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Up to 70 rotting crocodile heads have been found in an old freezer dumped at a remote Australian town, police said yesterday, with the culprits facing large fines and jail time if convicted of the killings. Several teenagers made the grisly find behind a row of shops at Humpty Doo, 40 kilometers outside Darwin on Sunday and contacted authorities. Police said at least 50 saltwater crocodile heads, and as many as 70, were stuffed inside. “(We saw) a deep freezer in a sad state of affairs,” senior wildlife ranger Tommy Nichols

MARK COLVIN: Figures obtained by the New South Wales Greens show a 40 per cent surge in gun registration in the State over the last 14 years. There are now more than 850,000 firearms in private hands in Australia's most populous state. And Greens MP David Shoebridge says he's so alarmed by the increase that he will introduce legislation to limit the number of firearms that people can register. But that has angered gun enthusiasts, as Mandie Sami reports. MANDIE SAMI: For Kym McEwen there's no surprise that people from a diverse range of backgrounds and locations own firearms. KYM...

Initial models of where potential debris from a missing Malaysia Airlines passenger jet might first wash up had incorrectly identified Indonesia as the most likely location, the Australian body leading the search said on Wednesday. Flight MH370 disappeared without a trace in March 2014 with 239 passengers and crew on board and search efforts have focused on a broad expanse of the southern Indian Ocean off Western Australia. A piece of aircraft debris that washed up on the French island of Reunion last week roughly 3,700 km (2,300 miles) from the expected crash zone was consistent with where the plane...

Australia on Tuesday announced a A$89 billion (US$65 billion) shipbuilding package to construct new frigates and patrol boats locally, with a decision on an international supplier for replacement submarines made “in coming months”. The “continuous shipbuilding” proposal, which involves the replacement of frigates, patrol boats and submarines over two decades, is expected by the government to keep up to 2,500 jobs in the sector in what Prime Minister Tony Abbott said was “a very historic announcement”. “Previous Australian governments have announced that individual ships or classes of ships will be built here in Australia,” Abbott said at a press conference....

Australia’s descent into full blown fascism just accelerated again. The Adler lever-action ban in Australia just got serious as Prime Minister Tony Abbott has now decided to personally intervene and ban the firearms completely pending completion of a review of the NFA. Australian Customs and Border Protection have been ordered to detain all shipments of the Adler until the review is complete. Amidst the backlash from firearms owners and running out of concocted reasons and emotive rhetoric based arguments as to why law-abiding firearms owners are responsible for the actions of criminals, and that 128-year-old technology has now suddenly become...

Boeing and the U.S. Navy presented the first EA-18G Growler tactical jamming and electronic protection aircraft to the Royal Australian Air Force at a rollout ceremony in St. Louis, Missouri, July 29. In June 2014, the RAAF awarded Boeing the contract for 12 Growlers to be purchased under a foreign military sales agreement. The ceremony marked the presentation of the first Growler to Australia, the only foreign country to acquire the aircraft so far. The Growler is a derivative of the F/A-18 Super Hornet. The Australian Growler has some features not on the U.S. version. It has an advanced targeting...

It is often held aloft by environmental campaign groups as an example of one of the last remaining regions of unspoiled habitat left in the world. But instead of being a pristine rainforest untouched by human hands, the Amazon appears to have been profoundly shaped by mankind. An international team of researchers have published evidence that suggests the Amazon was once home to millions of people who lived and farmed in the area now covered by trees.

It is often held aloft by environmental campaign groups as an example of one of the last remaining regions of unspoiled habitat left in the world. But instead of being a pristine rainforest untouched by human hands, the Amazon appears to have been profoundly shaped by mankind. An international team of researchers have published evidence that suggests the Amazon was once home to millions of people who lived and farmed in the area now covered by trees.

The new genetic analysis takes aim at the theory that just one founding group settled the Americas =========================================================================================================== Brazil's Surui people, like the man pictured above, share ancestry with indigenous Australians, new evidence suggests. (PAULO WHITAKER/Reuters/Corbis) ==================================================================================================================== More than 15,000 years ago, humans began crossing a land bridge called Beringia that connected their native home in Eurasia to modern-day Alaska. Who knows what the journey entailed or what motivated them to leave, but once they arrived, they spread southward across the Americas. The prevailing theory is that the first Americans arrived in a single wave, and all Native American populations...

Catholics in Iraq are 'challenging' the Islamic State not with weapons or violence but through education and teaching, thanks to the contribution and support of Australian Catholic University. This October courses will begin at the Catholic University of Erbil, which was desired by the Chaldean Church in Iraq as a concrete way to aid the Christian youth in the Middle East. In recent days, Archbishop Bashar Matti Warda of Erbil for Chaldeans met with representatives of Australian Catholic University (ACU) and the President of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference and Archbishop Denis James Hart of Melbourne in order to better...

I am alabaster in beauty ; the pearl in your crown , The voice of wisdom ; my words never fall to the ground , My majesty surrounds you for my heart you obey , My kingdom goes before you each and every day , There is no other that you serve , Your feet remain steady ; they never swerve , My heart is the path you joyfully anticipate , I AM your inheritance you pant for yet never need to wait , I AM your Shepherd ; your gateway , the pool of mercy you know , My...

A Japanese government team is in talks with at least two top British firms to help a Japanese consortium land one of the world's most lucrative defence contracts, sources in Tokyo said, a $50 billion (£32 billion) project to build submarines for Australia. Germany's ThyssenKrupp (TKMS), a rival bidder, is wooing anxious members of Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s ruling Liberal Party with the economic and political benefits of its proposal. Two Japanese government officials and a company source in Tokyo said Babcock International Group and BAE Systems had approached the consortium of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Kawasaki Heavy Industries with...

Some people in the Brazilian Amazon are very distant relations of indigenous Australians, New Guineans and other Australasians, two groups of scientists who conducted detailed genetic analyses reported Tuesday. But the researchers disagree on the source of that ancestry. The connection is ancient, all agree, and attributable to Eurasian migrants to the Americas who had some Australasian ancestry, the scientists said. But one group said the evidence is clear that two different populations came from Siberia to settle the Americas 15,000 or more years ago. The other scientific team says there was only one founding population from which all indigenous...

The Australian government intends to eliminate two million feral cats by the end of the decade, Environment Minister Greg Hunt announced on Thursday, waging a war on hordes of felines that are said to be the single biggest threat to many of the country's native species. "By 2020, I want to see two million feral cats culled, five new islands and 10 new mainland areas as safe havens, free of feral cats, and control measures applied across 10 million hectares," Hunt declared. Millions of feral cats roam around the continent, and scientists say that they are a primary factor behind...

Temperatures have plummeted to more than 10 degrees below average in places, while Sydney has had its coldest July weather in 44 years now has fallen in parts of Australia where such falls are so rare the weather bureau does not have the tools to measure it as temperatures plunged to more than 10 degrees below average. Antarctic air pushed up through central New South Wales and on to Queensland – known as the Sunshine State – over the past week bringing on a winter cold front not seen in some parts since the mid-1980s. In Queensland, snow fell in...

Last month Gina Rinehart, Australia’s richest woman and matriarch of Perth’s Hancock mining dynasty delivered an unwelcome shock to her workers in Western Australia: accept a possible 10pc pay cut or face the risk of future redundancies. Ms Rinehart, whose family have accumulated vast wealth from iron ore mining, has seen her fortune dwindle since commodity prices began their inexorable slide last year. The Australian mining mogul has seen her estimated wealth collapse to around $11bn (£7bn) from a fortune that was thought to be worth around $30bn just three years ago. This colossal collapse in wealth is symptomatic of...

Whenever an argument comes up for gun control, the United Kingdom and Australia are brought forth as examples where gun control ‘worked’. “Australia and the UK banned a lot of guns and instituted strict gun control and their gun crime went down, so if other countries besides the US can ‘make gun control work’ we should follow their example here”. There are a number of fallacies and biases that this line of reasoning adheres to; correlation = causation, , single cause fallacy, the ‘bandwagon’ fallacy or ‘appeal to popularity, and confirmation bias through functional fixation, otherwise known as technological determinism...

SPRING St was turned into a war zone as anti-Islam and anti-racism protesters fought running battles with police, shutting down one of Melbourne’s busiest streets. More than 450 police officers were needed to keep the peace in an major operation expected to cost Victorian taxpayers up to $250,000.

You have been subjected to much scorn and many have bludgeoned you with words of iniquity in hatred spite but I AM here to wipe away the tears and touch your heart with ~ ~ The Winds of Forgiveness ~ ~ you find in ME "THE WORD" ! So come Now and be healed in the washing of My waters for I AM your "T"otal and Complete "YES" of your Redemption and in your surrendering all to Me I shall fill you to Overflowing even Now with My Love, Joy and Forgiveness. . . "NOW COME" Rise UP ! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZVjKrmvYYQ&list=RDNZVjKrmvY...

Major roads have been closed and highway traffic is banked up as Australia's eastern states experience the best snowfall in a decade. ....