Reuters - Growing speculation that Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard could be dumped by her party before the end of the year forced senior ministers to rally behind her Friday after a disastrous start to 2012.

Reuters - Australian Gina Rinehart could soon become the world's wealthiest woman after amassing an $18 billion fortune from mining and media investments, Forbes magazine says in its latest list of the wealthiest people in Australia.

AP - A military inquiry on Thursday rejected an Australian soldier's allegations that a comrade died unnecessarily during a gunbattle in Afghanistan because the U.S.-led coalition provided inadequate air support.

AP - Police have arrested six demonstrators while pulling down tents and posters at the Occupy Sydney protest site in Australia's largest city.

AP - Hollywood director James Cameron is planning to move onto a New Zealand farm.

AP - The Australian mother of a 10-year-old disabled girl who was murdered by her American stepmother in North Carolina said Tuesday she has no idea what became of her daughter's ashes since the child's father brought them to Australia.

Reuters - Defense planners urged Australia's military on Monday to maintain a stronger presence in the country's north and northwest to guard the booming resource industry and be better placed to respond to challenges from Asia and the Indian Ocean.

AP - Australia is reviewing its timetable for buying 12 of the troubled F-35 Joint Strike Fighters between 2015 and 2017 after the Unites States announced a rethink of its own purchase schedule for the futuristic warplanes.

AP - A clash between protesters and Australian police that forced bodyguards to rush Prime Minister Julia Gillard out of an event appears to have been set off by information released by one of Gillard's own aides.

AP - Conservation staff in New Zealand have put down 33 stranded whales after several attempts to refloat them failed.