LAW

Opposition Liberal National did a turnaround Thursday, when it replaced its policy on enhancing online safety for children which provided for mandatory implementation of “opt-out” internet filters, by default for all Australians. The turnaround came in less than 5 hours after the earlier policy document was released. The redraft followed a major uproar, particularly on social media, with Malcolm Turnbull facing much of the ire.

A Sydney court sentenced on Thursday New Zealander Wati Holmwood three months prison term for streaking at the rugby league State of Origin in July.

They thought it was phony, but it turned out to be scary. Radiological analysis of a mummy, found by a boy in his grandmother's attic in Germany, has turned out to be real. Examiners saying it contain real human bones. The revelation has got police interested, and the boy’s father finds the situation “uncomfortable.” The only person who has all the answers - the boy’s grandfather - will not respond for he died 12 years ago.

Kim Dotcom seems to have a few more surprises up his sleeves. After his tweet about plans to launch a political party in New Zealand - a leak which he attributed to “whistleblower”- picked up storm, it is now known that he quit as director of Mega, the cloud hosting service that he launched with much fanfare in Jan 2013, after his previous file sharing venture Megaupload was shut down in a U.S. driven operation, following allegations of mass copyright infringement and money laundering.

Activists on the Freedom Flotilla, set for an unauthorised landfall on the Indonesian territory of West Papua, arrived at Thursday Island in the Torres Strait on Tuesday. As they plan the last leg of their protest journey, organisers said, international support for the movement for West Papua self-determination was growing.

Australia’s Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) found a $266 a week overall difference between what men and women in full-time work earn. Calculations show that takes 64 extra days of work for the average woman to equal what a man earns in a year. In its latest workplace survey figures, WGEA shows that, the gap between what men and women earn is widening in the country, increasing from 15% in 2004 to 17.5% over the last year.

An Australian sex predator has pleaded guilty to charges filed against him for luring his youngest victim, a 9-year-old girl in England, to engage in sexual activity using the Internet. Victoria police had received information from the UK police that the 9-year-old girl has been receiving sexually explicit messages from an Internet account belonging to an Australian. The tip included information about Skype chat logs taken from the computer used by the girl.

A 53-year-old German national will appear in Stirling Gardens Magistrate Court on Wednesday on charges of attempting to import five kilograms of methamphetamine into Perth. The Australian Federal Police (AFP) and Australian Customs and Border Protection Service (ACBPS) said in a press release on Tuesday.

Adam Freeman, son of notorious Sydney drug dealer George Freeman, has admitted his involvement in a multi-million-dollar drug operation.

Former boxer and suspected underworld figure Mick Gatto has been banned from running boxing events after the State Parliament introduced changes in the legistlation in boxing and contact sports.

A suicide threat on Twitter that has the Canadian police investigating is now believed to be a hoax made up to promote Nickelodeon star Ariana Grande’s new album. However, the girl responsible for the tweets claimed she wasn’t endorsing the star, and just wanted to gain followers on the social media site.

Controversial Internet entrepreneur, founder of Megaupload, Kim Dotcom, has announced plans to launch a new political party in New Zealand. Tweeting that it was in early stages of formation, he said the new party will contest elections next year in New Zealand.

With elections around the corner, Australian Immigration Minister Tony Burke claimed a major policy success in bringing down, for the first time, the number of asylum seekers. Burke claimed that, after the implementation of the “PNG solution,” there was a visible decline in the number of asylum seekers arriving on Christmas Island within a month.

It is being termed as the largest ponzi scheme scandal to hit New Zealand. The country’s Financial Markets Authority (FMA) and Serious Fraud Office (SFO), on Thursday, prosecuted David Robert Gilmour Ross, a financial professional from Wellington, on four counts of false accounting and one count of theft by person in special relationship. He has been taken into custody and will be sentenced in Oct.

Australian Federal Police (AFP) and Tasmania Police arrested an alleged recidivist online child sex predator following a joint two-week covert operation. The police charged the arrested 57-year-old Hobart man with accessing child abuse material on his smartphone. Police officials were monitoring the man’s behaviour since his release from prison, in a similar case, in June 2013.

Lures of the dollar and a non-resident spouse are the same for Indians. In spite of government efforts to caution people about the pitfalls of marrying an Non-Resident Indian (NRI) through a nationwide media campaign, any opportunity to find an NRI groom or bride is too hard, for any girl or boy in the country, to resist. Media reports said a 68-year old US-based Indian doctor, apparently, in response to his advertisement, received marriage proposals from around 152 Indian women of all age group...

Rui Zhang, the 27-year-old PhD student who attacked his classmate Xiaoyu Cheng by throwing sulphuric acid in his face and hit his head with a hammer, has been found not guilty on grounds of mental illness.

A Chinese woman killed her husband then boiled his remains to keep her crime a secret. Anhui News, a government-backed news agency in China, said she had discovered that her husband was abusing her daughter and had acted out of revenge.

A math and religion teacher in Sydney was jailed for a year for having a sexual relationship with her 15-year-old student in 2008. Meanwhile, another similar case happened in Worcester County, Massachusetts when a female sex education teacher had sex with her 14-year-old student on several occasions.

Taking a step towards opening its Australia office, social media giant, Twitter is reported to have recruited former Google Australia display advertising head, Karen Stocks as local country head. The move has a strong commercial motive but will also help closer engagement with authorities.

It is a major piece of legislation and could change the way we know software. It is a move that is expected to improve the system and drive further innovation. The New Zealand parliament on Thursday passed legislation that bans software patents. The motion was passed by a 117 to four vote and followed five long years of parliamentary debate. However, the legislation will only affect new patent applications. It means that existing software patents in New Zealand will continue to remain in force.

In a cautious yet deliberate move toward action, President Obama is ensuring the validity of his claims on chemical attacks in Syria on its own people. A revenge attack by the U.S. defence officials is planned by the end of the week; most likely on Thursday as UN officials leave Syria after investigating on the chemical. massacre

Four West Papuan pro-independence leaders were arrested by authorities on Wednesday, in Sorong – a coastal city in the eastern Indonesian province of West Papua - on charges of organising a congregation pray meeting at the Maranthan Church in the city. Over 2000 people had gathered at the local church to pray for the safe passage of the “Freedom Flotilla” to West Papua - a journey, which the organisers say, hopes to reunite the indigenous cultures of Australia and West Papua, and bring human ri...

Laura Ziv, 45, the ad director of a fragrance company in Lawrence, is blaming her boss for the brain hemorrhage she suffered resulting from stress because her boss said she looks like Britain's Got Talent's Susan Boyle.

The NFL coughs up $765 million for ex-players concussion settlement.

Last week, rumours mills were busy with the story of love rekindling between Prince Andrew and Fergie -Sarah Ferguson. Media reports suggested that the royal couple, both 53, may well be in the path to get remarried after 17 years of divorce. But after all the excitement over the past week, Hello Online on Monday reported that rumours are after all, rumours.

He built his empire shooting girls going wild. But a rendezvous with three women at a college graduation party at the Supper Club in Hollywood got the 40-year-old creator and owner of Girls Gone Wild, Joe Francis into some real trouble this time. He thought he “owned the police” but that didn’t help. His luck with the law ran out on Tuesday. Francis was sentenced to a jail term of 270 days, 3 years of probation, an anger management course and sessions of psychological counselling.

The jury of the Australian Capital Territory Supreme Court declared on Wednesday guilty the two Australian Defence Force Academy (ADFA) cadets who had sex with a female cadet and broadcast the act live via Skype.

If Libya has former dictator Moammar Gaddafi and the U.S. Ariel Castro as poster boys for men who abduct and rape their victims, their Australian counterpart, Michael Allen Pilgrim, has been found guilty and sentenced on Tuesday to at least 19 years prison term.