Esther Tanquintic-Misa

Australia has flatly denied a request from North Korea to reopen its embassy located in Canberra.

As the cardinals have zipped their mouths amid orders from the Vatican, the latter has likewise closed to the public the Sistine Chapel, in order to start sprucing it up for the necessary build works for the upcoming 25th papal conclave expected to unfold anytime this month.

True to its tradition, it actually is just a matter of time before the Vatican steps in to tell the College of Cardinals to zip their mouths in sharing bits and pieces of information from the pre-conclave talks on account of their oath to secrecy.

A 63-year-old Australian anaesthetist from the state of Victoria has been sentenced to 14 years in prison for infecting 55 women patients with Hepatitis C between June 2008 and November 2009.

Would-be tropical Cyclone Sandra, currently brewing and packing in strength off the Queensland coast, has elevated the anxieties of weather forecasters monitoring because they can't seem to figure out the movement of the state's second cyclone of the season.

Vatican City, the seat of the secular religion faith Roman Catholic church, has defrocked three priests from Central Massachusetts over allegations of sexual abuse.

It is now Day 3 of the pre-conclave talks by the cardinals who are being holed up at Vatican City. And from today, there are only 18 days left for the cardinals to be able to come up with a new 266th pope in time for the Roman Catholic church’s Palm Sunday rites, which heralds the start of its Lenten season. Yet despite the decreasing number of days, the College of Cardinals seem not wont to succumb to outside pressure to immediately start the ball rolling on this year’s anticipated papal concl...

After a debilitating horsemeat scandal, Ikea is again on the hot seat, this time after Chinese authorities discovered excessive levels of faecal or coliform bacteria in its chocolate almond cake products that were imported by the furniture and accessories store to China from Sweden. An equivalent two tonnes (1,872 kilos or 4,100 pounds) of the chocolate almond cake were immediately destroyed.

Still recovering from the devastating rains and floods that came in the first two months of the year, Queensland has yet to face possible further damage as a low monsoon off its northern part could develop towards end of the week into a Category 3 cyclone to be named Sandra.

If there is anybody or any entity more than prepared to welcome the new 266th pope of the Roman Catholic church, that must be the family-owned Gammarelli tailor shop which has dressed the papacy ever since the 18th century.

Four Chinese men aged over 60 years old have been meted out jail sentences of a maximum of two years each after unearthing female cadavers or dead bodies and then selling them as ghost brides to families to partner their equally dead bachelor sons.

Thomson Reuters has released on Tuesday its latest Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2012-2013 where six Australian institutions made it to the list of the global top 100.

Majority of the cardinal electors are already present in Vatican, hobnobbing with each other in and outside private meetings. But this majority chose not to determine yet a date for the start of the papal conclave as they wait for the arrival of 12 more fellow cardinals. In the meantime, talks on corruption and sex issues hounded the first day of pre-conclave meetings on Monday.

Had he researched much better and prepared enough, self-proclaimed Bishop Ralph Napierski may have been able to penetrate, witness and even mingle in this year's highly guarded and secluded papal conclave up to the very end. But the black fedora hat, when it should have been a red skullcap, and the glaring purple or magenta scarf, when it should have been a red sash, gave him away.

Australian newspapers and Web sites saw a 3 per cent rise in the number of jobs advertised in February compared to January, according to the Job Ads survey released on Monday by the ANZ. The growth likewise reflected an improvement that was the highest level since October 2012.

First Monday of March and the 115 Catholic cardinals responsible to elect the new pope are getting ready to work in a series of meetings in Vatican City.

Effective March 31, Australian rare earths miner Lynas Corp will have a new chief executive officer as Nicholas Curtis steps down to give way to Eric Noyrez.

For three years in a row now, Adelaide remained Australia's most liveable city, mainly due to its affordable housing payment schemes, cleanliness and good standard of living, according to a report released by the Property Council of Australia on Monday. Following it on second was Canberra and Hobart at third.

A 5.5 magnitude earthquake, in what Chinese media described as just shallow or moderate, struck the nation's Yunnan province on Sunday. Although no casualties have been reported as of presstime, the earthquake did damage at least 3,000 buildings and toppled some 700 homes.

Australia has broken its own hottest summer record, according to data released by the Bureau of Meteorology (BoM).

Some 2000 agitated members of the West Australian Prison Officers Union (WAPOU), dismayed over how the state government continued to stall their back pay dispute, has called a snap 24-hour strike on Friday morning, effectively abandoning their posts at 13 public prisons across WA.

Experts have identified that the mysterious shark caught two years ago by a local fisherman off Rottnest Island was a mandarin dogfish, a specie that's only usually found between Indonesia and Japan as well as in New Zealand.

China continued to intensify its campaign against online porn sites with its latest crackdown leading to the closure of 225 Web sites, including 4,000 Web channels and columns as well as 30,000 blogs and microblogs that allegedly contained and disseminated "obscene and vulgar information," according to the country's State Internet Information Office (SIIO).

Probably seeing what he did could mean the death of his business, the Chinese owner who had earlier put up a sign on his restaurant window banning Japanese, Filipino and Vietnamese nationals has voluntarily put it down.

The federal government of Australia has assured some $100 million in flood relief amount to Queensland to enable the state government rise from the series of floods that battled it in the month of January this year.

Watch out, China. Australian rare earths miner Lynas Corp on Wednesday announced it had produced its first batch of rare earths products from its Malaysian processing plant, in what could be a fitting finale to its hardships battling out for the operation of the facility.

A man aged 40s has died in New Zealand after a shark attacked him while swimming off Muriwai Beach, about 40 kilometres west of Auckland. However, police said they open fired at the shark from a boat and witness accounts said they were actually two sharks hovering at the time. Investigations are now being made if the man was indeed killed by which shark or by the bullets that flew from the cops' guns.

In the midst of the sexual abuse crisis now hounding the Roman Catholic church which ironically is in its most critical period in selecting the new pope, believers of the faith say it is not enough that the highly anticipated new leader is just plain spiritual or has charisma to convert bigots into the secular religion.

During his term as spiritual leader of the Roman Catholic church, he was merely known as Pope Benedict XVI. But on Feb. 28 at 8:00 p.m., once his resignation and abdication becomes official, the former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger will get to maintain and be conferred three titles by the Vatican: His Holiness Benedict XVI, Pope Emeritus or Roman Pontiff Emeritus.