Australia's third-largest city was headed into another lockdown Friday and nationwide restrictions on international arrivals were being tightened, after a cleaner at a quarantine hotel contracted the highly infectious UK strain of Covid-19.

Australia said Tuesday 330 troops were heading to Iraq for two years to train local soldiers fighting jihadists including the Islamic State group, joining an aerial and special forces contingent in the region.

Prime Minister Tony Abbott said the troops would be deployed from Wednesday and operate from the massive Taji base complex north of Baghdad alongside 100 soldiers from New Zealand.

The world's biggest economies must tackle rising inequality, aid agency Oxfam warned Tuesday, saying ignoring the issue would leave millions trapped in poverty and risk economic growth.

In a report ahead of the G20 summit in Brisbane, Oxfam said the wealth of G20 nations had risen by U.S.$17 trillion since December but the richest one percent of people took more than one-third of this with U.S.$6.2 trillion.

A terror suspect shot dead by Australian police after stabbing two officers in a frenzied knife attack may not have been acting alone, officials said Thursday, escalating concerns about the threat posed by radicalized youth.

Abdul Numan Haider, 18, was killed on Tuesday evening on the outskirts of Melbourne, a day after the Islamic State group called for Muslims to indiscriminately kill Australians.

Police have shot dead a "known terror suspect" who stabbed two officers, a day after the Islamic State group called for Muslims to indiscriminately kill Australians, officials said Wednesday.

The 18-year-old, reportedly associated with the Islamic group Al-Furqan, was killed on Tuesday evening, having arrived at a police station on the outskirts of Melbourne to attend a "routine" interview.

A drunk passenger sparked a hijack alert on a Virgin Australia flight heading for the Indonesian resort island of Bali Friday when he attempted to break into the cockpit, officials said.

Security forces rushed to the airport when the Boeing 737-800 touched down on the popular island, after the pilot reported the Brisbane to Bali flight had been hijacked, Indonesian authorities said.

A Frenchwoman has become the fourth foreign student to be brutally murdered in the Australian city of Brisbane in almost as many months, police said Wednesday.

The battered and naked body of a 21-year-old woman was found in a park near her apartment after what police called "a brutal attack" in the early hours of Friday morning.

A 14-year-old Australian girl was Monday charged with attempted murder after she allegedly poisoned two other children, reportedly with chocolate brownies tainted with a household substance.

Queensland state police said the girl had been charged after allegedly giving two boys, aged 12 and 13, food poisoned with a substance "generally found in the home" in the Brisbane suburb of Richlands on Sunday.

Maria Sharapova has withdrawn from the Brisbane International because of her continuing recovery from a left ankle injury first suffered at the Pan Pacific Championships in Tokyo in September.

Sharapova told Brisbane tournament officials in a statement released Saturday that "unfortunately my ankle is not 100 percent and I won't be able to make it this year." It would have been her first appearance at the Brisbane event which begins Jan. 1.