Two executives at a banknote-making firm part-owned by Australia's central bank have been suspended over a police probe into alleged bribery and kickbacks, officials said.

Australia has issued “catastrophic” alerts after record-breaking temperatures and wild lightning storms sparked more than 100 fires across the country, officials said Saturday.

Australian firefighters battled dozens of bush blazes on Friday as record-breaking hot weather sparked “catastrophic” warnings in two states, just months after the country's worst ever wildfire disaster.

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.