Australian anti-immigration firebrand Pauline Hanson said Thursday she plans to run in this year's general election, saying politicians were out of touch with how ordinary Australians feel.

Australia on Wednesday admitted for the first time that a man found hanged in a Tel Aviv jail worked for the Israeli government, but stopped short of confirming he was a Mossad spy.

Australia's weather went “on steroids” over a summer that saw an unprecedented heat wave, bushfires and floods, the climate chief said Monday, warning that global warming would only make things worse.

Australia will set up an anti-gang task force based on a United States Federal Bureau of Investigation model to combat “the gangs and guns on our streets,” Prime Minister Julia Gillard said Sunday.

Militant anti-whaling group Sea Shepherd said Saturday the Japanese fleet had left the Antarctic whale sanctuary and appeared to be heading home with its smallest catch yet, hailing an “enormously successful” harassment campaign.

The Australian government's pension fund for public servants Thursday announced it would sell off its AU$222 (US$228) million holdings in tobacco companies following the nation's move toward plain packaging.

Australian police on Thursday announced their largest ever seizure of methamphetamine, an illicit drug known as ice, that was smuggled into Sydney hidden in shipments of chemicals from China.

Australia's highest court on Wednesday narrowly rejected the case of two Muslim activists who argued they had a constitutional free-speech right to send offensive letters to families of Australian soldiers killed in Afghanistan.

Japanese whalers and militant conservationists have again been involved in dangerous clashes in icy waters off Antarctica, with both sides accusing the other of ramming their vessels.

The Pentagon's director of the F-35 program said Monday the next-generation U.S. fighter jet could be back in the air within a fortnight after an engine crack forced the grounding of test flights.