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Sydney Opera House architect dies

The Danish architect of the iconic Sydney Opera House, Jorn Utzon, has died at the age of 90, after suffering a heart attack. Mr Utzon, an award-winning architect, put "Denmark on the world map with his great talent," said Danish Culture Minister Carina Christensen. Having won a competition in 1957 to design the building, he left the project before it opened in 1973. Mr Utzon never visited the completed landmark, after disputes about costs. He had quarrelled with the Australian ...

Financial crisis helps define Rudd in first year as Australian PM

SYDNEY (AFP) — One year into the job, Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's popularity is riding higher than ever as he uses the global financial crisis to redefine his leadership, analysts said Sunday. The 51-year-old former diplomat Monday marks the first anniversary of his centre-left Labor Party's landslide win with a personal approval rating of 70 percent, according to a Nielsen poll. This is higher than any level the bespectacled father-of-three who speaks fluent Mandarin reached d...

Malouf’s bracelet dazzles on a list of literary treasure

DAVID MALOUF has won Australia's newest and richest literary prize for his short story collection The Complete Stories. Malouf was presented with the inaugural Australia-Asia Literary Award in Perth last night. The $110,000 award, which was created by the former Labor government in Western Australia, is worth $10,000 more than the next richest, the Prime Minister's Literary Award, and is given for fiction by writers resident in, or outside Australia, writing primarily about Australia or As...

Red Bull’s Mark Webber breaks leg in bike accident but could be fit for first F1 race in Melbourne

The 32-year-old, who drives for the Red Bull racing team, was competing in his own charity event on the Australian island of Tasmania when he collided head-on with a car. Tasmania police said Webber was airlifted to hospital where he is being treated for a broken leg and other injuries. His condition is believed to be serious but not life-threatening. The accident happened on a remote road south east of the capital city Hobart at about 12.40pm local time, police said. Webber was taking ...

Australian company fined for underpaying Indonesian worker

A South Australian fresh produce trader has avoided legal action, despite being found to have underpaid an Indonesian worker by more than $US42,000 over nine years. The Indonesian man, who worked for the trader at a market in the South Australian capital, Adelaide, recently complained of his underpayment to the Workplace Ombudsman and was then threatened with dismissal. The company has escaped court action but has been ordered to pay back the money. Ombudsman spokesman Craig Bildste...

Indonesia looks inward for economic help

The Indonesian President says his country will turn to its large domestic market to maintain economic growth in the face of an expected slowdown. Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has told the APEC summit in Peru, Jakarta will boost growth with infrastructure projects like power plants, and fight poverty with greater spending on education and health care. He says with global markets weakening and prices soft for Indonesia's exported commodities "sources of growth will come more from our large dome...

Whales returned to ocean after mass stranding

Eleven whales that survived a mass beach stranding on Tasmania's far north-west coast have been returned to the open ocean. Rescuers have been working since early yesterday to save the long-finned pilot whales, the only survivors from a pod of 65 that became beached near Stanley. It is hoped the group will be able to rejoin another migratory pod. Parks and Wildlife Services manager Chris Arthur says 12 whales, up to three metres long, were transported 17 kilometres along the Bass H...

APEC expected to back G20 action plan

Asia-Pacific leaders were to wrap up a summit in which they vowed to form a united front against the world financial crisis, but bold initiatives looked unlikely to emerge. US President George W Bush used his final summit before leaving office to encourage continuity on the part of his successor Barack Obama on issues ranging from North Korean nuclear talks to free trade. "We refuse to accept protectionism in the 21st century," Bush said emphatically on Saturday. His was one of a se...

Police arrest man over child abduction

Police have arrested a man over the kidnapping of two children in Sydney. A six-year-old boy and his two-year-old sister were allegedly taken from their Fairfield home yesterday morning by a man who is known to them. Police said the man allegedly threatened to harm the children before driving off with them in a grey four-wheel drive. A police spokesman says the man was found near his four-wheel drive in Campsie. Police had earlier issued a rare amber alert ABC News