Paul Pearson is a simple man with a simple dream. It is a humble dream; an achievable dream; a dream he shares, by his estimation, with “hundreds and thousands” of other noble dreamers. It is the dream of a humongous bong. Pearson lives in the small town of Woodenbong, Australia, a town that, inexplicably, does […]
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SYDNEY, Australia — They are a collection of oversized, sometimes bizarre, objects that draw roadtrippers to country towns, known as Australia’s “Big Things” — the Big Banana, the Big Pineapple, the Big Lobster, to name a few. Now, a resident of the New South Wales town of Woodenbong wants to add another: a big wooden […]
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SYDNEY, Australia — Money raised for a teenager who shot to worldwide fame after smashing an egg on the head of an Australian far-right politician will go toward the victims of the New Zealand mosque shootings, according to his fund-raising page. On Tuesday morning, a GoFundMe page for Will Connolly, now commonly known as Egg […]
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CHRISTCHURCH, New Zealand — New Zealand’s prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, on Monday ordered an inquiry into what government officials could have known about the gunman in Friday’s massacre before he carried out the attack that left 50 people dead at two mosques in Christchurch. “The purpose of this inquiry is to look at what all […]
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CHRISTCHURCH, New Zealand — When the prime minister announced plans to ban semiautomatic rifles following Friday’s mass shootings, it seemed to be the bold response that many New Zealanders wanted — until the country’s attorney general backpedaled almost immediately and said that might not be the government’s final decision. Even after a massacre that left […]
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An anti-immigration lawmaker in Australia who has been criticized for blaming Muslim immigration for Friday’s New Zealand shootings struck a teenager who smashed an egg on his head in Melbourne on Saturday. In video footage on the Facebook page of the senator, Fraser Anning, the teenager can be seen approaching him as he speaks to […]
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On Friday, an Australian white supremacist committed a monstrous act of violence against Muslim worshippers in New Zealand. The attack, which he livestreamed, was steeped in the kind of global iconography and discourse that characterizes modern white supremacy. The assailant played a song about convicted Serbian war criminal Radovan Karadzic as he approached the Al […]
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On Friday, a gunman stormed a pair of mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, showering worshippers with gunfire, and livestreaming the country’s deadliest mass killing since 1943. “I was able to hear the big sound of the shooting,” one survivor, Mohan Ibrahim, told the Canadian broadcaster CBC. Ibrahim fled through back entrance, people dropping around him. […]
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Australian Senator Fraser AnningScreenshot: YouTube Well, that didn’t take long. Less than 24 hours after a crazed gunman stormed two mosques in New Zealand killing some 49 people, an Australian senator sounding a lot like a damn senator from the U.S. has blames the mass shooting of muslims….on, you guessed it…Muslims. Advertisement Shortly after the […]
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The shootings that killed at least 49 people at two mosques in New Zealand on Friday have placed new scrutiny on New Zealand’s gun laws and sparked a fervent debate about whether they were a factor in the gunman’s decision to carry out his attack there. The police have described the gunman as a man […]
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WELLINGTON, New Zealand — A gunman opened fire on two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, on Friday, killing 49 people in an afternoon slaughter that in part was broadcast live online after the publication of a white supremacist manifesto. Jacinda Ardern, New Zealand’s prime minister, said that in addition to those killed, 20 were seriously […]
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MELBOURNE, Australia — George Pell, an Australian cardinal who was the Vatican’s chief financial officer and an adviser to Pope Francis, was sentenced to six years in prison on Wednesday, with no chance for parole for three years and eight months, for molesting two boys after Sunday Mass in 1996. The cardinal was convicted on […]
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MELBOURNE, Australia — George Pell, an Australian cardinal who was the Vatican’s chief financial officer and an adviser to Pope Francis, is scheduled to be sentenced on Wednesday for molesting two boys after a Sunday Mass in 1996. The cardinal was convicted on five counts in December, making him the most senior Catholic official — […]
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SYDNEY, Australia — Despite a series of sexual abuse scandals stretching back decades, Australia’s Roman Catholic Church displays a veneer of strength. Across Australia, more Catholic parishes have stayed open than in other countries that have weathered abuse scandals, and Catholic schools are still filled with children — owing largely to the financial and legal […]
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Twitter Australia is a terrifying continent. It’s had a history as messy as America when it comes to dealing with its native peoples and forming a modern nation, but one thing it has over the United States is a terrifying litany of animals that can kill you. There are spiders. So, so many spiders. And […]
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Fifteen years ago, a movie fan could go into any of Blockbuster’s 9,000 stores and walk out with a Steven Spielberg hit. Now, options are limited for those who want to rent a hard copy of “Saving Private Ryan” from somewhere other than a library. There are only two Blockbuster stores left in the world. […]
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Fifteen years ago, a movie fan could go into any of Blockbuster’s 9,000 stores and walk out with a Steven Spielberg hit. Now, options are limited for those who want to rent a hard copy of “Saving Private Ryan” from somewhere other than a library. There are only two Blockbuster stores left in the world. […]
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SYDNEY, Australia — An oil spill from a cargo ship that ran aground near a World Heritage site in the South Pacific is spreading, alarming environmentalists and government officials about the threat to the delicate local ecosystem and to people living there. The Hong Kong-flagged ship, Solomon Trader, was carrying more than 770 tons of […]
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In the decade I spent reporting from China, the most immediate obstacles to journalism were often physical. They took many forms: barricades blocking access to certain places; men in military buzz cuts trailing me; plainclothes thugs stationed in front of the homes of people I planned to interview; and of course, the threat of police […]
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Why don’t streaming services like Hulu or Netflix go bankrupt? After all, most businesses couldn’t survive if customers paid a flat subscription fee each month for all they could eat or all the gasoline they could use. Yet you can pay Netflix $8.99 and watch one movie or all 342 episodes (so far) of “Grey’s […]
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