Australia and Japan have sought a 90 per cent reduction in world’s nuclear stockpile by 2025, asking the US and Russia to reduce the number of their warheads to 500 each.
National police response will be the key to protect overseas students, including Indians who have come under a spate of attacks in Australia, a review of the country’s international education sector has suggested.
HE COALITION has seized on a Reserve Bank warning that expansionary monetary policies are no longer “prudent” to attack the government’s stimulus spending.
UNIONS are being targeted by the nation’s workplace watchdog, with 20 investigations being conducted into allegations of unlawful industrial action by workers.
In its first prosecution of a union, the Fair Work Ombudsman Nicholas Wilson has taken the Transport Workers Union to court over a strike by Qantas baggage handlers that disrupted domestic flights.
In an agreed statement of facts to the Federal Court, the TWU has admitted to committing two breaches of workplace laws by organising Qantas baggage handlers to engage in unlawful industrial action at the Adelaide and Melbourne airports in December 2007.
THE Sri Lankan asylum seekers holed up on board a boat in Indonesia intend to end their two-day-old hunger strike and are considering stepping ashore.
Over 250 Tamil asylum seekers fleeing Sri Lanka have appealed to Australia to grant them refuge after the Indonesian navy intercepted their boat on its way to this country.
Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd had earlier this week asked Indonesia to intercept the boat carrying the asylum seekers, and the vessel is struck in an Indonesian island.
MALCOLM Turnbull has reminded recalcitrant Liberals demanding a boycott of Kevin Rudd’s emissions trading scheme debate until next year that they are in opposition, not government.
The beleaguered opposition leader has today addressed the 60th state conference of the Liberal party in Western Australia, telling them it would be “most unwise” not to engage in debate and seek amendments to the government’s legislation next month.
A TSUNAMI alert has been cancelled after three earthquakes struck within an hour of each other off the coast of Vanuatu.The Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre has cancelled all tsunami warnings throughout the Pacific after a 7.5 earthquake struck 15 minutes after a 7.8 quake prompted the alert. A third quake, of 7.1 magnitude, struck around an hour later. The Hawaii-based centre withdrew the alert about two and a half hours after the first quake hit. “When no major waves are observed for two hours after the estimated time of arrival or damaging waves have not occurred for at least two hours, then local authorities can assume the threat is passed,” the centre said.
NO consideration was given to evacuating residents of Marysville in the hours before it was wiped out by a Black Saturday bushfire that killed 34 people, despite senior fire agency officers knowing the town was under threat, the royal commission investigating the disaster was told today.
The incident controller responsible for initially managing the fire, Andrew Miller, said that by the time an emergency co-ordinator in the township asked if there was a contingency evacuation plan in place at about 6pm, it was already too late.
PETER COSTELLO has bowed out of politics throwing a political hand grenade at Malcolm Turnbull’s attempts to cut a deal with Labor on an emissions trading scheme.
The former treasurer, who confirmed today he would quit politics sparking a by-election for his seat of Higgins, said there was “no urgency” to the legislation.
He offered to bet the national debt with any government minister who said the laws would not be repeatedly changed between now and 2012.
