SYDNEY, Australia — A new law in Australia gives law enforcement authorities the power to compel tech-industry giants like Apple to create tools that would circumvent the encryption built into their products. The law, the Telecommunications and Other Legislation Amendment (Assistance and Access) Act 2018, applies only to tech products used or sold in Australia. […]
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SYDNEY, Australia — In the soft afternoon light, men and women huddle in groups, their images reflected in floor-to-ceiling mirrors. Some kiss. Some fondle one another. Some touch fingertips, tension sizzling. This isn’t a nightclub or an orgy. The men and women are actors. And they’re taking part in an “intimacy workshop” — part of […]
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MELBOURNE, Australia — “I’ve never done this before,” Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova said as she climbed on a stationary bike in front of a crowd that didn’t feel that much smaller than the one that had watched her 6-7 (3), 6-3, 6-3 upset of fifth-seeded Sloane Stephens at the Australian Open. The fourth-round match ended six minutes […]
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MELBOURNE, Australia — Hundreds of people gathered on the steps of Parliament House in Melbourne on Friday to pay tribute to the second woman killed in an apparently random attack on the city’s streets in less than a year. The woman, Aiia Maasarwe, was a 21-year-old Israeli student. She was killed just after midnight Wednesday […]
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MELBOURNE, Australia — Novak Djokovic, the men’s world No. 1 from Serbia, has been lifting up people from his homeland for years, but not usually like this. At the end of a practice session during last year’s Australian Open, Djokovic walked over to a waist-high fence where fans were packed 10-deep to watch him and […]
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SYDNEY, Australia — It was a young penguin colony, and all but one of the couples were pretty bad parents. They would get distracted from their nests, go for a swim or play, and so neglected eggs were getting cold, likely never to hatch. This was normal for inexperienced penguins, and the aquarium managers didn’t […]
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Jerri-Lynn here. In this short post, Jomo Kwame Sundaram makes the case against the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) – a free trade agreement originally intended to draw the US back into the Pacific region to counter the influence of China. To endorse this agreement would have required Trump effectively to flip flop on […]
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SYDNEY, Australia — There was a hint of mauve peeking out from behind Joel Edgerton’s left eyelid, barely discernible beneath a newsboy cap. “I ran into my van, hit it on the awning,” he said, pointing at his face. But it was the camper van, not his face, that preoccupied the actor and filmmaker as […]
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MELBOURNE, Australia — They’ve found a home in Hollywood, appearing in some of the biggest films and TV shows of the year. But on a balmy December evening, a group of young Asian-Australian actors were relaxing together in a place where they’re rarely recognized: the country where they grew up. Over beers and cigarettes at […]
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SYDNEY, Australia — When Mark Twain steamed into Sydney’s harbor in September 1895, journalists peppered him with questions before he had even stepped off the S.S. Warrimoo. “I am going to write a book on Australia,” he proclaimed. “And I think I ought to start now. You always know so much more of a country […]
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BANGKOK — A young Saudi woman who fled her family and was facing deportation from Thailand won a brief reprieve Monday after she posted a short video from her barricaded hotel room asking for asylum. Thai immigration officials, who had said earlier that they would put her on a plane to Kuwait, allowed her to […]
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The Indian government has authorized 10 central agencies to intercept, monitor, and decrypt data on any computer, sending a shock wave through citizens and privacy watchdogs. Narendra Modi’s government late Thursday broadened the scope of Section 69 of the nation’s IT Act, 2000 to require a subscriber, service provider, or any person in charge of a computer […]
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President Trump’s decision to withdraw roughly 7,000 troops from Afghanistan, along with the resignation of his defense secretary, Jim Mattis, stirred fears in the Asia-Pacific region on Friday that the United States was abandoning its leadership of decades-old alliances crucial to stability and peace since World War II. The surprise announcements came after President Trump […]
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In the lead-up to Christmas 2012, while living in Los Angeles, I set my heart on plum pudding. For once, I was going to eat the hot steamed dessert in the winter (admittedly a warm winter), when it made sense, rather than in Australia’s sweltering summer. Australia has adopted plum pudding, like so many things, […]
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In the 1800s, thousands of Aboriginal Australians were the victims of a terrible trade in the name of science. Anatomists opened their graves and stole their skeletons. After massacres of Aboriginal Australians, police officers sold body parts to museums. Today, many of these bones lie far from home. “Our old people’s remains have been stolen […]
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In the village of Cook’s Bay, on the remote side of the remote island of Erromango, in the remote South Pacific nation of Vanuatu, 1-month-old Joy Nowai was given shots for hepatitis and tuberculosis that were delivered by a flying drone on Monday. It may not have been the first vial of vaccine ever delivered […]
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The #MeToo movement has toppled dozens of prominent men in American society over the past 18 months. Some other English-speaking countries, however, have only seen modest or muted reckonings. As Australia’s ABC News put it in May, “There’s been a steady stream of #MeToo headlines out of the US, but it’s more of a trickle […]
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ImageYael Stone in New York on Thursday.CreditCeleste Sloman for The New York Times Yael Stone is scared. We are in New York City, at a ramen place near her apartment in Astoria, Queens, and Ms. Stone, who stars in “Orange Is the New Black,” has barely touched her soup. She tells me she hasn’t been […]
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SYDNEY, Australia — Australia announced on Saturday that it now recognizes West Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and will move its Tel Aviv embassy once a peace settlement is reached. “Australia now recognizes West Jerusalem, being the seat of the Knesset and many of the institutions of government, is the capital of Israel,” Prime […]
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SYDNEY, Australia — There is a criminal case unfolding in Australia that shall not be named. The defendant is a figure with a global reputation, someone of great influence in the country and the world. The charges are serious and of significant public interest. But publishing news about this case is illegal. Judges in Australia […]
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