POLITICS & POLICY

Despite tough national controls and a guns buyback program instituted by then Prime Minister John Howard, the number of Australians owning guns have risen and are already actually parallel to the number in circulation prior to the 1996 Port Arthur shooting massacre.

The main building facility housing the telescopes of Australia's Siding Spring Observatory remained unscathed and intact despite a raging bushfire in New South Wales that have destroyed at least 12 homes in the Warrumbungle National Park area over the weekend.

Feeling grouchy on a Monday? Grumpy Cat is with you. A lot of cats on Reddit, Instagram and Facebook look adorable, cute and friendly. Grumpy Cat hates them all. But then this perennially cranky cat hates everything. Grumpy Cat has been on different social networks, whining about life, special occasions and commentaries on trending topics of the day.

Bell FX Currency Outlook: The Australian Dollar opens today's trading in the mid 1.0500's recovering from a relatively quiet session Friday night.

Blue-chip stocks edged higher Friday, capping a week of modest gains, though Wells Fargo & Co.'s earnings weighed on bank shares. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 17.21 points, or 0.1%, to 13488.43 Friday.

While Oppositions in Australian politics often paint the current government as a bad one in a bid to wrest power, an International Monetary Fund (IMF) assessment said it is not the Whitlam, Rudd or Gillard Labor governments that there there was wasteful spending, but during the term of former Prime Minister John Howard.

Former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd called on his Labor colleagues, specifically those serving in the Gillard Government, to use more of their hearts in designing the national dole program for hard-up Australians.

Ellen DeGeneres is Australia bound! The Hollywood talk show chatterbox, Ellen, who has a fan base even in the Asia-Pacific, is bringing her light and easy banter Down Under like contemporary Oprah last year.

A survey released by the U.S. Heritage Foundation and The Wall Street Journal on Friday titled 2013 Index of Economic Freedom has placed Australia on the third spot, with Hong Kong still on the lead for the 19th straight year.

Donations to victims affected by the first catastrophic bushfire in Tasmania, Australia have reached past A$2 million, with Prince Charles and his wife Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall, among those who donated a significant amount.

Luka Apps of Highworth, Wiltshire, England bought a precious LEGO Christmas toy. Just like any other kid, the 7-year-old boy became upset when he lost the Jay ZX LEGO character of the Ninjago Ultrasonic Raider set while inside a supermarket so he decided to write a letter to the company about his misfortune.

While other state parts are being ravaged by simultaneous bushfires, residents off the northern coast of Western Australia prepares for tropical cyclone Narelle, the country's first for the Dec-April tropical storm season.

Toward the end of 2012, while the rest of the world was talking about the Mayan prophecy that speculated an apocalypse on Dec 21, 2012, the United States was dealing with a major financial and political problem that led to the popularity of the words fiscal cliff.

Bell FX Currency Outlook: The Australian Dollar is eyeing USD 1.0600 as the grind upwards continues.

Financial shares led broad gains in major benchmarks, as market-watchers found reasons for bullishness in economic data. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 42 points, or 0.3%, to 13433. Bank of America paced the blue chips, rising 2.5%.

A proposal for the U.S. Treasury to mint one trillion dollar coins to address the country's debt limit problem appears headed for defeat despite the support for it by Republicans and some sectors.

Investors kicked off the latest quarterly-earnings series with broad-based gains. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 61 points, or 0.5%, to 13390, in Wednesday afternoon trading.

Bell FX Currency Outlook: The Australian Dollar shrugged off weaker domestic data and remained well supported opening back above 1.0500 against the U.S. greenback this morning after what was a lacklustre overnight session.

Chris Hadfield is just no plain Commander of NASA's International Space Station. He is also once photography aficionado. And this passion has helped the world see for itself the massive 'catastrophic' bushfires that is currently raging on in Australia.

Deep purple and pink. These two colours have just been added by Australia's Bureau of Meteorology in its forecasting colour wheel maps to aid weather temperature projections exceeding 122 Fahrenheit or 50 degrees Celsius.

China's first production quota of rare earths for 2013 has been set at 46,900 metric tonnes, according to the country's Ministry of Land and Resources.

Reported UFO sightings can become controversial when experts fail to provide a logical explanation to the "witnesses." Here, two men from South Africa and the U.S. pose their photo-backed questions to willing viewers.

A video of a polar bear attacking a camera man has gone viral with a million views within only four days. The footage drew mixed reactions from disbelief, to genuine awe, to excitement and suspense.

Slumping telecommunications and industrial shares weighed on U.S. stock benchmarks as investors struck a cautious tone ahead of corporate earnings season. The Dow Jones Industrial Average shed 71 points, or 0.5%, to 13313 midafternoon trading on Tuesday. The S&P 500 gave up seven points, or 0.5%, to 1455, extending its slide from a five-year closing high on Friday.

Bell FX Currency Outlook: The Australian Dollar remains steady after a quiet night in offshore markets. Australia: In contrast to every other trading day so far this year, the negative correlation between risk sentiment and the US Dollar has reasserted itself in overnight markets.

Australian shoppers on the lookout for great, massive bargain finds may well ought to splurge these first few months of 2013 as retail businesses prepare to further slash already discounted items for sale just to be able to overcome the sector's burgeoning sales slump and somehow boost profit.

The Australian summer had been made more agonizing by the bushfires. The country's continued rising temperatures had been the crux of insurance companies as incidence claims have now surged by more than $42 million and yet more still likely to come in as the blazes unexpectedly occur with the dry weather.

With bushfires happening left and right in Australia, the Bureau of Meteorology is now analysing data to support theories that the series of successive high temperatures this January 2013 alone already broke the country's past scorching records.

Local NSW police have started to alert the residents of Kybean Valley of potential exposure to a raging bushfire that started near the Mount Forest Road, Carlaminda area.