Attack on Indian's an you will be behind the bar's for 6 Year's--Australian Court To Australian's

MELBOURNE:

A court here has sentenced an Australian to over six years in jail for attacking an Indian taxi driver with knife, an incident that led to hundreds of Indian cabbies blocking the Melbourne streets last year.

Justice Elizabeth Curtain sentenced Parrish Chales to six-and-a-half years in jail, saying the stabbing was "random, unprovoked and frenzied" and the fact that the 45-year-old attacker had a hunting knife hidden in his pants showed a degree of "premeditation".

The judge said the unprovoked and unexpected assault on 23-year-old Jalvinder Singh was terrifying and left Singh with ongoing mental and physical injuries that would change his life, media reports said on Friday.

Charles stabbed Singh five times from behind with a hunting knife and the victim crawled bleeding from his cab and was found in the gutter hours later by a passing truck driver in April last year.

Charles drove off in the cab but crashed it nearby. The crime shocked the city and led to a mass blockade of Flinders and Swanston streets in central Melbourne by taxi drivers for 22 hours.

Victorian Government had to then agree to safety screens in cabs for drivers who wanted them, and pre-payment of fares to become mandatory at night.

Australian authorities declared Disaster Due to flood

SYDNEY:

Australian authorities declared a natural disaster along parts of the country's east coast on Saturday as heavy floods cut the main road linking major cities, stranding thousands of people.

Torrential rain soaked the Coffs Harbour region north of Sydney overnight, swamping the arterial Pacific Highway with flash floodwaters that isolated almost 5,000 people, emergency officials said.

About 40 people had to be evacuated from the area hit by the raging floods and New South Wales emergency services minister Steve Whan declared a natural disaster, releasing state funds.

More than 500 millimetres (20 inches) of rain had fallen in the past two days, Whan said, in the fifth major flooding incident to hit the region this year.

"I guess one of the things we've seen predicted from climate change consistently is that the rain and the weather events will come in more storms and more short-term deluges," he said.

"Unfortunately that's the pattern that we seem to be seeing this year in the area."

Floodwaters were expected to peak at five metres (yards) at Coffs Harbour on Saturday afternoon before easing, the State Emergency Service said, describing as "drastic" the cumulative effect of recent downpours.

"Weather conditions have eased considerably over the last few hours. However, we still have some 4,800 people isolated by floodwaters in a number of north-coast communities," said SES spokesman Phil Campbell.

Intense storms hit the east coast late last month, generating more than 10,000 lightning strikes and disrupting train and flight services.

Tens of thousands of homes and businesses were blacked out and a man was killed when his car hit a tree in torrential rains.

Indian Students were left in the lurch as four Australian colleges close

MELBOURNE:

Over 2,000 international students, including those from India, were left in the lurch - some with barely two weeks to go before they get their degrees - following the sudden overnight collapse of four private colleges in the Australian cities of Sydney and Melbourne.

Teachers at the colleges run by the Meridian Group were told they were out of jobs on Thursday night, but no one told the students who arrived at campuses on Friday morning to find the doors closed, ABC Online reported.

Several hundred students who gathered outside the group's Melbourne and Sydney colleges were left stunned by the closures.

A student said: "In just two weeks we were going to get our degrees."

Melbourne-based Jass Sandhu says she had no information from the school about the closure.

"Immigration should do something for us. If the college has closed it's not our problem.

"We were studying well, we were paying our dues. We weren't left with any dues, we were paying our dues on right time. What about our future?" she said.

About 2,700 international students were affected, including students about to take their exams.

The students were mainly from India and other Asian countries.

The colleges, located at 13 campuses in Melbourne and Sydney, provide tuition in hospitality, design, English language, fashion and secondary education.

The Global Campus Management/Meridian Group, which runs the four colleges, went into voluntary administration Thursday.

Administrator Stephen Parbery says it is unlikely the group will reopen the schools.

"They have formed the view that the companies are not viable," he was quoted as saying.

Jacinta Allan, Victoria's skills and workforce participation minister, says the government is reviewing legislation covering such colleges.

"The buck stops with the state regulator having oversight, and that is why we are making sure we strengthen the guidelines. We are reviewing the legislation," she told ABC radio.

"This is a company that's made what appears to be a reasonably quick decision on withdrawing their financial support for the ongoing operation of the company.

"The administrators have since come in and moved very quickly to close the schools down, which also causes concerns because of the effect on students."