Australia's largest pleasure cruise company said on Thursday it would continue to insist that young adult passengers be accompanied by parents even though the policy has been branded discriminatory.

A Bangladeshi toddler separated this week from her conjoined twin sister was talking and behaving normally Thursday after waking from a medically induced coma, the head of the surgery team said.

Australia must abolish policies that discriminate against Aborigines in its quest to lift its indigenous population out of Third World poverty, the head of an international human rights group said Wednesday.

When Australian aid worker Danielle Noble first saw conjoined twins Trishna and Krishna in a Bangladesh orphanage, everyone assumed they would die.

Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's personal rating with voters has fallen in the past two weeks as he struggles to stem a rise in boatpeople arrivals, but his government remains ahead.

Twin Bangladeshi girls who were joined at the top of their heads and shared blood vessels and brain tissue were successfully separated Tuesday after 25 hours of delicate surgery, hospital officials said.

A marathon and risky operation to separate Bangladeshi twins joined at the head, which they have only a one in four chance of both surviving, was going well Monday, surgeons said.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd issued an historic apology Monday to thousands of impoverished British children shipped to Australia with the promise of a better life, only to suffer abuse and neglect thousands of miles from home.

Britain will apologize for shipping thousands of poor children, often without the knowledge of their parents, to its former colonies during the 20th century, the government said on Sunday.

Australia's government has agreed to exclude agriculture from its emissions trading scheme in a major concession to the opposition to try to get carbon trading laws through parliament, a minister said on Sunday.