An Australian anti-logging campaigner who has spent the last 15 months living 60 metres (196 feet) up a tree was Thursday forced down by an approaching bushfire, but vowed to continue her protest. Miranda Gibson, 31, took to a makeshift platform atop a eucalypt tree in Tasmania in December 2011 and has remained there since, demanding that the state's high conservation value forests are protected from logging. But advice from her support crew that an uncontrolled bushfire was only a few kilometres away and posed a risk convinced her to abseil down.

By James Grubel CANBERRA, Jan 14 (Reuters) - Raging wildfires destroyed at least another 28 homes and licked at Australia's leading optical space observatory on Monday, officials said, but spared giant telescopes that have mapped far-away galaxies and discovered new planets. Less fortunate were a father and son who police arrested after a fire was lit deliberately to destroy illegal drug laboratories they were alleged to be running in dense bushland. Police were closing in on the drug labs when the fire was lit.