SYDNEY — Disgraced Sydney businessman and former Auburn deputy mayor Salim Mehajer has been jailed for at least two years and three months for lying to the court to further his business interests. The 34-year-old had pleaded not guilty of two counts of perverting the course of justice and one count of making a false statement under oath, but New South Wales District Court Judge Peter Zahra found he falsified documents and claims. Mehajer still faces separate charges in other matters, but for this judge-alone case, he will first be eligible for parole on Jan. 18, 2023. Judge Zahra dismissed medical expert evidence…
Author: zenger.news
MELBOURNE, Australia — A lawyer collected more than AUD 650,000 ($502,573) for a proposed class action promoting unproven Covid-19 treatments and against hotel quarantine, contact tracing, and face masks. Serene Teffaha was also behind a class action filed on behalf of Melbourne public housing tower residents subject to a hard lockdown last year. She cried and said in Victoria’s Supreme Court on April 22 that the state’s legal regulator was trying to “sabotage” her after it canceled her certificate to practice law. Court documents showed Teffaha previously amassed AUD 654,000 ($505,729) in a trust account held by her one-woman practice, Advocate Me. That account was…
BILOELA, Australia — Malcolm Turnbull has flipped his position on releasing a family of Tamil asylum-seekers being detained on Christmas Island. Turnbull was prime minister of Australia when Priya, Nades, and their two young daughters were taken from Biloela in central Queensland and put into detention. More than three years on, he now supports the family being resettled in Australia. Turnbull acknowledged the importance of tough border security policies to stop asylum seekers from making risky journeys to Australia by boat. But he called on new Home Affairs Minister Karen Andrews to exercise some discretion. “There’s a difference between scratching your ear and ripping it off, as…
MELBOURNE, Australia — A Melbourne couple accused of holding a woman as a slave for eight years has been convicted. A jury found the couple guilty on the afternoon of April 23 after a trial lasting more than two months. Their victim, a Tamil woman now in her 60s, had come to the Australian state of Melbourne to care for the couple’s children twice on six-month visas before returning on what was meant to be a one-month trip in 2007. But instead of sending her home when her visa expired, the woman continued to be held in their Mount Waverley home…
MELBOURNE, Australia — Australian Minister for Defense Peter Dutton has declared that Australia will never surrender its sovereignty or compromise its values to appease China. China has threatened to launch fresh action against Australia after the federal government tore up Victoria’s Belt and Road Initiative agreements with Beijing. The Chinese government said it would “reserve the right to take further action” after lodging a formal protest with the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin accused the Scott Morrison government of “political manipulation and bullying” and warned canceling the agreements would make already strained China-Australia relations worse. “We took note of the…
HOBART, Australia — After a bumper week of trans-Tasman travel, Air New Zealand chief executive Greg Foran is hopeful flights over the ditch can help restore the national carrier after its most turbulent year. Air New Zealand witnessed its busiest day on April 23 since the onset of the pandemic, with 42,000 people taking flights with the national carrier. Foran will be one of them. The New Zealand-born former Walmart senior executive is taking his first overseas flight since taking the job, heading to Sydney to meet new family members. “I have three children who live in Australia, and there are three grandchildren there I…
SYDNEY — A team of asteroid-hunting scientists has reconstructed a massive space rock’s 22-million-year journey through the solar system before it slammed into the Earth. The discovery of its origin in space will help astrophysicists and astronomers better understand what Earth-threatening asteroids are made of. Asteroid 2018LA lit up the sky when it disintegrated at about 37,282 miles per hour above the Kalahari Desert in Botswana on June 2, 2018. CCTV camera footage captured the 5.7-ton rock’s final moments, which appeared as a huge fireball hurtling through the atmosphere before impact. “As the asteroid broke up 16.77 miles above ground, it was 20,000…
CANBERRA, Australia — Australia Post‘s entire board is set to be grilled over Liberal Party links at a Senate inquiry into former boss Christine Holgate’s controversial departure. Holgate says she was unlawfully stood down after it emerged she gifted four Cartier watches worth AUD 20,000 ($15,480.1) to executives who had clinched a lucrative deal. Chair Lucio Di Bartolomeo will make his second appearance in the past two weeks on April 27, this time alongside the board’s directors. Tony Nutt, who was the Liberal Party’s former federal and Victorian director and worked in senior roles for John Howard, is set to come…
MELBOURNE, Australia — The government of southeast Australian state Victoria has established a new fund to cover funeral expenses for members of the stolen generations. Aboriginal Affairs Minister Gabrielle Williams, on April 23, announced the AUD 300,000 ($231,976) interim program, which will operate until an AUD 10 million ($7.73 million) broader reparations scheme began later in 2020. The fund, which will be backdated for any death after Jan. 1, 2021, will be accessible until later this year, when the scheme will become available. The program will provide family members with up to AUD 10,000 ($7,732.55) to cover the costs of a funeral, headstone, or plaque,…
KOLKATA, India — Amid reports of daily Covid-19 cases crossing 300,000 and vaccines going out of supply in India, hundreds of vaccines were stolen from a hospital in the northern Indian state of Haryana on April 22. But the thief — who stole 1,710 Covid-19 vaccinations from the P.P. Center General Hospital in Jind, Haryana — later had a change of heart. “Sorry, did not know they were ‘corona medicines’,” the thief scribbled on a piece of paper, attached it to a bag, and left it near a police station around 12 hours after stealing the vials. An attendant in the Jind civil…