Sydney - The Anglican Church in Australia said Monday it had been humbled in the global credit crunch and might have to lay-off staff.

"The global financial crisis is obviously starting to have an impact on a lot of not-for-profit organizations and agencies, and ... we've been caught up in that," church finance chief Kevin Spackman said.

The church said it was reliant on investment income and this was likely to fall drastically. It also admitted to not managing its money as well as it might.

Sydney - Australia, a rich country, has frequently lectured Indonesia, its poor neighbour, on felling of its forests.

Australians, though, seem unconcerned at the rate of land clearing of their own continent, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) claimed.

Queensland, which occupies most of the east coast, is where the bush is disappearing the fastest. The latest annual edition of the Statewide Landcover and Trees Study (SLATS) reports that 
375,000 hectares of forest were cleared in 2005.

Sydney - Australian stocks rallied at the bell on Monday after a horror trading session at the end of last week saw them slip to a five-year low.

In early trading, the ASX 200 gained 221 points, or 5.5 per cent, to 4,182 to break the 4,000 barrier.

Commsec economist Craig James said bargain hunting would buoy the market following Friday's 8.3-per-cent crash, the biggest drop since 1987.

Sydney - Australia is set to join other countries struggling to maintain investor confidence by raising the level at which it guarantees bank deposits.

The proposed threshold was 20,000 Australian dollars (13,200 US dollars) but the government is expected to raise this to 100,000 Australian dollars.

Sydney - Australia claimed Saturday that a 101-metre giant swamp gum found last week just 4 kilometres from a popular Tasmanian tourist attraction is the world's tallest hardwood tree, tallest eucalypt and its tallest flowering tree.

The 400-year-old whopper is only a few metres shorter than the world-record 115-metre redwood in California's Redwood National Park.

Sydney - Australian stocks gave up 8.3 per cent Friday in response to Wall Street falling to a five-year low and big setbacks on Asia markets.

The ASX 200 dropped 360 points, or 8.3 per cent, to 3,960 after smashing through the psychologically important 4,000 barrier mid-session.

Resources stocks were down 8.3 per cent, financials down 7.4 per cent, industrials down 7.5 per cent and the four big high street banks were off 6-8 per cent.