Queensland

Swimming Australia said Friday that Queensland state will host the Pan Pacific championships in August 2014 at a venue to be determined. The Pan Pacific titles are held every four years over four days in a 50-meter pool and feature about 300 swimmers from the United States, Canada, Japan, Brazil, New Zealand and Australia. The 11th edition of the titles were held in Irvine, California, in 2010. Australia last hosted the PanPacs in 1999 in Sydney as a test event for the 2000 Olympics.

Swimming Australia said Friday that Queensland state will host the Pan Pacific championships in August 2014 at a venue to be determined. The Pan Pacific titles are held every four years over four days in a 50-meter pool and feature about 300 swimmers from the United States, Canada, Japan, Brazil, New Zealand and Australia. The 11th edition of the titles were held in Irvine, California, in 2010. Australia last hosted the PanPacs in 1999 in Sydney as a test event for the 2000 Olympics.

SYDNEY - A bungee jumping, ostrich-riding British charity worker was named the winner yesterday of what's been dubbed the "Best Job in the World" - a six-month contract to serve as caretaker of a tropical Australian island. Ben Southall bested nearly 35,000 applicants from around the world for the dream assignment to swim, explore, and relax on Hamilton Island in the Great Barrier Reef while writing a blog to promote the area. The 34-year-old was selected for the 150,000 Australian dollar ($111,000)

PERTH, Australia — Wildfires tore across the outskirts of an Australian city yesterday, destroying at least 41 homes and damaging 19 others, authorities said. One firefighter was reportedly injured. Two fires fanned by hot summer winds were burning in forested areas to the north and southeast of Perth in Western Australia state, the Fire and Emergency Services Authority said. The fires in Australia’s far west come as huge areas of the east coast recover from a huge cyclone that struck in Queensland state last week and from flooding from drenching rains in Queensland and in southern...

SYDNEY — An American man convicted in the drowning death of his wife during a honeymoon scuba dive on the Great Barrier Reef was released yesterday from an Australian jail. But he was not immediately deported to the United States, where officials want to try him for the death. Immigration officials escorted Gabe Watson from the Queensland state jail, where he served an 18-month sentence, to an immigration detention center this morning. He will be held there until Australia — a staunch opponent of capital punishment — receives assurances that he will not face the...

BRISBANE, Australia — A swollen river submerged bridges and inundated homes and stores yesterday in Australia’s already sodden Queensland state as more heavy rain added to the country’s worst flooding in decades. Maryborough became the latest of some 40 towns to be partly awash as a river running through it burst its banks. Downstream, residents of Gympie were frantically sandbagging in anticipation of flooding there today. The latest flooding was not as bad as in recent weeks, when entire towns were submerged beneath an inland sea the size of France and Germany...

SYDNEY - Red Outback grit shrouded Australia’s largest city yesterday, blotting out such landmarks as the Sydney Opera House and Harbor Bridge and reaching underground to coat subway stations. The country’s worst dust storm in 70 years diverted planes and produced an eerie orange sky. The haze was visible from space, appearing as a huge brown smudge in satellite photographs of Australia. By afternoon, the dust had moved from Sydney, north toward the Queensland state capital of Brisbane, where the sky was clogged into the evening.

SYDNEY - Officials conceded yesterday that Australia's welfare system failed a girl who was removed from a remote Aboriginal community after being sexually abused at age 7, then gang raped at age 10 when she was returned to live in the town. The case has drawn outrage in Australia after it was revealed that nine males who pleaded guilty to the second rape were paroled or had their sentences suspended by a judge who said the victim had probably consented to having sex with them.

PERTH, Australia — Wildfires tore across the outskirts of an Australian city yesterday, destroying at least 41 homes and damaging 19 others, authorities said. One firefighter was reportedly injured. Two fires fanned by hot summer winds were burning in forested areas to the north and southeast of Perth in Western Australia state, the Fire and Emergency Services Authority said. The fires in Australia’s far west come as huge areas of the east coast recover from a huge cyclone that struck in Queensland state last week and from flooding from drenching rains...

CANBERRA, Australia -- Children meandered around their parents' ankles. A man, likely a hunter, dashed through the mud. Somebody dragged a dead animal along the shores of a lake. Now the footprints they left some 20,000 years ago are giving a fresh perspective on the lives of Australian Aborigines. Since an Aboriginal park ranger stumbled upon the first print in 2003 in Mungo National Park, 500 miles west of Sydney, archeologists helped by local Aborigines have excavated 457 other prints from the region's shifting sands.

CAIRNS, Australia — A massive cyclone struck northeastern Australia early today, tearing off roofs, toppling trees, and cutting electricity to thousands — the most powerful storm to hit the area in nearly a century. Cyclone Yasi roared ashore at the small resort town of Mission Beach in Queensland, battering the coast known to tourists as the gateway to the Great Barrier Reef with heavy rain and howling winds gusting to 186 miles per hour. “Vegetation has been reduced to sticks,’’ said Sergeant Dan Gallagher, Mission Beach officer in charge.

BRISBANE, Australia — A swollen river submerged bridges and inundated homes and stores yesterday in Australia’s already sodden Queensland state as more heavy rain added to the country’s worst flooding in decades. Maryborough became the latest of some 40 towns to be partly awash as a river running through it burst its banks. Downstream, residents of Gympie were frantically sandbagging in anticipation of flooding there today. The latest flooding was not as bad as in recent weeks, when entire towns were submerged beneath an inland sea the size of...

SYDNEY — An American man convicted in the drowning death of his wife during a honeymoon scuba dive on the Great Barrier Reef was released yesterday from an Australian jail. But he was not immediately deported to the United States, where officials want to try him for the death. Immigration officials escorted Gabe Watson from the Queensland state jail, where he served an 18-month sentence, to an immigration detention center this morning. He will be held there until Australia — a staunch opponent of capital punishment — receives assurances that he will...

SYDNEY - Red Outback grit shrouded Australia’s largest city yesterday, blotting out such landmarks as the Sydney Opera House and Harbor Bridge and reaching underground to coat subway stations. The country’s worst dust storm in 70 years diverted planes and produced an eerie orange sky. The haze was visible from space, appearing as a huge brown smudge in satellite photographs of Australia. By afternoon, the dust had moved from Sydney, north toward the Queensland state capital of Brisbane, where the sky was clogged into the evening.

HOBART, Australia - A cat named Clyde was reunited with his owner yesterday after a mysterious three-year odyssey in which the long-haired Himalayan strayed 2,400 miles into the Australian Outback. Ashleigh Sullivan, 19, said she had given up hope of finding Clyde after he vanished when he was about 1 year old from her home near Hobart city in Australia’s island state of Tasmania. “I’m positive he remembers. He’s not acting like he’s suddenly appeared somewhere and is frantic,’’ Sullivan said as she tearfully held her contented cat. A nurse...

PORT DOUGLAS, Australia - “Kiss the toad, mate!’’ Kiss a toad? I had come to tropical Queensland to get close to Australia’s wildlife, but this wasn’t exactly what I had in mind. Tradition is tradition, however, at the Ironbar’s nightly cane toad races, and if the race director said it was good luck for “jockeys’’ to peck their warty steeds, who was I to argue? I bestowed a kiss on the back of my toad and loaded him into the starting gate - an open cylinder in the middle of a rickety, circular table.

HOBART, Australia - A cat named Clyde was reunited with his owner yesterday after a mysterious three-year odyssey in which the long-haired Himalayan strayed 2,400 miles into the Australian Outback. Ashleigh Sullivan, 19, said she had given up hope of finding Clyde after he vanished when he was about 1 year old from her home near Hobart city in Australia’s island state of Tasmania. “I’m positive he remembers. He’s not acting like he’s suddenly appeared somewhere and is frantic,’’ Sullivan said as she tearfully held her contented cat. A nurse found Clyde wandering at a...

CAIRNS, Australia — A massive cyclone struck northeastern Australia early today, tearing off roofs, toppling trees, and cutting electricity to thousands — the most powerful storm to hit the area in nearly a century. Cyclone Yasi roared ashore at the small resort town of Mission Beach in Queensland, battering the coast known to tourists as the gateway to the Great Barrier Reef with heavy rain and howling winds gusting to 186 miles per hour. “Vegetation has been reduced to sticks,’’ said Sergeant Dan Gallagher, Mission Beach officer in charge.

SYDNEY - A bungee jumping, ostrich-riding British charity worker was named the winner yesterday of what's been dubbed the "Best Job in the World" - a six-month contract to serve as caretaker of a tropical Australian island. Ben Southall bested nearly 35,000 applicants from around the world for the dream assignment to swim, explore, and relax on Hamilton Island in the Great Barrier Reef while writing a blog to promote the area. The 34-year-old was selected for the 150,000 Australian dollar ($111,000)

Orpheus Lost By Janette Turner HospitalNorton, 358 pp., $24.95 Janette Turner Hospital's new novel, "Orpheus Lost," dramatizes harsh, current war headlines through the forebodingly resonant framework of Greek legend. Her hot-blooded, edgy characters scramble for survival and love in a world at odds with imagination, intelligence, and integrity. Hospital's 12th book, like much of her work, is characterized by a rich, varied appreciation of place. Leela-May Magnolia Moore meets Mishka Bartok one day in the Harvard Square T station.