American graphic artist Robert Crumb, famous for his subversive comic drawings, has pulled out of a visit to Australia because of fears for his safety, reports said Wednesday.

Crumb, known for his "Fritz the Cat" comics, cancelled his appearances at the Graphic 2011 festival in Sydney for "personal reasons", organizers said.

A senior government minister in Australia has announced that her lesbian partner is pregnant.

Finance Minister Penny Wong said in a statement Tuesday that her partner, Sophie Allouache, had conceived through in-vitro fertilization and is expecting her first child in December.

Sydney will host one of Australia's 2014 World Cup Asian qualifying matches in October, with Oman to face the Socceroos at a yet to be named venue, officials said Sunday.

Football Federation Australia (FFA) said that under an agreement with the New South Wales government, the Socceroos will play two more qualifying matches in the state if they progress out of the third round in which they are grouped with Saudi Arabia, Oman and Thailand.

A manhunt was under way Thursday for a suspect who attached what turned out to be a fake bomb to a terrified Sydney teenager in a drama described as "like something out of a Hollywood movie script.”

Madeleine Pulver, 18, a member of one of Sydney's wealthiest families, endured a horrifying 10-hour ordeal after a masked male intruder strapped a device around her neck at her home in the exclusive suburb of Mosman.

Bomb squad officers were Wednesday working to defuse a "suspicious device" at a Sydney house that media reports said was strapped to a terrified teenager.

Police were alerted by an 18-year-old woman in the exclusive suburb of Mosman and were in the house with fire crews and paramedics on standby.

Australia's government plans to post video on YouTube and Facebook of the first group of asylum seekers sent to Malaysia under a pact between the countries to swap refugees, in an attempt to deter others from taking dangerous boat journeys to Australia.

Releasing video of the asylum seekers at Christmas Island — an Australian territory in the Indian Ocean — boarding a plane, and arriving in Malaysia will help raise awareness of Australia's new policy, Immigration Minister Chris Bowen said Tuesday.

The travel plans of thousands of Australians were disrupted Saturday by a power outage at Sydney's international airport.

Australia's busiest air terminal was blacked out for an hour and a half, crippling security screening and check-in and delaying "thousands" of passengers, a Sydney Airport spokesman said.

An unemployed truck driver was charged Wednesday with hacking into an Australian broadband network provider in an alleged crime that police say could have caused significant damage to the national Internet infrastructure.

David Cecil, 25, was charged in a court in New South Wales state with hacking into one of the National Broadband Network's service providers and numerous other businesses and websites in Australia and overseas since May.

A lethal bat-borne horse virus has been detected in a dog for the first time, authorities in Australia said on Tuesday, prompting fears it has jumped species.

"This is the first time outside of a laboratory that an animal other than a flying fox or a horse, or a human, has been confirmed with Hendra virus infection," Queensland state Chief Veterinary Officer Rick Symons said.

Heavily-armed Australian police on Tuesday seized a "substantial" stockpile of explosives in a raid on a house north of Melbourne, but ruled out any religious or racial connections.

A 32-year-old man was arrested on suspicion of possessing items used to make bombs after arson and explosives squad detectives, together with the Special Operations Group, executed a search warrant at the house in Castlemaine.