Australia

SYDNEY (AP) — Oscar-winning actor Geoffrey Rush won his defamation case on Thursday against a Sydney newspaper publisher and journalist over reports he had been accused of inappropriate behavior toward an actress.

The 67-year-old Australian had sued The Daily Telegraph’s publisher and journalist Jonathon Moran over two stories and a poster published in late 2017.

CANBERRA, April 10 (Xinhua) -- Australia's aviation authority has granted approval for drone delivery system to take to the skies in the nation's capital city Canberra.

Project Wing, a venture of Google's parent company Alphabet, was on Tuesday given the green light to begin full operations in Canberra by the Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA).

It comes after an 18-month trial of using drones to deliver food, drinks and medication in the Canberra suburb of Bonython was deemed successful.

SYDNEY, April 8 (Xinhua) -- Dutchman Wiebe Wakker pulled into Sydney on Sunday having traveled 95,000 km over three years in his fully electric powered car.

In a journey which took him across 33 countries including Turkey, Iran, India and Malaysia, Wakker hoped to prove the viability of electric vehicles and spread a message of sustainability.

While not officially a world record, due to the car being modified for electric power, the 95,000-km distance is reportedly the longest ever driven in an electric vehicle.

SYDNEY, April 8 (Xinhua) -- An experimental facility launched in the Australian State of Queensland on Monday will test a new way to purify bore water, industrial wastewater and sea water for drinking.

For the past three years, researchers from the Queensland University of Technology (QUT), along with Japanese chemical conglomerate Asahi Kasei, have worked to develop a method by which solar energy or industrial "waste heat" can be used to desalinate water samples.

SYDNEY, April 5 (Xinhua) -- A mathematics professor from Australia's University of New South Wales (UNSW) has solved a 48-year multiplication puzzle which will give computers the ability to multiple large numbers much faster.

Associate Professor David Harvey, from UNSW's School of Mathematics and Statistics, on Thursday published a method to multiply large numbers which proves an academic theorem first proposed in 1971 by German mathematicians, Arnold Schonhage and Volker Strassen.

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — Australia’s Parliament passed legislation on Thursday that could imprison social media executives if their platforms stream real violence such as the New Zealand mosque shootings.

Critics warn that some of the most restrictive laws about online communication in the democratic world could have unforeseen consequences, including media censorship and reduced investment in Australia.

CANBERRA, April 2 (Xinhua) -- Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has ruled out risking Australian lives to bring the children of Islamic State (IS) fighters stranded in Syria back to Australia.

Responding to reports that three children of Khaled Sharrouf, an Australian who left the country in 2013 to fight for IS in Syria, have been found stranded in a Syrian refugee camp, Morrison said that any operation to return the children to the family in Australia would be too risky.

MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — An Australian appeals court on Friday dismissed a bullying case brought by an engineer who accused his former supervisor of repeatedly breaking wind toward him.

The Victoria state Court of Appeal upheld a Supreme Court judge’s ruling that even if engineer David Hingst’s allegations were true, flatulence did not necessarily constitute bullying.

Hingst said he would take his case to the High Court, Australia’s final court of appeal.

28 Mar 2019; AFP: Australian police on Wednesday said they had apprehended a British suspected drug offender, who tried to flee to Papua New Guinea on a jet ski.

Border police said they received a tip-off that "a man, possibly armed with a crossbow and carrying additional fuel and supplies, had been seen launching the jet ski" from a peninsula in the far northeast of the country.

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — Australia’s prime minister on Tuesday accused an influential minor political party of trying to “sell Australia’s gun laws to the highest bidders” by asking the U.S. gun lobby for donations.