Queensland

Melbourne, Aug 31 (AFP) A Tamil family of four -- including two Australian-born toddlers -- have been moved to a remote island off the coast of Indonesia, despite a court order blocking deportation, their lawyer said Saturday.

The family -- who are fighting to remain in Australia because they fear persecution in Sri Lanka -- were moved to Christmas Island detention facility overnight, lawyer Carina Ford said, speaking in Melbourne.

Sydney, May 29 (AP) An Australian man who kidnapped and repeatedly raped a British backpacker during a month-long ordeal in the country's Outback has been jailed for 10 years.

Marcus Allyn Keith Martin, 25, had pleaded guilty in the District Court of Cairns, in the far north of Queensland state, to charges of rape and deprivation of liberty against the 22-year-old woman from Liverpool, England.

Prosecutors told the court the pair met in Cairns in January 2017 and had begun a relationship.

30 Apr 2019; DW: A secretly filmed video dealt a heavy blow to Australia's One Nation party ahead of an election, after the country's Nine Network TV showed a clip of populist leader Steve Dickson groping and propositioning strippers during a US trip in September.

SYDNEY, April 8 (Xinhua) -- An experimental facility launched in the Australian State of Queensland on Monday will test a new way to purify bore water, industrial wastewater and sea water for drinking.

For the past three years, researchers from the Queensland University of Technology (QUT), along with Japanese chemical conglomerate Asahi Kasei, have worked to develop a method by which solar energy or industrial "waste heat" can be used to desalinate water samples.

Senator Fraser Anning from Queensland, Australia, has caused widespread outrage after releasing a statement on the New Zealand Mosques killings that resulted 49 deaths so far.

Anning’s statement has been slammed as “disgusting”, “reprehensible”, and an attempt at “blaming the victims”. Another Australian politician, Martin Pakula, slammed Fraser Anning as “human garbage”.

SYDNEY, Feb. 23 (Xinhua) -- Australian researchers said they have found a new way to recycle glass into everyday products, pointing to major cost and waste reductions for the environment.

The method extracts liquid silicate from waste glass and it can be used to make thousands of products ranging from concrete sealers and fertilizers to detergents and toothpaste, the University of Queensland said in a statement about its researchers' work late on Friday.

08 Feb 2019; AFP: Hundreds of thousands of cattle weakened from a severe drought are feared to have died in record-breaking floods in northeastern Australia, authorities said Friday, as they stepped up efforts to feed surviving livestock.

Incessant rains over an almost two-week period have flooded swathes of Queensland state, with the full scale of the devastation on drought-hit cattle stations becoming clearer as floodwaters recede.

04 Feb 2019; AFP: Australia's military has been deployed to tackle devastating "once-in-a-century" floods that have inundated homes, schools and airports in the country's northeast, forcing hundreds to flee and bringing crocodiles onto the streets.

The Australian Defence Forces delivered 70,000 sandbags, deployed amphibious cargo vehicles and helped pluck flashlight-wielding residents from their rooftops Monday, as monsoon rains drenched the northern state of Queensland.

03 Feb 2019; DW: Unrelenting torrential rain lashed parts of the northeastern state of Queensland on Sunday, bursting river banks and inundating roads and homes.  

Local authorities issued a number of flash flood warnings for the area surrounding the coastal city of Townsville, which has just experienced its wettest seven days on record. Some 1,012 millimeters (40 inches) of rain was dumped there over the past week, compared to the previous high of 886 millimeters in 1998.

SYDNEY, Feb. 3 (Xinhua) -- Australia's Brisbane International Airport went into emergency lockdown on Saturday night after a man allegedly entered the international terminal carrying a knife.

Following a swift and extensive security response, the man was taken into custody by police who used non-lethal weapons to subdue him.

"There is no evidence to suggest the incident at the international airport is terrorism related; it is a domestic violence-related situation," police told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.