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The Pyongyang regime is clearly shaken up by President Donald Trump and resorting to clumsy desperation measures.  A letter sent to the "parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia" by the "Foreign Affairs Committee of the DPRK Supreme People's Assembly" was revealed by Julie Bishop, Australia's foreign minister, who called it "unprecedented."  The letter came via the North Korean embassy in Jakarta, their closest diplomatic establishment to Australia, and was accompanied by an open letter to parliaments of the world.  These North Korean entities speak for Kim Jong-un. (Full texts below.) Both documents reveal that North Korea has bought into the image...

Australian gun rights advocates have raised $21,000 to help a farmer get back his firearms and gun license, which were taken after after he used an unloaded gun to protect his family against a knife-wielding trespasser. David Dunstan encountered the trespasser, who was armed with a knife and wooden club, at the back door of his Riverine property in the eastern state of New South Wales last month, according to a GoFundMe page set up to raise money for the farmer. Dunstan then grabbed his unloaded .22-caliber rifle and was able to ward off the man and convince him to...

A letter from North Korea to nations including Australia urging them to distance themselves from the United States has been described by Malcolm Turnbull as "a rant about how bad Donald Trump is". North Korea wrote an open letter to parliaments around the world, a month after US President Donald Trump spoke at the United Nations General Assembly and called North Korean leader Kim Jong-un a "rocket man on a suicide mission for himself and his regime". The letter, from the Foreign Affairs Committee of the rogue state's Supreme People's Assembly, described Pyongyang as a fully-fledged nuclear power and said...

New Zealand is set for a centre-left coalition government led by Labour head Jacinda Ardern.

The Navy's new stealth submarines might not be so stealthy after all. A top executive at the company building the subs has thrown doubt on whether cutting-edge pump-jet propulsion technology will be used as planned. The ultra-quiet technology was a key selling point for the French design that won the Government's competitive evaluation process to build the new submarines at a cost of $50 billion. Jean-Michel Billig, Executive Director of Naval Group, was asked at a naval conference in Sydney earlier this month whether pump-jet propulsion "remained viable" for the Australian submarine. He said it "could" be viable, but also...

The Australian government said Thursday it was prepared to relax its proposed English language test for new citizens as a compromise to get other tough new restrictions on attaining citizenship through Parliament. Immigration and Borden Protection Minister Peter Dutton said his conservative government was prepared to reduce its proposed English-language skill threshold from “competent” to “modest:” a level of basic communication with many mistakes. The change would be from level six to five on the nine-level International English Language Testing System scale. Language skills are not currently tested in the Australian citizenship process although some English is required. ”We believe...

Defence looks set to plough hundreds of millions of dollars into sustaining and upgrading one of its most trouble-prone helicopter models despite the aircraft being grounded over potential safety issues and never seeing a war zone. The attack and reconnaissance Tiger helicopters, which cost about $1.5 billion and more than $800 million to sustain, are supposed to continue to operate into the 2020s. And to maintain operations to 2020, the aircraft needs a mid-life upgrade worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Due to the helicopter’s ongoing problems, such as running seven years late in reaching final operating capability, Defence was...

The mid-air emergency happened an hour out of Perth on Sunday afternoon when its cabin pressure plummeted. Malcolm and Janet Canning said it wasn't just passengers that were scared but airline staff too as the flight plummeted from 32,000 feet to just 10,000. "The panic was escalated because of the behaviour of staff who were screaming and looked tearful," passenger Clare Askew said.

Canada's plan to shop for used Australian fighter jets rather than buy new Boeing Super Hornets may backfire, according to defence experts, because the U.S. government will ultimately have a say on whether a deal proceeds. Even though the FA-18 Hornets are nearly three decades old, require regular corrosion maintenance and are nearing obsolescence, their proposed resale would still require Washington's approval because they are advanced warplanes, originally manufactured in the U.S., a former Royal Australian Air Force officer told CBC News. "I imagine all of it is going for a fair bargain price," said Peter Layton, a fellow at...

THE hunter stalks through the bush in full camouflage gear and combat boots, binoculars in hand, tracking that afternoon’s prey. When the deer is in sight, the hunter waits patiently for the perfect moment to strike, aiming a rifle with skill and firing one, clean shot, straight to the heart. A manicured hand with dark red nails reaches up to adjust the hunter’s hijab, her carefully made-up face relaxes and she whispers an Arabic prayer. Then, Kadeja Assaad sets off to skin and butcher her kill and take it home for her children’s dinner. This is a regular adventure for...

One of the strangest sagas in defense procurement over the last decade has been Canada's meandering road to a new fighter aircraft to replace, or even augment, the country's relatively small fleet of aging CF-18 Hornets. We have talked in great depth about this issue, and although the Super Hornet is clearly the right jet for Canada, a recent trade spat has made it politically unsavory for the Trudeau Administration to order even a handful of the strike fighters as a interim measure before selecting a fighter to replace the entire CF-18 fleet sometime in the future. In the meantime,...

A hole the size of Maine—or larger than the Netherlands, depending on which geographic mass means more to you—has opened up in the Weddell Sea in Antarctica. In an otherwise thick layer of sea ice, still frozen from the Antarctic winter, the hole is an aberration. Ice scientists aren’t sure what’s going on, but they’re all talking about it. “It looks like you just punched a hole in the ice,” atmospheric physicist Kent Moore, of the University of Toronto, told Vice’s Motherboard. Autonomous float deployed in 2015 has resurfaced unexpectedly inside polynya & started transmitting data https://t.co/qnyTYRVoOy @NSF pic.twitter.com/JgfwdDtBoc —...

A government lawyer told Australia’s High Court on Tuesday that it could not take a constitutional ban on dual citizens being elected to Parliament literally when deciding the fates of seven lawmakers. Solicitor-General Stephen Donaghue told the High Court judges that five of the lawmakers, including three government ministers, should not be disqualified from Parliament for breaching the constitution because they did not voluntarily acquire or retain citizenship of another country. The hearing began on Tuesday and is expected to take three days. Under Section 44 (i) of the 116-year-old constitution, “a subject or citizen of a foreign power” is...

Benjamin Faulkner, 26, and Patrick Falte, 27. Two men who sexually abused a child and uploaded photographs to their child pornography website were each sentenced Friday to life in prison. Benjamin Faulkner, 26, and Patrick Falte, 27, pleaded guilty in federal court in Richmond earlier this year to the aggravated sexual abuse of a minor. They were taken into custody after Faulkner, of Canada, and Falte, whose address is unavailable but is from out of state, traveled to an undisclosed address in Hanover County — which had no apparent connection to the offenses — and then to Northern Virginia...

Both men stiffen as VG confronts them. – Go ahead and publish what you know about us now, if you think it’s true, but be prepared for the consequences, says Jon. Next to him in a Brisbane hamburger pub sits Paul. VG has just told them what we’ve uncovered: that they run the world’s largest online forum for child sexual exploitation, “Childs Play”. Jon, the Australian, turns pale. Paul, who is British, flushes crimson. It is January 2017. At this point the two have been running the Childs Play website for three months. Under their supervision, thousands of members have...

snip Another Australian man staying at the Mandalay Bay Resort has spoken about his close call with the Las Vegas gunman - claiming he launched his murderous attack from the room next door. Australian Brian Hodge, who previously worked at Jupiters Casino on the Gold Coast, claimed he was staying in the room next to the shooter on level 32 at the Las Vegas resort. He said he managed to escape the initial horrific scenes inside the hotel but found himself forced to hide in a bush for several hours after the event. “I got outside safely and was hiding...

I arrived in Australian on 1 July, 2017, the first day of the gun amnesty in Australia. I will be returning to the United States on 26 September at the tail end of the three month amnesty.This amnesty is completely different from the mandatory confiscation/turn-in that happened in 1996. In 1996 people were paid to turn in firearms. Some types of guns were effectively outlawed for nearly everyone. Perhaps the strictest firearms regulatory scheme in Western Civilization was implemented on the wave of emotion promoted by the media and John Howard.In 2017, some sanity is returning to firearms regulation...

A three-month amnesty in Australia has seen more than 51,000 banned guns surrendered to authorities. A homemade machine gun, a rocket launcher and a mini-pistol were among the weapons handed in. They will now all be destroyed. Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has said that maintaining strict gun laws is key to preventing a Las Vegas-style mass shooting in the country. "We've seen the shocking tragedy in Las Vegas," he said. "This killer there had a collection of semi-automatic weapons, which a person in his position would simply not be able to acquire in Australia." Semi-automatic rifles and guns were...

Israeli firm Rafael took the opportunity afforded by the Pacific International Maritime Exposition in Sydney to internationally launch its latest variant of the Typhoon remote-controlled naval gun, the Mk 30c. The ‘c’ represents compact, an indication that size is an important feature of this gun that weighs around 1t. Meanwhile, the ‘30’ refers to the ATK Mk44 Bushmaster II 30mm cannon that the system hosts. However, an important evolution on the Typhoon Mk-30c is the ability to change the gun barrel to 20mm, 25mm or 30mm. The interchangeable barrel, which also encompasses changes to the fire control system to update...

Here’s a thought experiment: what if, suddenly, all the world’s submarines could no longer submerge? There they would be, on the surface of the ocean, slow, unwieldy, with no effective protection against attack. They’d be sitting ducks. Fanciful? Perhaps not. With a high probability, something very like this awaits the world’s submarines within the next couple of decades. Submarines are classic stealth predators. They have only one big trick — their invisibility — and they rely on it utterly to mount a successful attack. In that respect, they are no different from sabre-tooth tigers or trapdoor spiders. And like such...