Australian 80's band Men At Work have been ordered by a court to pay royalties for ripping off a flute riff from a children's campfire song for their hit song "Down Under." The band said it was an "unconscious" lifting.

In your illiterate Wednesday media column: Joe Klein fails reading comprehension, Gerald Posner does the Gerald Posner thing again, Photoshop model disclosure in Australia, a Conde-Hearst talent war foreshadowed, and Playboy grows ever less sexy.

Australia has a new prime minister. A woman prime minister! Her name is Julia Gillard.

A pair of Australians earned the nicknames "Dumb and Dumber" for indulging their curiosity about whether an air rifle "would penetrate their skin or would hurt" by shooting each other. Answer: Yes. [UPI, Image: Olga Popova/Shutterstock]

Hayabusa, a Japanese spacecraft containing material from a moving asteroid, re-entered the atmosphere this week, putting on an amazing light show after ejecting its cargo to parachute safely into the Australian Outback. Click through for video of the explosion.

Don Ritchie lives across the street from the most famous suicide spot in Australia: A cliff known as "The Gap." Most people would move, but Ritchie's stayed for almost 50 years—saving an estimated 160 people from suicide.

Abby Sunderland, the 16-year-old California sailor attempting to circumnavigate the globe alone, activated her distress beacon Thursday after hitting rough weather in the Indian Ocean. A search is now underway. Update: She has been found "alive and well."

Here's a little news that ought to put starving people the world over in good spirits this blah Monday: an Australian cafe has made the world's biggest hamburger. It's 178lbs and costs $1500. It takes four men to flip. [Reuters]

President Obama has bailed on his Australia/Indonesia trip, thanks to the BP oil spill.

Australian fitness class participants: are they listening to pop music authentic enough to get them pumped? Alas, the answer may be "no." Because in Australia—whether it's cardio-kickboxing, spinning, or some other bullshit—it's set to Britney cover tunes.

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange claims that Australian officials confiscated his passport. He added, ominously, that Australian police questioned him about his past. Was it payback for the time Wikileaks published a secret government document? We call bullshit.

For his new installation, Australian artist Bennett Miller has assembled a meeting of the U.N. Commission on Human Rights in the Melbourne Museum plaza. The part that is "art" is that all of the delegates are dogs. All together: Awwwwww.

Sir Ian McKellen, England's second most famous wizard, was sitting outside the Comedy Theatre in Australia in his Waiting for Godot costume when someone walked by and dropped money in his hat. They thought he was a real tramp. [Telegraph]

The Broadbeach Cats Australian Rules football team "were cheered on by two skimpily-dressed staff," in a recent game. Their sponsorship deal pitted upset feminists against one plucky Hooters branch owner with a flawless argument.

The Australian government announced plans today to ban all shiny branding and logos on cigarette packs—it'll just be the brand name, and a big ol' photo of a diseased lung. Eh, they all taste like diseased lungs anyhow. [SMH]

Today a free justin Bieber concert scheduled in Sydney, Australia had to be cancelled after a mass of teens turned into a surging wall of squealing humanity. Tonight, Justin contemplated what it meant to leave destruction trailing in his wake.

An Australian court order is leading Heinz to give away some 2,000 tons of pineapple to Australia's homeless community, who will use the fruit for food, and building materials, and some kind of pineapple-based currency. [news.com.au]

The pop singer, famous for getting arrested cruising for sex in a public toilet, is now on Grindr, a location-based iPhone app that allows gay men to meet up via their phones. And he's terrorizing Australia's gays with it.

Good news for Lady Gaga stalkers: One of your own penetrated Gaga's inner sanctum, broke into her dressing room, "stalkerishly touch[ed]" her clothes, stole her itinerary, and put it on his blog. Bad news for Lady Gaga: See above.

On the Late Show the other night, Robin Williams accused Australians of being "English rednecks." Belligerent drunk and Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd shot back that Alabamians are American rednecks. Good point! Australia is the Alabama of the South Pacific.