formal treaty with white Australians and closure of a 17-year life expectancy divide between indigenous people and the rest of the nation.

"We want to close the gap in all the areas that keep us back and hold us back in terms of our human dignity," said indigenous rights activist Jackie Huggins, calling for a "Healing Fund" paid for from an expected A$20 billion (9.4 billion pound) budget surplus.

Foreign affairs experts called for more engagement with Asia and Pacific nations, while environmentalists suggested carbon-neutral buildings and a national climate plan.

But it was the suggestion for a republic which drew most cheers, although Rudd has called it a second-tier priority for his government. A national vote in 1999 was rejected amid republican infighting over the style of presidency.

"A plebiscite to decide whether to sever ties and secondly a referendum to decide on the model," said Rupert Murdoch's Australian newspaper chief John Hartigan, who chaired one of 10 summit groups.

Rudd, who is Australia's most popular leader for 20 years, said Australian should try harder to be "a force for good in the world" and the summit was just a start point.

"I don't want to have to explain to my kids and perhaps their kids too that we failed to act, that we avoided the tough decisions, that we failed to prepare Australia for its future challenges," Rudd said.

(Editing by Bill Tarrant)