Australian thieves have made off with a life-size cutout of Prince William and his bride in a midnight heist from a luxury hotel offering special wedding stays, a spokeswoman said Friday.

The cardboard couple had become something of a draw-card since being erected in the lobby of Melbourne's Hotel Windsor earlier this year, bringing a steady crowd of guests and locals keen for a happy snap.

Australia's food watchdog said Wednesday it may lift its ban on food derived from hemp, with the man pushing for change promising cannabis ice-cream if successful.

Hemp foods are widely available in many overseas markets, including Europe, Canada and the United States, and deregistered Sydney doctor Andrew Katelaris has applied for the rules to be overturned in Australia.

A British museum said Thursday it had agreed to return 138 sets of skeletal remains of indigenous people to Australia in what it hailed as a new approach to the delicate subject of repatriation.

London's Natural History Museum will return the remains to the Torres Strait Islands off Queensland.

Lebanon’s ambassador to Australia said there were no Lebanese victims in the deadly earthquake that struck one of New Zealand's largest cities on Tuesday.

The foreign ministry said Wednesday that Ambassador Jean Daniel informed it that no Lebanese were injured or missing in the quake that hit the city of Christchurch.

Wildfires destroyed at least 59 homes in Perth, Australia's fourth largest city, officials said Monday, as soldiers fanned out for massive cleanup operations across the cyclone-hit northeast.

A natural disaster was declared in areas of Perth on the country's west coast, where two major blazes raged out of control for a second day, triggered by heat and high winds brought by last week's ferocious Cyclone Yasi.

For decades, New Zealand has campaigned for museums to repatriate the mummified and heavily-tattooed heads of Maori warriors held in collections worldwide -- now it must decide what to do with the gruesome but culturally valuable relics.

New Zealand's national museum Te Papa has more than 100 of the heads, known as toi moko, in storage in Wellington, along with about 500 skeletal remains plundered from Maori graves as recently as the 1930s.

Australia marshaled 4,000 troops and sent a supply ship with tons of food to its cyclone-stricken northeast coast Friday, as awe-struck residents in wrecked towns confronted debris that included boats tossed into neighbors' yards.

Authorities confirmed the first death from the storm that slammed into the coast early Thursday and said a search was under way for two missing people.

Australia's biggest cyclone in a century shattered entire towns, pummeling the coast and churning across the country Thursday, terrifying locals but causing no confirmed fatalities.

Shaken residents emerged to check the damage after Severe Tropical Cyclone Yasi hit land at around midnight, packing winds of up to 290 kilometers per hour in a region still reeling from record floods.

Novak Djokovic's commanding Australian Open win over Andy Murray broke the Federer-Nadal Grand Slam monopoly and heralds a new era for men's tennis, Australian media said Monday.

The Serbian world number three dominated Sunday's three-set clash with a display described as "crushing" by the local press.

Lionel Dhulmanawuy, an Aboriginal dancer from a remote tropical island off northern Australia, points to his cracked lips and dry skin: Beijing's winter is "powerfully cold", he says.

Dhulmanawuy and his fellow Chooky Dancers, who became a YouTube sensation with a quirky "Zorba the Greek" number, left Australia for the first time in January to perform in China's televised Spring Festival gala, seen by millions.