Oceania News

A 30-year-old Australian man has been killed in a fall down a mountainside in New Zealand's lower South Island.

MYER chief executive Bernie Brookes says the department store's ''Project Batman'' refurbishment program has generated an immediate lift in sales at stores receiving the facelift as the company gears up for Christmas trading.

CLYDE GRAF: Anti-1080 film maker. Hamilton film maker Clyde Graf, one of the family duo that claims the moral high ground in the anti 1080 campaign, has convictions for bank robbery.

The family of two Australian diggers lost in Papua New Guinea during World War II have finally laid their loved ones to rest.

Indonesia's censors have banned Balibo, an Australian-made film about five foreign journalists who were killed by Indonesian troops during the 1975 invasion of East Timor.

Two people have been arrested following the aggravated robbery of four tourists near Rotorua on Monday.

A teenager whose night of heavy drinking ended with the death of his best friend in a road crash has been jailed for five years and has no hope of regaining a driver's licence until he turns 26.

A disease-carrying mosquito previously confined to the Torres Strait has been found on mainland Australia.

RISING SLOWLY: New Zealand retail spending climbed 1.2 percent in November from the same month of 2008, according to Paymark.

The tsunami waves which struck Samoa and American Samoa, killing more than 200 people including a British toddler, were more than four storeys high when they slammed into the coastline, scientists have revealed.

A ton of high-profile projects have been added to the list of films that will be playing at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival.

A man who dove face-first into an extremely venomous, peanut-sized jellyfish in the waters off northeast Australia was flown to a hospital intensive care unit, officials said Friday.

The Central Land Council, which administers Aboriginal land in the nation's arid centre, said the corpses were poisoning water supplies, describing scenes of mass carnage.

Firepower boss Tim Johnston has so far avoided spending time behind bars despite a warrant being issued for his arrest yesterday.

Penny Wong ... sat through most of the marathon debate. The Federal Government will make a third attempt at winning Senate approval for its emissions trading scheme when Parliament resumes sitting in February.

Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said on Thursday his government should serve out its three-year term but would not rule out calling an early election to end a political deadlock over climate-change policy.

The search resumes on Wednesday for the remains of the New Zealand rocket launched from off the Coromandel Peninsula on Monday.

Two South Pacific nations, American Samoa and Kiribati, have been crowned the fattest countries in the world -and New Zealanders have also hit the fat top ten.

Wool Services International posted a loss of $4.38 million after tax, compared to last year's profit of $2.39 million, partly because tax authorities declined a 2007 deduction, which cost it $1.685m and because it took a $3.209m hit on rationalising wool scours.

New research has proven what many Aussies long suspected - Australia is a magnet for New Zealand's most unskilled workers.