Councillor Khal Asfour has been re-elected Mayor for a second term in the City of Canterbury Bankstown overnight, defeating Councillor Glen Waud by 9 votes to 4. “I would like to thank my fellow Councillors for the trust they have continued to place in me, to lead our City over the final year of this Council’s term,” Mayor Asfour said. …

Iranian authorities have now confirmed the nation is detaining three Australians, with one of them accused of spying for a third country. The details are contained in a brief report from the semi-official Fars news agency, which contains the first information from within Iran about the detention of three Australians. It quotes an Iranian judiciary official saying two Australian travel bloggers …

Cardinal George Pell has taken his legal fight to overturn his child sex abuse convictions to the High Court of Australia. A 12-page application seeking leave to appeal has been lodged, following the Victorian Court of Appeal’s dismissal of Pell’s appeal in August. The 78-year-old former adviser to the Pope is currently serving a maximum six-year prison sentence for the sexual …

A man has died while trying to avoid a swooping magpie in a park near Wollongong which has a history of attacks. The 76-year-old was riding his bicycle in Woonona yesterday morning when the bird started to swoop so he rode off the path in an effort to escape. He then crashed into a fence post, was thrown to the …

HWPL Australia hosted peace conferences in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, to raise awareness about peace culture and the D.P.C.W Sydney, September 8, 2019 – For the first time in the 5-years’ of Heavenly Culture World Peace and Restoration of Light’s (HWPL) World Peace Summit, the Australian branch of this peace NGO hosted Legislate Peace events, aligned to the summit held …

Queensland remains a “tinderbox” despite favourable bushfire conditions, with Gold Coast hinterland residents on alert while firefighters work to control a blaze. Firefighters from Victoria, South Australia, Western Australia and New Zealand have arrived in Queensland to give weary crews a break after days of fighting fires that have razed homes and bushland. Meanwhile, on Saturday at 1pm, the New …

Gladys Liu’s Liberal Party branch pushed an unusual motion within the Liberal Party to relax foreign investment laws prior to her becoming a federal MP. At the 2017 Victorian Liberal Party conference, the party’s Eastern Multicultural Branch, of which Ms Liu was the president, proposed a motion that would make foreign investment in agribusiness and agricultural land easier without approval …

A push by the federal government to impose an immediate ban on mobile phones in Australian classrooms has divided education professionals across the country. The technology crackdown, raised by Federal Education Minister Dan Tehan, is intended to curb cyberbullying and follows Victoria’s decision to introduce a phone ban in all state schools from next year. Mr Tehan met with state and territory …

Detectives initially charged 17 people in May over their alleged links to a fake business called Red Roses Family Day Care. It was alleged the illegitimate company accumulated the sum in rebates in ten months alone by exploiting the federal government’s childcare subsidy scheme. Police have claimed the alleged scam could be as many as 100 childcare fraud syndicates operating …

Gladys Liu’s association with Chinese figures who were deemed a security risk was the subject of an ASIO investigation even before she entered Parliament or became a Liberal Party candidate. The ABC understands ASIO Director-General Duncan Lewis advised that then-prime minister Malcolm Turnbull, based on the guest list, should not attend a “meet and greet” organised by Ms Liu in …