he Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard has made a surprise visit to Afghanistan, seeking assurances from President Hamid Karzai that he is doing all he can to halt insider attacks.  She met the Afghan President in Kabul while also visiting Australian troops for a barbecue at their base at Tarin Kowt. Her office said the Australian leader raised concerns about the so-called green-on-blue attacks in which uniformed Afghans turn their weapons against their international allies. NATO has struggled to counter them and assaults have spiked this year.

Himachal Pradesh  Gujarat

 South Australian Prime Minister Jay Weatherill has said that uranium sale to New Delhi from his country would be a vital move in reducing carbon levels globally.

In his address to the Australia India Business Council -South Australia, Weatherill said that nuclear power

is crucial to lifting people out of poverty in a way that helped the environment.

Weatherill, who is set to visit India on a trade mission in November, said that India's needs in continuing its
economic transformation aligned with South Australia's capacity to supply it with uranium.

Authorities in Sri Lanka say they have arrested 131 would-be asylum seekers heading to Australia. Naval officials say they have seized the fishing trawler being used for the people-smuggling operation. The navy detected the boat carrying 109 people off the east coast and has escorted it to the port of Trincomalee. 

A police spokesman says they have arrested another 22 people suspected of preparing to leave the island illegally on a different trawler. The number of Sri Lankans detained on charges of illegally trying to leave the country has reached more than 250 over the last week.

Sri Lanka Navy said that they had intercepted a multi-day fishing trawler illegally headed for Australia in the seas 25 nautical miles off Kalkudah on Saturday .

All the persons onboard the intercepted trawler that included 109 males were brought to the Trincomalee Naval Base and handed over to the Criminal Investigation Department for further investigations .

The arrest, the highest of such kind, is the third made by the Navy within five days in Sri Lanka’s Eastern waters.

Another 22 people suspected of preparing to leave the island illegally on a different trawler, from Chilaw were also arrested by the Sri Lankan police in a separate incident Sunday morning.

The arrested persons are from Chilaw, Kalmunai, Kalpitiya, Thalawakelle and Valachchenai.

n Australian man, who killed his Indian girlfriend and her two siblings, was today sentenced to life with a minimum 35 years of jail without parole. This is the longest sentence handed down in Queensland history.

Supreme Court judge John Byrne handed down the life sentence to 42 year old Massimo Max Sica. The judge described the killings as brutal, horrific crimes in the worst category of murder.

Earlier on Tuesday, a jury found Sica guilty of killing his former 24-year-old girlfriend Neelma Singh, and her siblings -- Kunal, 18 and Sidhi, 12, in 2003. The three were found dead in the spa of their parents' home at Bridgeman Downs, on Brisbane's northern fringe.Sica showed no emotion as the sentence was read out.
Sica was sentenced to serve a life sentence for eachvictim, and Justice Byrne said he must not be released for 35 years unless under exceptional circumstances.

Australia's parliament has voted down an asylum bill after fierce debate reignited by the sinking of two boats in the past week. The bill would have reopened a detention centre on Nauru and allowed the government to send asylum-seekers to Malaysia for processing. 

The bill passed in the lower house but was defeated in the Senate. Meanwhile dozens of people rescued after Wednesday's sinking have been transferred to Christmas Island. Following the vote, Prime Minister Julia Gillard announced that an expert group led by a former defence chief would be formed to look into possible solutions to the impasse.

Australian police today said that early reports suggested up to 75 asylum seekers had died after their boat capsized off remote Christmas Island en route from Sri Lanka. Western Australia police commissioner Karl O'Callaghan said a large number of the 200 on board were feared to have perished. 

O'Callaghan told reporters that there were about 200 refugees on board and currently there are about 40 on the hull and the rest are in the water. He said the boat capsized in Indonesian waters 120 nautical miles north of Australia's Christmas Island. O'Callaghan said the rescue operation will go well into the night.

South Africa, Australia and New Zealand will host the biggest radio telescope ever built. The nations belonging to the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) organisation took the decision at a meeting today. The 1.5 billion euro SKA's huge fields of antennas will sweep the sky for answers to the major outstanding questions in astronomy. 

They will probe the early Universe, test Einstein's theory of gravity and even search for alien intelligent life. The project aims to produce a radio telescope with a collecting area of one million square metres - equivalent to about 200 football pitches.

Australian High Commissioner to India Peter Varghese called on Minister for Steel Beni Prasad Verma in New Delhi on Thursday and discussed bilateral issues related to steel business. During the meeting, specific issues related to Steel Authority of India Limited, SAIL, and National Mineral Development Corporation, NMDC, were also discussed. 

Mr Verma asked Indian steel companies to explore the possibility of acquisition of cooking coal assets in Australia. The Steel Minister urged the Australian High Commissioner to look into problems faced by Indian steel companies scouting(searching new things) for raw material resources in Australia. 

The Australian High Commissioner agreed to provide all necessary support to Indian companies exploring raw material assets in Australia.

India and Australia have agreed to further strengthen their existing bilateral ties in the field of skill development and education. This was decided in a meeting between the minister of Overseas Indian Affairs Vayalar Ravi and Australian minister for Immigration and Citizenship Chris Bowen in New Delhi today. Talking to reporters after the meeting, the minister said that talks with Mr. Bowen were fruitful and both sides decided to increase coordination in the field of skill development and education. Mr. Ravi said that Mr. Bowen has assured him of complete security to Indian students studying in Australia.

Replying to a query on the steps taken by the Australian government for the security of Indian students, Mr Bowen said that his government is making all efforts to ensure their security. He also welcomed more Indian students to study in Australia.

The Reserve Bank of Australia has cut its key rate to 3.75 per cent from 4.25 per cent. Most analysts say the interest rate cut was more-than-expected because economic conditions were somewhat weaker than forecast. There have been increasing signs that Australia's economy is being hit by a slowdown in global growth and demand for its resources.

The Reserve Bank of Australia in a statement said the decision is based on information received over the past few months that suggests that economic conditions have been somewhat weaker than expected, while inflation has moderated. It said growth in the world economy slowed in the second half of 2011, and is likely to continue at a below-trend pace this year.

Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard has said that Australian troops will be withdrawn from Afghanistan earlier than planned. In a speech to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute in Canberra Ms Gillard said troops would begin pulling out this year and the drawdown process would be completed by the end of 2013. Most international troops are due to leave Afghanistan by the end of 2014. NATO-led International Security Assistance Force is in the process of handing over security responsibility to Afghan troops. Some strategically important areas of the south and east have already been transferred to Afghan forces. There are currently about 130,000 NATO troops from 50 contributing nations in Afghanistan.

Australia has some 1,550 troops serving in Afghanistan, mainly in the Uruzgan province. 32 Australian soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan Since 2001. Australia is the second country who has announced early withdrawal of its troops from strife torn Afghanistan. France has already announced withdrawal of its forces in by the 2013.

In Australia, two people have been confirmed dead in a glider crash in Victoria’s south-west. The accident happened at the Ararat Airfield. A gliding instructor and a 21-year-old female student died at the scene. Police say the glider crashed several hundred metres after it took off, being towed behind a plane. They say conditions were fine and it was not yet clear what caused the crash.

In Australia, an Indian student was sentenced to 14 months in jail for his involvement in a bribery scam under which the English test scores used for granting Australian permanent residency and visas were falsified. A local court in Perth yesterday sentenced Rajesh Kumar, who had pleaded guilty to 10 counts of bribery between November 2009 and June 2010. 

The court heard that Kumar became an intermediary in the scam and personally received between 32,000 dollars and 44,000 dollars. Kumar also payed for his own International English Testing System results falsified by Kok Keith Low, an employee of Perth-based Curtin Universit