Sydney

Pushy pig terrorizes Australian woman for 10 days

Pushy pig terrorizes Australian woman for 10 days Sydney - A woman was being held hostage on an east coast Australian farm by a wild pig she took in 10 days ago and treated for an eye infection, news reports said Tuesday.

"One of its eyes it couldn't see out of, so I put cream in it and I fixed it back up, but apparently, it's actually claimed my land and claimed my place," Caroline Hayes, 63, told the national broadcaster ABC.

Australia worries wealth not spreading to the middle

Sydney - Australia worries wealth not spreading to the middleIt's a measure of the strength of the economy that analysts squabble over whether the next move in interest rates by the Reserve Bank of Australia would be up or down.

Interest rates go up when times are good to slow demand and curb inflation. In bad times, when money is short and demand is slack, they fall.

In Australia, times are good: The government isn't carrying any debt, it has a surplus of 21 billion Australian dollars (17 billion US dollars) and figures out this week showed export earnings would hit record levels this year.

Australia's red earth turns the snow orange

AustraliaSydney - The worst dust storm in 40 years was Monday dusting the snow with an orange powder in the alpine region of Australia's south-east corner and bringing what locals call mud rain.

Winds of up to 100 kilometres per hour are lifting soil from the arid interior of New South Wales and dumping it nearer the coast. When combined with rain, it can fall with the consistency of watery mud.

The ochre dust has swept across Mount Kosciusko, flat Australia's highest mountain, giving what resident Darren Nielsen told national broadcaster ABC was an "extremely bizarre" aspect.

Australia's Rudd stung for his travel bug

Sydney -Australia's Rudd stung for his travel bug Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's year-long honeymoon with Australian voters ended messily Monday with an opinion poll showing a warm embrace of new opposition Liberal Party leader Malcolm Turnbull.

The numbers reflect disquiet in the electorate over Rudd's frequent travels abroad and his desire to play the global statesman.

Satisfaction with Rudd fell to 50 per cent, its lowest level since he ousted veteran conservative John Howard in a Labor landslide in November. Dissatisfaction with the 

Sniffing out graffiti vandals

Sydney - It would be easy to teach dogs to help nab graffiti artists. They could be trained to alert handlers to the whiff of the aerosol spray paint cans used in defacing public property.

But popular targets like train stations and public parks are big places, and attacks often occur at night. Dog squads are simply too expensive an antidote to sprayers.

Science has come up with a technological solution that keeps costs down and, for good measure, do what dogs can't do and help police gather evidence for a possible prosecution.

Australia slaps further curbs on short-selling

Sydney - Australia's securities regulator Sunday joined the United States, Britain, Germany, France and Switzerland in curbing the short-selling of shares.

In a short sale, a trader sells borrowed stock, hoping to make a profit by buying it back at a cheaper price.

Many argue that short-selling is behind the turmoil in global share markets. They claim hedge funds are deliberately driving down the price of shares in order to make windfall profits when they buy them back.

Last week the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) ruled that from Monday a temporary ban on what's called naked short-selling would take effect. In naked short-selling, traders sell shares they don't actually own.

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