SYDNEY ~ Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has spoken out against plans to stop people climbing tourist hotspot Uluru, also known as Ayers Rock, as debate rages about the ban. Rudd said it would be “very sad” if visitors couldn’t climb the giant red rock, one of Australia’s most recognisable landmarks along with Sydney’s Opera [...]

DADSWELLS BRIDGE ~ Long dismissed as tourist kitsch, Australia’s Big Things – giant models of everything from koalas to pineapples – are now being heritage-listed and recognised as works of folk art. The gaudy structures, commissioned since the 1960s by rural towns keen to put themselves on the map, have gathered such a following they [...]

By Doyle McManus Barack Obama has fallen back to Earth. When he ran for president, Obama said his election would be “the moment the rise of the oceans began to slow.” And when he made his first big foreign trip in April, he was hailed by adoring crowds – and almost-as-adoring politicians – in Britain, [...]

By Jonathan M. Metzl When I arrived in China late last month, the hazmat-suited public officials who met my plane had the same question for each passenger: “Have you had contact with pigs?” The officials took our temperatures, and then we were free to pass through customs and go on our way. As a physician [...]

KUALA LUMPUR ~ Malaysia said this week that talks with Indonesia over its ban on sending maids to work here, imposed in response to a recent abuse case, have been delayed until month’s end. The ban was put in place last month after a 43-year-old Malaysian woman was charged with causing grievous bodily harm after [...]

JAKARTA ~ A strong 6.4-magnitude earthquake struck remote Sumba island on Monday but there were no reports of damage or injuries, seismologists said. The quake struck at 7:52pm with an epicentre 107 kilometres northwest of the main island town of Waingapu, the Meteorology and Geophysics Agency said. It was measured at a depth of 86 [...]

TIMIKA ~ Police battled unidentified gunmen on Wednesday near a US-owned gold mine in Papua province, where a recent spate of deadly ambushes has claimed three lives. Five police officers were wounded in the firefight, which broke out as they patrolled near the sites of two weekend ambushes that killed an Australian mine technician and [...]

By Chris Erskine Los Angeles Times LOS ANGELES ~ Add taxes to the things I hate – Valentine’s Day, toll roads, pasta salad (not a pasta, not a salad). Now there’s taxes too. I’m a yankee-doodle cheapskate, from way back. I’m so tight, you could mint pennies between my fingers. You could press nickels between [...]

Because I have more grey matter on the outside of my head than I do on the inside, I am often asked why I don’t dye my hair. “I do,” I always respond. “I dye it grey so I’ll seem more mature.” To which people say, “It’s not working.” So when my barber, Maria Vieira, [...]

TEHRAN ~ Iran said on Thursday it has found the black boxes from an airliner that crashed in flames near Tehran, killing all 168 people on board in the worst air disaster in the sanctions-hit nation in years. “The plane’s recording and flight systems have been found,” Ahmad Majidi, head of the transport ministry’s crisis [...]

BANGKOK ~ Thousands of Thai “Yellow Shirt” protesters rallied on Thursday in Bangkok to denounce terrorism charges levied against members of their group who mounted a crippling airport blockade last year. Foreign Minister Kasit Piromya is among the 36 supporters of the People’s Alliance for Democracy (PAD) who face the charge, which carries the death [...]

TOKYO ~ Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso’s public approval rating has tumbled to just 16 percent as support for the opposition grows ahead of a general election, a poll showed on Thursday. Public support for the Aso cabinet fell by nearly eight percentage points from last month, the Jiji Press news agency said. It is [...]