Six ancient Syrian sites as well as Australia's Great Barrier Reef could be listed as endangered by UNESCO, which Sunday begins its annual session to decide which global cultural and natural treasures merit World Heritage status. The main task of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation committee will be to decide whether some 31 sites, including Japan's Mount Fuji and the city of Agadez in Niger, are of "outstanding universal value".

Australia's Bondi Beach is set for a major makeover, with concrete car parks to be replaced with grass, trees and a boardwalk in an ambitious overhaul of the world-renowned site. The draft proposal, which local authorities hope will cement Bondi's status as a world-class tourist destination, will see large areas of the foreshore currently devoted to parking turned into green space.

Australia's Woodside Petroleum announced Friday it was shelving a controversial gas export project worth more than $40 billion, prompting government assurances that the resources boom was not over. The energy giant said the proposed Browse liquefied natural gas development in Western Australia was not a financially sound option. "The development would not deliver the required commercial returns to support a positive final investment decision by Woodside," the company said in a statement to the Australian stock exchange.

A tropical cyclone hit Australia's resource-rich northwest coast Wednesday, bringing winds of up to 165 kilometres (102 miles) an hour as it crossed the shore near the tiny community of Pardoo. Severe tropical cyclone Rusty had been sitting offshore for several days, slowly intensifying as it edged towards the Pilbara coast and bringing heavy rain and gale-force winds to the iron ore region. "It is in the process of crossing," Neil Bennett from Australia's Bureau of Meteorology told AFP just after 0700 GMT, adding it was too soon to say whether it had caused any damage.