Australia

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Woman Canned After Sending Worst Text Ever to Boss

Louise Nesbitt tried to pass off 'complete d---' message as lighthearted humor

(Newser) - If you're going to insult your boss, there's no better way to ensure getting fired than making sure that insult is unequivocal. That's the situation former Dragon Mountain Gold employee Louise Nesbitt found herself in last year when the Aussie woman accidentally sent an unflattering text message...

Australia: Vaccinate Your Kids or Lose Benefits

PM unveils 'no jab, no play, no pay' policy

(Newser) - Life is about to get tougher for Australian parents who refuse to have their children vaccinated. Prime Minister Tony Abbott has announced that "conscientious objectors" to childhood vaccination will lose benefit payments and tax rebates of more than $11,000 per year per child, reports the Sydney Morning Herald...

Aussie Autofill Error Leaks World Leaders' Private Info

Passport numbers for Obama, Putin, Merkel emailed to soccer group

(Newser) - You'd think if you had charge of the passport numbers of the planet's elite leaders you'd be pretty careful. But a hapless employee of Australian's immigration agency relied a little too much on autofill—and mistakenly sent an email with the passport numbers, visa info, and...

Biggest-Ever Asteroid Impact Found

Asteroid broke in two, scarring Earth more than 300M years ago

(Newser) - More than 300 million years after a massive asteroid collided with Earth, scientists have found the planet's 118-mile-long scars. Experts say two huge underground domes in the Earth's crust, about 19 miles beneath central Australia's Warburton Basin, are evidence of the largest and most powerful asteroid impact...

How a 'Last Hug' Revived Dying Baby

Kate and David Ogg were told newborn baby was dying

(Newser) - Kate and David Ogg held onto their dying baby five years ago as a way of saying goodbye, only to find him come miraculously back to life . Now the media has returned to see how the family in Queensland, Australia, is doing—and apparently they're happily raising three young...

Why Australia Is Killing Koalas

Animals were euthanized after 'falling out of the trees'

(Newser) - Koalas' numbers on one part of Australia are too big for their own good, and some are starving—so officials have quietly been culling their population, Australia's ABC News reports. "We have had koalas suffer in that Cape Otway area because of ill health and starvation" amid overpopulation,...

Seizure Knocks Skydiver Unconscious Mid-Fall

Christopher Jones, 22, says 5K-foot free-fall 'possibly scariest moment of my life'

(Newser) - For 30 terrifying seconds, Christopher Jones plummeted through the air over Australia, unconscious and in free fall after suffering a seizure just seconds after jumping out of a plane, NBC News reports. Jones' video of the Nov. 14 incident, which he posted yesterday, already has nearly 4 million views. It...

Rare Disease Could Turn Boy Into 'Mannequin'

Jarvis Budd is one of 13 Australians to suffer from the rare disease

(Newser) - Three-year-old Jarvis Budd is one of just 13 people in Australia to suffer from a rare disease called fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva, or "human mannequin disease." This means that with every minor fall or injury, he runs the risk of his joints seizing and triggering "abnormal bone growth,...

Blind Boy's Campaign Changing Australia's Cash

Nation will add tactile features so bills can be told apart

(Newser) - Australia is redesigning its cash and adding a tactile feature so blind people can tell the bills apart. And as the nation's ABC News reports, the pending change is largely thanks to a 13-year-old kid named Connor McLeod. He launched a campaign and online petition that gained steam and...

To Land a Job Here, It's a 15-Hour Interview

Your body language gets special scrutiny

(Newser) - Considering a job at Appster? Sure! Just send in your résumé, spend an average of 15 hours interviewing, and score in the top 5% worldwide on competency tests, and maybe you'll get hired. Fortune reports the Australian app-development company re-engineered its approach after calculating that only about half...

20-Year-Old Quarter Pounder Looks About the Same

Aussie mates promote aging burger for charity

(Newser) - Wonder how long a Quarter Pounder with cheese can last? Two Australians say they bought a few McDonald's burgers for friends back in 1995, when they were teens, and one of the friends never showed up. So the kid's burger went uneaten—and stayed that way, Australia's...

Australia's Oldest Guy Knits Sweaters—for Penguins

Alfie Date has been knitting for 80 years

(Newser) - When Alfred "Alfie" Date moved into a new retirement home on the New South Wales Central Coast last year, his reputation preceded him. But it wasn't his title of Australia's oldest person that the facility's nurses were most intrigued by. "I think I'd been...

Australia Busts 2 Men in 'Imminent' Terror Plot

Counterterror raid turns up ISIS flag, weapons, video threat

(Newser) - Two men were charged today with planning to launch an imminent terrorist attack in Australia, after police seized a homemade ISIS flag, machete, and hunting knife in a counterterror raid. The men, ages 24 and 25, would have carried out the attack yesterday if they hadn't been arrested in...

'Huge, Huge Shark' Kills Australia Surfer

Tadashi Nakahar, 41, is latest victim in string of encounters

(Newser) - Australia sees an average of one shark attack death every 12 months—but a brutal attack on a Japanese surfer has brought the total to four fatalities in the past year, the Guardian reports. Tadashi Nakahar, 41, lost both his legs and died at the scene as fellow surfers tried...

More Secrets of 1629 Mutiny, Murder Unearthed

11th skeleton discovered on Beacon Island

(Newser) - More details from "one of the darkest chapters of Australia's maritime history" are coming to light, nearly 400 years after they occurred. On June 4, 1629, the Dutch East India ship the Batavia was downed by a reef on its maiden voyage. Most of the roughly 340 people...

How the 2 Sydney Siege Victims Died

One by the gunman's hand, one by police bullet fragments

(Newser) - Gunman Man Haron Monis killed one of the two Sydney siege victims execution-style; the other was the victim of ricocheting bullets fired by police who stormed the cafe after witnessing Tori Johnson's murder. The details came at the opening day of the inquest into last month's siege at...

Baby Gammy Now an Australian Citizen

Child in surrogate controversy gets access to country's health care

(Newser) - The baby who last year made international headlines in a surrogacy controversy is now a 1-year-old Australian citizen, though he still lives in Thailand. Gammy, who has Down syndrome and a heart condition, can now access Australian health care, the BBC reports. He has been a regular patient at a...

Police Bullet Hit Sydney Hostage

Bullet ricocheted, hit Katrina Dawson during cops' shootout with gunman

(Newser) - Australian cops who stormed the Sydney chocolate shop where a gunman took 18 people hostage may have accidentally killed one of the captives in the melee, the Sydney Morning Herald says. Police investigators say that forensics show 38-year-old Katrina Dawson was struck by fragments from a police bullet, which ricocheted...

Man Stranded in Outback Dies a Mile From Safety

Unidentified Aussie walked nearly 29 miles after car quit

(Newser) - An Australian man is dead after walking nearly 29 miles on a steaming hot, lonely Outback road. The unidentified 60-year-old and a female companion were driving to the Windidda Station cattle ranch near the remote town of Wiluna when their car broke down on Sunday, police say. The pair camped...

Teen Spears Shark He Watched Kill Friend

Jay Muscat, 17, dies after shark bites leg

(Newser) - A 17-year-old Australian boy is dead after being attacked by what authorities suspect was a 13-foot-long great white—and a friend who was alongside him managed to survive after shooting the animal with his spear gun. "The shark hit me first, then attacked Jay," Matt Pullella wrote on...

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