Lawyers

• 16-year-old Australian schoolgirl admits transferring $10,000 to Islamic State fighters to support terror activities

  A 16-year-old school girl was apprehended in Sydney earlier this week for transferring thounsands of dollars to Islamic State to fund the group's terror activities. The girl faces charges on terror financing.

• Gay couple gets married in Australia after finding legal diplomatic loophole

  A manly couple from Australia got married last week after a legal diplomatic loophole. The couple got married at the British consulate and is legally married in Britain, but their union remains unrecognized by the Australian government. James Hanley and Dan Waknin said that they are looking into the option of adopting children.

• Australian police raid Sydney home of reported bitcoin creator

  Australian police raided the Sydney home and office on Wednesday of a man named by Wired magazine as the probable creator of bitcoin and holder of hundreds of millions of dollars worth of the cryptocurrency, Reuters witnesses said.

• Australian PM brings forward vote on leadership to Monday

  Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott, fighting for his political life, said he would bring forward to Monday a meeting of his ruling party to consider a challenge to his leadership in an effort to halt a destabilizing internal revolt.

• Australian mother charged with murder of eight children

  An Australian mother has been charged with the murder of eight children, seven of them hers, two days after their bodies were found in a home in the city of Cairns.

• 'Lone wolf' Australian hostage-taker had violent, unsettled past

  The self-styled sheikh behind a siege at a Sydney cafe had been charged as an accessory to murder and with multiple sexual offences. He also harbored deep grievances against the Australian government and had found little kinship in the city's large Muslim community, where he was seen as deeply troubled.

• Police storm Sydney cafe to end hostage siege, three dead

  Heavily armed Australian police stormed a Sydney cafe early on Tuesday morning and freed a number of hostages being held there at gunpoint, in a dramatic end to a 16-hour siege in which three people including the attacker were killed.

• Hostages held in Sydney cafe, forced to hold Islamic flag in window

  Dozens of hostages were trapped inside a central Sydney cafe on Monday, with local television showing some being forced to hold up a black flag with white Arabic writing in the window, raising fears of an attack linked to Islamic militants.

• Crime and gangs: the path to battle for Australia's Islamist radicals

  The children of refugees who fled Lebanon's civil war for peaceful Australia in the 1970s form a majority of Australian militants fighting in the Middle East, according to about a dozen counter-terrorism officials, security experts and Muslim community members.