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/ 21 September 2005
Australian officials were on Wednesday searching for those responsible for killing a dolphin which was found stabbed to death on a beach. The adult female dolphin sustained up to seven stab wounds, including a lethal wound to the heart, officials said.
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/ 20 September 2005
Commonwealth Games organisers are treating recent terrorist threats against host city Melbourne as little more than rhetoric, despite outlining security plans that involve military aircraft, armed patrols and about 1 200 troops around venues. Victoria state Premier Steve Bracks said the security is appropriate and necessary.
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/ 19 September 2005
The West Indies have replaced South Africa as the opposition for an annual cricket match against the prime minister’s XI at Manuka Oval in Canberra, Australia. The match was originally scheduled to feature an invitational side against South Africa on January 27.
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/ 18 September 2005
A computer-savvy Australian MP wants the government to stop being the nation’s biggest junk-mailer and become its biggest spammer instead. Liberal MP Malcolm Turnbull wants every Australian to be given an e-mail address that would last them from the cradle to the grave.
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/ 16 September 2005
Australia’s immigration department said on Friday it had wrongly cancelled the visas of up to 8 000 international students and asked diplomatic posts around the world to tell the wronged pupils they can resume their courses. In a major hitch for Australia’s stated goal of becoming Asia’s education hub, a court found the immigration department had been using incorrect paperwork.
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/ 16 September 2005
A new Australasian Provincial Competition rugby series will kick off next year with the possible future addition of teams from Japan, the Australian Rugby Union said on Friday. The competition will comprise Australia’s four Super 14 teams — Queensland Reds, NSW Waratahs, ACT Brumbies and Western Force — playing in a home and away series with a final in a five-week June-July window from 2006.
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/ 15 September 2005
Australia’s opposition Labour Party was in strife on Thursday after former leader Mark Latham said successor Kim Beazley was not fit to clean the toilets in Canberra’s Parliament House let alone head the country’s second biggest political force.
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/ 15 September 2005
An Australian on Thursday admitted trying to hire a hitman to murder a teenage girl who had accused his son of rape. The plan to murder the girl came unstuck when Chouaki Bou-Antoun asked an undercover police officer to carry out the hit. Chouaki Bou-Antoun (50) pleaded guilty in the New South Wales District Court to soliciting the murder of the girl in December 2003.
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/ 13 September 2005
Australians under voting age woke to a new, unfamiliar experience and older generations were reacquainted with an unsettling feeling: England have won the Ashes. To clarify, England beat Australia for cricket’s most storied international prize late on Monday at The Oval in south London, where the Ashes were created in 1882.
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/ 13 September 2005
An Australian professional football player said on Tuesday he plans to have one of his fingers amputated in an attempt to improve his game. Brett Backwell told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation he has suffered from pain and restricted movement since he broke his left ring finger three years ago.
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/ 12 September 2005
Australia’s biggest media companies appeared in court on Monday for allegedly conspiring to deprive a rival commercial television network of lucrative sports broadcasting rights. The Seven Network, owned by media mogul Kerry Stokes, is seeking Aus-billion in damages from the country’s biggest media and telecommunications groups over the loss of football rights.
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/ 12 September 2005
Australians are praying for a Shane Warne miracle to enable Ricky Ponting’s cricketers to hang on to the Ashes in the weather-marred final Test at The Oval. Australia have a minimum of 98 overs on Monday’s final day to conjure a win which looks virtually impossible with England 34 for one, holding a lead of 40, and needing to avoid defeat to secure a first Ashes series in 18 years.
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/ 10 September 2005
The Papua New Guinea government has yet to receive reports of any damage from a massive undersea earthquake on Friday but cannot yet rule out loss of life in remote outlying villages, an official said on Saturday. The magnitude-7,3 earthquake was centred 96km under the seabed in the island province of New Ireland.
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/ 8 September 2005
Donald Horne, a historian and author who first labelled Australia ”The Lucky Country” and was credited with helping launch its republican movement, has died at age 83, his agent said. Horne, who also was a respected journalist, died early on Thursday at his Sydney home, said his literary agent, Jane Cameron.
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/ 7 September 2005
Australia will launch an aggressive, all-out attack in the crucial final Ashes Test, captain Ricky Ponting pledged on Wednesday. Fighting to avoid the humiliation of being the Australian skipper who lost the coveted urn for the first time in 16 years, Ponting said he is counting on the team’s proven ability to lift itself for the big games.
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/ 6 September 2005
Lamb chops, steak and rice cookers were among packages of contraband intercepted by prison authorities in a recent crackdown, an official said on Tuesday. New South Wales state Corrective Services commander of security investigations Brian Kelly said he didn’t see the need for visitors sneaking in food or cooking gear for inmates.
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/ 4 September 2005
Australia’s dreaded cane toad might have met its match — disco-style ultraviolet lights. Northern Territory researchers said on Sunday they have been successful using dark ultraviolet lights — the same as those used in nightclubs — to lure and trap the pests that are killing off many of Australia’s native animals.
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/ 3 September 2005
A South African flight attendant appeared in an Australian court on Saturday on smuggling charges after 1kg of cocaine was found hidden in his luggage, news reports said on Saturday. Abdengo Morema Serane (26) arrived at Perth International airport on a flight from Johannesburg on Thursday.
Australia’s media was accused of being ”ruthless” on Wednesday after a disgraced politician apparently tried to commit suicide over allegations of racism and sexism. But the publisher of one of the newspapers under fire hit back by revealing that the devastating stories about the politician came from within his own Liberal Party.
Springbok captain John Smit has been accused of racism after allegedly taunting a Samoan bouncer who ordered him to leave a Sydney bar, a report said on Tuesday. Smit called the bouncer a ”black …” at Hugo’s Lounge in the busy nightlife district of Kings Cross in the early hours of Monday morning, The Daily Telegraph reported.
The Australian Rugby Union and national team coach Eddie Jones on Monday voiced their support for embattled Wallabies’ skipper George Gregan ahead of this weekend’s final Tri-Nations match with New Zealand. There have been calls for Gregan to get the axe after a season of indifferent performances at the helm of the Wallabies.
Australian rugby captain George Gregan has denied published reports that he’s planning to retire from international play before the 2007 World Cup. The Weekend Australian newspaper said on Saturday that Gregan (32) will announce his future plans in the coming days and that his last Test could be the Tri-Nations match on Sept. 3 against New Zealand at Auckland.
Australia is about to sever a yet another historical link with Britain. It will abandon Greenwich Mean Time and adopt a new national standard next week, based on the atomic clock. ”Really, GMT is just a little bit outmoded,” said Richard Britain of Australia’s National Measurement Institute.
Forget the sweet scent of roses — Melbourne’s Royal Botanic Gardens was suffused with an unusual stench on Friday, as the gardens’ foul-smelling tongue orchid flowered for the second time in 30 years. The Papua New Guinea native orchid is one of a several plants with flowers that smell like rotting meat to attract flies, which help its pollination.
It remains the greatest mystery in Australian political history: did the then prime minister Harold Holt drown while swimming at his favourite beach or was he spirited away in a Chinese submarine? Almost four decades after Holt vanished at Cheviot Beach, south-east of Melbourne, an inquest is trying to solve one of the country’s oldest political whodunits.
Imagine a world where farmers greet the dawn from their beds and cows milk themselves. An Australian research consortium said on Tuesday that such a nirvana was not such a distant dream. They are working on a system that attracts cows to the milking shed and milks them with automated equipment while they feed.
The Wallabies were on Tuesday hit by more injury concerns ahead of their final Tri-Nations rugby international against New Zealand in Auckland on September 3. The Australians, who are without a win in the Tri-Nations after two defeats to South Africa and another to New Zealand, have delayed naming their squad until Wednesday to await a series of medical reports.
South Africans Graeme Smith and Shaun Pollock will lead the World Test and one-day teams in the Super Series in Australia in October, the International Cricket Council (ICC) announced in Melbourne on Tuesday. Smith will lead the ICC World XI in the six-day Test against the Australians, while Pollock will skipper the international team for three one-dayers against Australia.
Blue Bulls flanker forward Danie Rossouw will join the Springbok rugby squad on Tuesday in Dunedin after he received the call on Saturday night to replace his injured provincial teammate Pedrie Wannenburg. Wannenburg returned home after he sustained an injury to his lower back during the Springbok’s penultimate training session before the Tri-Nations clash with the Wallabies.
Australian coach Eddie Jones has warned his team not to get sucked into South Africa’s high-tempo game in Saturday’s Tri-Nations clash, saying patience holds the key to victory. The under-fire coach said the Australians will be determined to play at their own pace against the high-flying Springboks.
Ricky Ponting’s 156-run innings that led Australia’s ”great escape” in the third Ashes Test against England marked the Tasmanian batsman’s true graduation as Test captain, according to Steve Waugh, cricket’s most successful leader to date. ”Ricky Ponting led from the front … as all influential leaders should,” Waugh said.
Australia, trying to end a three-match losing streak, has dumped backrowers George Smith and John Roe for Saturday’s Tri-Nations rugby Test against South Africa at Perth’s Subiaco Oval. The pair were replaced in the starting XV by Phil Waugh and Rocky Elsom.