The small Australian town of Wee Waa is readying for its global launch of the new album by French group Daft Punk, despite being pipped at the post with the music already available online.

Wee Waa, a farming town known as the "Cotton Capital of Australia", lies about 500 kilometres (310 miles) north-west of Sydney and Daft Punk are not attending Friday's event.

Politicians in northern Australia said Tuesday they were considering putting neglected Aboriginal children up for adoption, sparking fears of a new "stolen generation".

Northern Territory Chief Minister Adam Giles, Australia's first indigenous state or territory leader, said he was advocating the plan on a case-by-case basis to protect vulnerable children.

A deep 7.0-magnitude earthquake struck near the Northern Mariana Islands in the western Pacific on Tuesday, the US Geological Survey said, but no tsunami warning was issued.

The quake hit 42 kilometers (26 miles) west of Agrihan and 395 kilometers north of the main island Saipan, but it was at a depth of 603 kilometers and seismologists said it was too deep to cause any impact.

Australia's central bank scaled back its forecasts Friday, warning of muted growth and a "subdued" outlook as the commodities-driven economy transitions away from mining.

The Reserve Bank of Australia said it expected growth of 2.5 percent and inflation of 2.25 percent for the year ended December 31, compared with 2.0-3.0 percent for both forecast in February.

Sky-gazers were treated to an annular solar eclipse in remote areas of Australia on Friday, with the Moon crossing in front of the Sun to leave a "ring of fire" around its silhouette.

The eclipse, which occurs when the Moon passes between the Earth and the Sun but is too close to the Earth to completely cover the Sun, was seen in full across northern Australia, while Sydney saw a partial eclipse.

Investigations were under way Thursday into who lobbed Vegemite sandwiches at the Australian prime minister as she toured a Queensland school.

Julia Gillard tried to play down the prank on Wednesday at Brisbane's Marsden state high school. "One kid thought he might just be a little bit naughty," the prime minister said.

Australian cattle exporters said they had suspended live shipments to Egypt Saturday after abattoir footage shot by animal rights activists showed "horrific" mistreatment of cows.

The Australian Livestock Exporters' Council, the industry's representative body, said it had urgently halted shipments to Egypt after Animals Australia presented it with footage showing "vicious, cruel and clumsy" practices.

A South Korean spy ring has been uncovered in Australia trying to cultivate public servants to obtain trade secrets, a report said Thursday.

The Sydney Morning Herald said previously suppressed information revealed that South Korea's National Intelligence Service (NIS) had sought "to obtain sensitive information" on trade negotiations between Canberra and Seoul.

Australia was first settled by between 1,000 and 3,000 humans around 50,000 years ago, but the population crashed during the Ice Age before recovering to a peak of some 1.2 million people around five centuries ago, a study said on Wednesday.

Estimating the early population of Australia is a source of debate in anthropology, partly because it touches on how European colonization affected the country's indigenous people.

A self-proclaimed leader of the LulzSec international hacking group has been arrested in Australia, police said on Wednesday, after charging him with attacking and defacing a government website.

The 24-year-old IT professional, who went by the online identity "ozshock", was seized at his office in a town 76 kilometers (47 miles) north of Sydney on Tuesday.