Sydney - Tariffs on imported cars would be halved to 5 per cent if Prime Minister Kevin Rudd accepts the recommendations of a panel he appointed to study Australia's domestic automotive industry.

The budget for building a "green car" locally would double to 1 billion Australian dollars (880 million US dollars), Industry Minister Kim Carr said Friday when releasing the report.

"The Rudd Labor government firmly believes that there is every reason to be optimistic about the future of the nation's automotive industry if the right policy decisions are made now," Carr said.

Sydney - Another day, another safety scare for Australia's Qantas Airways Ltd.

Engineers at Singapore's Changi Airport discovered a body panel had fallen off a Qantas jumbo flying between Melbourne and the island republic, a spokeswoman said Friday.

"It had absolutely no flight safety implications," the spokeswoman said.

But there were implications for the passengers from Wednesday's mishap: a six-hour delay before the flight proceeded to London.

Sydney - Leighton Holdings Ltd, Australia's biggest construction company, on Thursday reported a 35-per-cent jump in profits, mostly on a rise in contract mining.

Leighton, which is 55-per-cent owned by Germany's Hochtief AG and delivers around 70 per cent of its profits, said profit rose to 607 million Australian dollars (520 million US dollars) for the year to June 30 on revenue that was up 22 per cent to 14 billion Australian dollars.

Sydney - The wine snobs who said Australians would never forsake bottles with corks for screw-topped ones have been proved wrong.

More than 70 per cent of this year's vintage will go on sale in bottles with metal caps. In fact, corks are now most prevalent in the cheap end of the market rather than in top-shelf wines.

To blunt the shift to metal, Portugal's Amorim has gone on the offensive, saying corks are the more environmentally sound solution because screw tops require four times more greenhouse gases to produce than corks do.

The world's largest producer of corks has a million-dollar advertising campaign running that tugs at the heartstrings of Australian drinkers.

Melbourne, Aug. 12 : Four wildlife groups -- The Australian Society for Kangaroos, the Wildlife Protection Association of Australia, the Kangaroo Protection Coalition and Kangaroo Defenders – have warned that kangaroos are on the brink of extinction in three states -- New South Wales, South Australia and Queensland.

In view of this alarming development, they have called for a moratorium on the commercial and non-commercial slaughter of this iconic Australian animal.

Melbourne, Aug 12 : The parents of nine-year-old boy Yadav Munohur of Indian origin, who went missing last Thursday, have not given up hope of finding him and claimed that he was still alive. Yadav went missing after he ran away from home for being stopped by his mother from going to play in a nearby park.