Sydney - Australian shares ga

Sydney - HIV infection rates have crept up in Australia because funding for spreading the safe-sex message has fallen, a report released Wednesday said.

There were 27,331 HIV cases and 10,230 cases of full-blown AIDS reported in the year to December 2007 - a 50-per-cent increase on the rate eight years earlier, the National Centre in HIV Epidemiology and Clinical Research report said.

While homosexual men still account for the bulk of new cases, the incidence among heterosexual men is rising. One reason given is that cashed-up miners in Western Australia and in Queensland on the opposite coast are holidaying abroad and returning with infections picked up in Asia.

Sydney - Australia's strong economy and sound banking system are well-cushioned against shocks from the US financial meltdown, market analysts said Wednesday.

Reserve Bank of Australia governor Glenn Stevens said Australia would weather the global financial storm.

"The corporate sector is quite liquid and profitability is generally pretty good too. As we see it, the corporate balance sheet of corporate Australia is very strong," Stevens said.

"There are some entities with high leverage and complexity and those entities are under pressure at the moment. We all know who they are."

Sydney, September 17 : Russian airline Qantas had dropped its plan to offer live Internet access on its A380 planes from next month.

The airline’s decision comes in the wake of a controversy over the surfing of porn websites by American Airlines’ passengers.

Qantas has now planned to offer only a limited selection of "cached internet content", and access to web-based email and chat services.

The airline has refused to give further details of what content will be included other than qantas.com, or how much the service would cost.

A spokeswoman for Qantas said that the internet plans have been hit by "logistical and regulatory issues" encountered by its connectivity provider, OnAir.

Sydney, Sept. 17 : A taxi driver of Bangladeshi origin has been found guilty of raping an 18-year-old woman in his taxi while she was on her way home after a night out with friends.

A Sydney Morning Herald report today said that 23-year-old Mohammad Kowsar Ali was declared guilty by a jury of nine men and three women after deliberations lasting two hours and ten minutes.

According to the report, the girl, who was a virgin, was only identified as Jay and had recently moved to Sydney.

At the time of the attack, "Jay" believed she was gay. She had spent a night out at the Flinders Hotel in Darlinghurst with girlfriends and had travelled home alone to Oyster Bay at 12.30 a. m. on Sunday, November 4, last year.

Sydney  - Malcolm Turnbull, elected Tuesday as the leader of Australia's opposition Liberal Party, is the conservative politician from central casting: well-groomed, well-educated, well-connected and, well, rich.

He's the wealthiest member of the Canberra Parliament, thanks to a career in business that saw him start information-technology companies and rise to the top at the local arm of the US-based brokerage Goldman Sachs Group Inc.

His years as a master of the corporate universe came after a spell in journalism and as a lawyer.

Turnbull, elected to Parliament in 2004, was environment minister when John Howard unsuccessfully sought a fifth election victory in November.